Do You Live In a Safe or a Dangerous World?
What Did Albert Think?
Albert Einstein, (a relatively bright guy, just in case you haven’t heard of him) said, “the most important decision you will ever make is whether you live in a safe or a dangerous world.” Why do you think he felt so strongly about it? I believe he realized each of us create our personal reality out of our beliefs and expectations. What that means is that in life, we filter our experiences based on our pre-frame about what we expect to see. If our expectation is that the world is dangerous, something from which we must be protected, than our primary stance will be defensive one. And so it is with much of the world. From their perspective, trust is a sign of naivety, so they keep their guard up and their welcome sign down. But at what cost?
Media and Fear Machine
Here is a fact. People consume more news when it focuses on that which we fear. If your headline article says, “Prepare for the Storm of the Century,” you will outsell your competitor who says, “Everything is Coming Uo Roses.” Recognize that media is in the business of selling advertising. Sharing the “news” is merely the method they have chosen to attempt to do the former. That being said, it is understandable that many in our society live in fear and defensiveness. The media seeks out and amplifies every act of destruction, while remaining silent about the millions of acts of random kindness that occur everyday. Being fed “reality” by a market driven media provides a picture of reality greatly distorted. This distortion benefits no one as it serves to build fear based barriers between the very people with whom collaboration is our life’s purpose.
It’s Not About Blind Trust
While it can be argued that blindly endowing trust on everyone might lead to catastrophe, this exaggerated position is the result of a false choice. Simply choosing to be more trusting doesn’t mean that we no longer trust our intuition, not that we fail to do due diligence. It merely means that those actions are done from a place of hopefulness, rather than cynicism. And while the larger filter may on occasion allow a committed deceiver to slip by our radar, it also means it is far more likely we are attracting into our lives those people and circumstances that will enable us to create the lives of our dreams.
Cynicism Disconnects Us from our Source
Cynicism emanates from a worldly perspective based on fear and separation. When we buy into such a belief, we unconsciously choose to sacrifice the joy of aligning with possibility for the opportunity to “prove that we are right.” That is a huge price to pay. Living in the habit of saying “no” ensures that much of the fruits of the world will remain unharvested. By choosing instead to see the beauty and love that surround us, we are in a position to attract that which we most desire and build partnerships based on mutual benefit.
Challenge the Stories that Rob Us of Our Joy
So what do we do if we find ourselves living out of fear, limiting our life energy flow and settling for far less in life that we were intended? Begin by challenging our assumptions that brought us here by challenging the assumptions that underlie the beliefs:
- How do we know that we live in a dangerous world?
- What proof do we have that the assumptions underlying this are true?
- Is it possible that our interpretation of that data is flawed?
- What would be a more empowering way to frame our reality?
- What would be possible for us if we could knew we lived in a safe world?
- How might it serve us to open up to new people and circumstances by first saying “yes?”
What Will We Gain?
By asking these and similar questions, whenever we find ourselves closed down to new possibilities, we release within ourselves the human energy necessary to turn those mere possibilities into our new reality. As we open up to new relationships, and courageously engage the gifts with which we have been endowed, we move beyond the restrictive and safe artificial boundaries we had ignorantly constructed for our “safety” and tap into unlimited possibilities that lay before us. We were not created to live independent of the contributions of others, not were we meant to horde our gifts for ourselves. The universe works on the flow of giving and receiving and we become an active part of that world, we begin to value the diversity we once feared.