All humans are blessed with intuition. It’s a natural, hard-wired gift from The Divine. It’s also the thing that kept our ancestors alive in prehistoric times, when sensitivity to subtle changes in sound and energy from the earth could mean the difference between successfully hunting a bison and getting trampled by a stampeding herd. Picking up on the subtle signs of the unrest and danger of an approaching stampeding herd of two-ton animals requires both the intuitive ability to be able to read and hear the signs that would lead to appropriate defensive actions to avoid being trampled. While fleeing the danger is key, our ancient ancestors did not live in permanent flight or fright mode. They also did not have a dizzying array of input from phones, internet, and any number of thousands of media source options. All that static can drown out the true source of knowledge you can always trust; centuries old intuition that we are hard wired with. The gradual shift of this static from occasional to constant, loud and overwhelming data bombardment lies at the heart of people not realizing how intuition can continue to play a significant, grounding role in our media overloaded lives. The problem lies in how this flood of media input interferes with accurate perception.
The result of all of this interference is the ascendancy of fear and anxiety as the dominating emotional paradigm. There is a ton of fear being generated by our modern media and advertising. Companies are literally banking on it, as it is used to drive all aspects of our society and discourse.
Fear and the static effect
Much like poor WiFi signals, the noise and overwhelming data input present in our normal modern life can play havoc with the messages that our ever-present intuition is struggling to deliver to us. We all want and need to avoid reacting to the modern equivalent of the stampeding herd of bison. A full inbox and voice message file will not kill you...seriously. It’s quite easy to default to the usual means of dealing with life, which is to be pulled to and fro by the surge and flow of whatever currents and societal fear is predominant at the time. It is a bit harder, but infinitely more productive to decide on your desired outcome, then get focused and clear on what that outcome feels and looks like, then tune yourself to The Universe so that The Universe does the work to give you your desired outcome.
I’ve discovered this is the beauty of the get-centered-and-tune-in technique. You aren’t doing the heavy lifting of making things happen. Your main job is to obtain clarity of goals and focus. Focus on positive outcomes and have a firm belief in the goodness and love of the Universe, rather than some dire, horrible outcome that is the equivalent of wishing for a ton of bricks to flatten you. Once you can gain this precious focus, the static of fear and anxiety dissipate, and you’re able to more clearly see what your goal is and focus on it. I discovered the truth of this when interacting with patients who were terrified before surgery. #faithoverfear
Tune In to Your Desired Outcome
Just having a surgery is a challenging proposition. Dealing with the fears of what could happen, friends or family history of bad surgical experiences, or the potential outcomes of one’s own surgical outcome is enough to send many people into the realm of panic and what if. Unfortunately, this is the mental state which I found many of my patients in the pre-operative areas. What I quickly discovered was that the best route to step out of the fear loop and get patients calm and focused on the positive was to get them first to focus on their breathing. Calming the breath is central to interrupting the fear and doom loop.
Just BREATHE
Breath work is always central to calming the mind and spirit. It’s also central to arriving at a state most conducive to achieving a positive outcome during surgery and recovery. Unfortunately, it's also not a topic given much focus in traditional medical thought and surgery preparation. Through a complex series of physiologic effects that I won’t bore you with, when you change your breath pattern from rapid and shallow and in the upper part of your chest to slower and deeper and centered in your belly, you automatically signal your nervous system to start the shift from flight and fright mode to a more relaxed state. In this relaxed state, the parasympathetic system begins to do it's job to override the adrenaline-fueled freak-out junkie effects of the sympathetic or flight or fight system. I get patients to take deep breaths and do box breathing to help them break out of this downward spiral of fear. The truth is that most decisions made in the grip of flight and fright paradigm are not the best or most rational decisions you could make. That is, unless it truly is life or death: like being eaten by a tiger. The other nasty bit of news is that our society, and many of the industries in it, trade on our hardwired flight or fright response to sell and make money. We must essentially unlearn a very familiar response to the unknown and learn to look within as we focus on our breath, not external stimuli and influences, to calm ourselves. Going to this internal space of calm is central to being able to rewire our responses and make decisions and set goals that are not based on fear.
Faith Not Fear
One of my favorite books is The Universe Has Your Back: Transform Fear to Faith, by Gabrielle Bernstein. It has been a landmark mindset book for me, because central to the book’s premise is the statement that:
“..the stories we project on our internal movie screens become the experience we perceive to be our realities”
In other words, when we perceive something as fearful, that is the drama we project onto our internal movie screens, to play itself out over and over into a never-ending nightmare loop. But when we choose not to perceive in fear, the nature of the movie has the potential to change. When we perceive out of love and positivity, we generate a much nicer movie to see over and over and have the potential to turn our dreams into a more pleasant and positive reality.
Fuel Your Dreams With Love
Put another way (thank you Gabby Bernstein), "You are the dreamer of your dream." If you have the power to show The Universe the outcome you desire, to dream your dream, why not make it a perfect ending rather than some nightmare scenario? My first step with over-the-top anxious patients, after I get them to do some breath-work to to calm down, is then to get them into a receptive head space to dream and imagine the perfect outcome of their surgery rather than some awful nightmare hellscape that they would not wish to be in. Once we interrupt the fear loop, we can do the real work of changing perception from one based on fear to one based on faith and love. #lovemore
Dream the World You Want to See
The Universe responds to the energy behind our thoughts and beliefs. Also true is that the Universe will send you more outcomes and energies to match the energies your thoughts are putting out. Starting with positive and loving thoughts and outcomes is a first step in setting intentions and making goals that you want to reach, like successfully navigating your surgery and recovery period. The next involves keeping that focus, and you imagine how you will feel, and the activities you will participate in when you reach this goal. At this point, you will be putting forth positive, loving energy (The Love Channel) rather than the energy deriving from fear. Having the Universe match this emotion of love and positivity will generate still more attractive power for events like recovery from surgery. This first step is generating emotions and feelings of positivity and a desired outcome; faith that things will turn out well. #dreams, #dreambig, #faith
The next step, and the next blog, will focus on tuning into your intuition, or intuitive wisdom, to help you make the changes internally that will result in manifesting your dreams into reality. This is the basis of the techniques I use in coaching my patients through the surgical period. It’s also something that I’ve used myself during my life to meet challenges and the tough spots that inevitably come to us all.
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