The human mind is an enigma which has garnered immense curiosity, debate, and frustration since the beginnings of human civilization. We all deal with the full time career of managing the beliefs, emotions, and thoughts that we experience on a daily basis. The complexity of the mind’s inner workings is something that we have only just begun to become knowledgeable about. Its innate capability to absorb new knowledge and concepts, as well as its ability to recall memories made decades prior to the present day is something that still astounds scientists worldwide. Yet despite all the good it can do, it can also be a huge burden if unhealthily managed.
Many people struggle when coping with three of the most powerful negative emotions that exist in our world which are hate, fear, and doubt. Hate is the harboring of extreme emotional dislike directed at a particular person, group of people, place, or thing. Fear is a destabilizing response mechanism that is induced by a perceived internal or external threat. While doubt is a feeling of uncertainty that arises around an action, motive, fact, decision etc. These emotions can severely limit what you believe that you can do and what you believe others can do. Overcoming the tendency to allow any of these three negative emotions to control aspects of your mind is a challenge, however if you can achieve it, an enjoyable life is sure to follow.
Misunderstandings or lack of deep knowledge about the beliefs, actions, or thoughts of another individual or group could be a catalyst for hateful feelings. In the world that we live in today, feelings of hate can be widespread. Some may hate others because of what they believe, what they do, or what they look like. Though externally it is very obvious who is a victim when it comes to directed hateful actions or words, what is not often as obvious is the harm it causes to the one doing the actual hating. Though hate is certainly a very powerful emotion in its own isolated right, it is also debilitating in that for the individual that harbors these intense feelings also suffers internally. Hateful actions or words are sent out into the external world and cause damage to an external target, however they have to be generated from ones internal world first. This is where the true problem lies. Suffering deep down inside of an individual’s internal world is the true source of these negative feelings, which are then sent out into the external world and released onto an external person, place, or thing which is then oftentimes falsely blamed to be the origin of the original generated feelings. An external target is usually the scapegoat for these feelings of negativity because one does not usually want to associate any animosity with one’s own self because that would conflict with ones personal ego. Hate is the most powerful negative emotion in existence, however it absolutely pales in comparison to its compliment, the most powerful positive emotion in the universe, which is the emotion of love.
Love is a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection for another person. This strong emotion could be characterized as the feeling a child feels for his parents or the feeling which bonds two romantic partners together. This goes way beyond just a physical or mental attachment level, but rather more on a spiritual attachment level. One has to establish a strong, consistent sense of love for their own self in order to avoid falling into the trap of self-hate which could rebound onto others living in the world around them. Self-hate could result from a person disliking particular aspects of themselves such as self-perceived defects or shortcomings in life. This could then generate internal negative energy harbored around whatever they may dislike about themselves which begins to make them lash out at others in the world because in essence they have been poisoned by their own negative mental feelings. The cure to this poison is to replace whatever you may be feeling negative about with love, unconditional love for yourself and any and all that could be considered your shortcomings in life. You are the way you are today because of a previous mindset which dealt you results which led you to the point you are currently at. However that does not mean that you have to stay that way forever. Establishing love for yourself, and every aspect of yourself is one way to start fresh and get rid of any negative emotions that may be built up inside you which are then directed at other people, places, or things. If one dislikes a particular aspect of self and actively seeks to change it because of a ‘perceived better way to be’, there are much healthier avenues to pursue this change rather than beating yourself up and harboring toxic energy inside you, which only serves to weaken every aspect of yourself in the process. Replace hate, with love and strive to seek out a deep understanding for things you are not familiar with or exactly comfortable with. This could be an enlightening experience which could open up doorways for you to see life with a new healthier outlook; one which could reap benefits which are not solely bound to the physical world that we live in.
Fear is a distressing, oftentimes paralyzing sensation one feels when aroused by an impending danger, evil, or pain etc., whether that threat is real or imagined. Unlike hate, fear is not all bad. For instance harboring a fear of dangerous animals and a having a tendency to stay away from environments in which they tend to live within is a smart thing. Likewise having a fear of walking alone on a dark street at nighttime is a good fear as realistically at night your visibility is low, which could leave you vulnerable to potential threats that could take advantage of this physical deficiency. Both of these are rational fears. On the other hand, irrational fear exists as well. Having a fear to stand up in front of a crowd of people and do something which you were perfectly fine doing with your mother minutes earlier on the telephone, speaking, and feeling completely paralyzed and vulnerable that the people who will watch you speak are going to judge your every word and critically analyze every sound you utter from your mouth to make sure that it is pronounced correctly is certainly an irrational fear. This could also be the fear of engaging in certain social situations due to a mental disposition that makes you assume that you are always doing something wrong, or that you are not good enough, or fearing a negative reaction from another person in response to something that you could potentially say or do. Any fear that prevents you from doing something that you are perfectly capable of doing, only if you didn’t have that mental roadblock telling you that it is in some way going to harm you, endanger you, or embarrass you is an irrational fear. All this amounts to a certain kind of mindset, which is being controlled by the fear of imagined threats, which holds you back from living the best quality of life that you could possibly live. We are all our own worst self critics, yet some are worse than others. Being overly self-critical could be a main catalyst for a person developing a plethora of irrational fears which could impair that person’s perceived ability to do the things that they would like to feel comfortable doing. The key to eliminating this tendency to develop irrational fears is you must establish a strong sense of self-confidence in yourself and your innate abilities.
Confidence is the state of being certain that one can do whatever it is that they desire to do. It is a state of harboring full trust, assurance, and reliability in a person, place, or thing. Self-confidence is all about harboring this state of assurance in oneself. If one firmly and consistently holds their self-confidence in place that is enough to overcome any irrational fear that exists in this world. Establishing confidence is all about creating a positive self image of you. Analyzing what you have already achieved in your life, writing down what you would consider your biggest strengths and weaknesses, and thinking about what’s most important in your life and what pathway you would like to direct your life towards are all great ways to establish a stable level of self-confidence in yourself. What is also very important is analyzing the contents of your mind and figuring out the sources of any negative voices that may be swirling around in your internal world. Find out where they are originating from and use your new found awareness of your own personal strengths to replace those negative internal seeds which are spouting out mental toxins with a healthy, positive seed in its place. With these newfound self-confidence building abilities, one can then try to erase the old irrational fears that previously kept them at bay from doing the things that they would have been able to do easily if only they had the self-confidence to actually do them.
Lastly, doubt is a state of being hesitant, indecisive, or uncertain about something or what to believe. Having doubt in oneself can be a major problem for many people because it can delay necessary actions out of concern of possible mistakes or improper judgments. Self-doubt can be caused by not trusting your own inner guidance or being confused by the possibility of hearing conflicting voices of reason inside your internal world. This multiple voice scenario where by listening in to your internal world, you may hear multiple forms of guidance, often of a conflicting nature, can be a major source of self-doubt. A person may feel unsure of what voice to listen to which causes them to doubt whether what they are in fact hearing is either right or wrong. This multiple-voice scenario is due to an inner voice of fear speaking as well as your higher intuition speaking at the same time; making matters more challenging is the fact that these two voices are only separated by one of degree; your conscious inner voice could speak to you in a steady, calm reserved tone, while a voice motivated by fear or anxiety may feel overly excited or anxious even though the external situation you may be involved within doesn’t warrant such a heightened awareness. Still in the heat of a situation which you may be feeling uncertain about, people usually have the tendency to act upon the first internal voice they hear in their mind, which all to often is a default, loud voice of fear which is a self-protective mechanism to protect the self from an imagined threat, which would be classified as an irrational fear. The right thing to do is in the heat of any particular moment you should try to allow the mind to remain calm and critically analyze what is a perceived reality based upon fear and what is a perceived reality based upon solid belief in oneself. Only by acting upon the reality based on solid belief in oneself will ones true intuition speak softly and clearly to you, which will enable you to act upon your best principles and experience rewarding results and not act out of a hesitant or anxious nature which all too often leads to limited, lackluster results.
Belief is the mental acceptance of something to be true. Belief is right up there with love as one of the most powerful positive emotions in the world. Doubt holds no candle to a firm belief within something; while one is fixated around uncertainty, the other is fashioned around a solid core of definition. Establishing beliefs is usually acquired by experience and repetition. Experience creates beliefs because the more events that you go through throughout your life either lead you to positive outcomes or negative outcomes which cause you to believe certain things to be right or wrong. All your beliefs built up about the different elements of life end up becoming what most call your ‘common sense’. Secondly repetition creates beliefs because the more times that you hear something, the more it becomes engrained into your subconscious mind. Once an idea becomes engrained into your subconscious mind it is very difficult to change it because it essentially becomes a part of your very being—a belief. For a person who is troubled with doubt about any particular circumstance that is governing their life, it is a must to replace that doubt with some sort of decisive belief in order to relieve that person from potentially staying in a mode of indecisiveness which all too often leads to confusion, impulsiveness, and melancholy. Beliefs are powerful mechanisms that can serve to guide you in the right direction, and ones intuition is usually already filled with all the right guidance one can ever have. In order to access that higher knowledge, it just requires you to break through any clouds of doubt which may be shrouding you from the truth that you desperately seek, which is all too often lying right in front of your very own eyes.
Overall correcting a mindset that seems to be auto-set on thinking negativity about self, others, or the world is all about establishing a sense of worth and self-respect within the individual which feels that way. Hate, fear, and doubt are the three most powerful negative emotions in the world which affect the human mind; however they will always be dwarfed by the three most powerful positive emotions in the world which are love, confidence, and belief. The human mind is and always has been a mystery of epic proportions, which still serves as a challenge for so many of us to fully comprehend and master. We may never understand the true extent of the powers we have inside of us but it doesn’t hurt to attempt to correct any mental dilemmas that may be stalling us from living out the most beautiful, enjoyable lives which we all deserve to live. We are by definition what life is, so if we are life, why can we so often be confused by it? Try asking that question to the enigmatic puzzle that is the human mind!
Thank you,
Emmett Dennis Jr.
