#4 Love vs. Fear

Hey everyone and welcome back to soul seek with me. Akshaya Chinapa. 

I want to ask you a question how do you make your decisions? What part of your brain do you access when you decide whether something is or is not for you when you decide whether you're going to apply for a new job, look for a new relationship, buy a new car, or maybe move out of state. Our fear based thoughts are so deeply ingrained into our subconscious, that we're often unaware of their presence. You know, these thoughts? I can't because oh, I should do this. I'm not as good as or what will people think? 

These thoughts were passed down to us by parents, relatives, friends, all when we were in our young and carefree years. We saw we heard everything and it stuck. We understood what relationships looked like by watching our parents interact with each other, with their friends with siblings. And that became our standard and oftentimes that became our limiting beliefs. 

If you believe that in your home, you had to keep things together for family, no matter how difficult some family relationships are, it's because difficult family relationships were normalized for you as a child. Right. So your idea of a healthy relationship came from watching adults and people you looked up to interact when you were a child. Right. So if you saw that your parents had a loving, tender relationship, that's likely what you seek out as an adult. If your parents had a difficult relationship where they often thought that might be your norm, you're like, okay, it's okay to fight all the time. In a relationship, even when things are going good. Oh my god. There's this underlying thought that goes, things are good. I need to pick a fight. Right. I know you get this I know you've been there, my friends. 

This is how the subconscious works. It works on thoughts that we have no idea even exist in our brains. Right. So let me give you another example. Say your parents had a difficult relationship with their sibling, where your parent was often mistreated by the sibling, either verbally, emotionally physically and you witnessed their interaction. And that's how you understood sibling interaction. This was normalized for you because your parents accepted a sibling who treated them badly. And maybe your parents fought back. And that sibling gave them the silent treatment or exploded with anger. Again, these interactions were normalized and now if you have a sibling, right if, if you somehow identified watching your parent and their sibling interact, you might recreate that dynamic in your current sibling relationships. Right so if you're an older sibling, and you watched an older sibling, put down disrespect, push and shove a younger sibling. And you thought, oh, that's what older siblings do. And you now put down disrespect and shove, maybe verbally shove your younger sibling around. It's because deep in your subconscious, there is a message that tells you that defines an older younger sibling relationship with these behaviors. 

And if you saw, say you're a younger sibling and you saw a younger sibling, your parent as a younger sibling, just take abuse from an older sibling. You begin to normalize that this is how younger siblings react respond to an abusive or a harmful older sibling. And standing up for yourself, you might have had, you know, you might have received silent treatment. You might have received backlash not just from the sibling but maybe from the rest of your family. Right if you witnessed your parent go through that. You might have the message. Oh, you can't stand up to an abusive sibling. Otherwise my whole family will hate me. What will they say? They won't love me. I don't want to hurt anybody. Because I stand up for myself.

But what about you? What about your peace? Your joy? Right. What about your authentic voice, voicing your pain? Honestly, openly when you choose from love? You release the power that generational and societal messaging have on your psyche. You get to validate your experience, your feelings, your needs. You begin to think I can do this. I deserve better. I am worthy of a healthier sibling relationship. I have a new job, a new home whatever that is. I choose to let go of unhealthy relationships. Because I love myself. I don't care what others think about that. I have to do what's right for me. Right you take the self love approach and people will call us selfish for walking away from an abusive family relationship for choosing yourself for loving and putting yourself first. 

But let me tell you my loves, selfish is just another word for self love. When you are choosing your best, most loving interest without causing harm to anybody else, that is self love. It takes an enormous amount of courage and support to get to the place of self love. There will be many difficult moments, hard conversations all done out of love for the benefit of yourself and others - the people you love. 

You will learn how to set boundaries and let people know that you're no longer available for their tantrums, mistreatment or disrespect. This is the work we do from love. We set boundaries because we love ourselves. Right you let others know how you like to be treated. And when they don't respond accordingly. You can restate your boundaries with a firm and loving tone. You can walk away from that negative energy where you're not being heard or respected. Right sometimes we just have to leave that space and get out of it, get back in touch with our love for ourselves and approach the conversation again. Right and with a loving, firm tone. Eventually, this other person will either meet you halfway or you'll have to learn to let them go until they're ready.

Right sometimes people aren't ready, and it's not your job to help them get ready. What you do is by choosing yourself, showing people how you want to be treated right and standing up for your boundaries, repeating it over and over again until it is truly heard and respected. People start coming around and then here's the beauty of it, people start doing that for themselves. People start loving themselves and questioning, How can I invite more love into my life? 

Some people will never be ready. And that's okay. You are still worthy of your boundaries. You are still worthy of being treated with kindness and respect. You are still worthy of your dreams your desires. And here I used a very simple example of relationships, right to show you how our brain decides to stay in a relationship out of fear. Now imagine standing up for yourself out of love and seeing how that relationship grows, evolves and shifts for the better. Or if you have to step away from that relationship, you know that you will invite in new Loving friendships relationships, partnerships into your life just by giving yourself that loving energy and you can use the same thought process for all the other decisions in your life. 

Say you want to go for a new job, right? You're at a current job where you have the security and stability off your paycheck that comes every single week. But your work environment is toxic and it wears you down physically mentally, emotionally and has a huge negative impact on your mental health. Now choosing from love may mean having to begin looking for opportunities where the workplace culture matches what you desire. A culture that treats employees well, a culture that respects your contribution, a culture that allows you to grow. Right and leaving a current job is not easy. There might be a period where you won't have a paycheck coming in. But here's the thing if you don't have to blow up your life overnight, quit walk away and go look for that new job. You can take baby steps, as many as you need. To get closer to where you want to be. 

As long as you're choosing yourself prioritizing your needs you are choosing from love. Right. So I invite you to begin to look at the current decisions you've made in your life and ask yourself was that out of fear? Or was that out of love? And how can I make my next decision from a place of loving kindness for myself, and how can I prioritize my needs, my joy, and my peace? This is possible for you my loves. Please share with me what you come up with. I'd love to hear in the comments on Instagram. Connect. Have a beautiful day my loves.