We need to become more attuned with our deeper drivers and understand the hidden reasons, agendas and motives behind our existence. Once we understand our perceived subconscious views, we can resolve what actually causes our issues and miseries and holds us back in life.

The following topics provide definitions to some of our most common and pressing issues in society.

What is stress?
What is depression?
Lack of motivation/goal setting and drive
What is fear?
What is guilt?
What is anger?
What is regret
What is lack of confidence?

What is stress?
Stress is a natural way for the mind to react towards things that it perceives to be against its desired expectations and wishes. Such a worry registers in our minds as a topic of concern and draws most of our attention and energy toward itself. Unless the worry is addressed or resolved in some shape or form, it takes precedence over other topics and priorities in our minds.

Negative aspects of stress
We all experience stress, it is as natural as life itself. However, when it persists and does not subside as a topic of concern, the natural energy of the mind and body is depleted and results in many potential physical side effects. The other important negative aspect of prolonged stress is also the way it stops and removes our attention from other topics and priorities essential to healthy daily life. This causes us to operate in total disharmony with other aspects of ourselves, and life around us.

Anxiety & panic
Anxiety is the manifestation of stress and the way in which the mind and body react under stress. The mind looks for solutions to address the problem (topic of concern) and causes the stress to rise up within us. If the way in which it pursues a solution is not promising or if it is encountering major obstacles, the anxiety/panic may manifest itself as the ultimate reaction of the mind towards our helplessness and the perception of being out of control. The physical symptoms of panic are the final indication of the degree of “I am out of real options”, therefore panic is the only viable option left open for the mind to use.

The mind also has its own trauma management capability that knows when to bury an unbearable unresolved issue deeply within itself. It does so in order to restore our sanity and to allow us to get on with our normal daily functions. Such an action also provides a welcome temporary respite from prolonged stress. We also consciously encourage this process to proceed forward by practising the old concept of “out of site, out of mind”. Unfortunately, the buried issues will resurface themselves when the environment is right. Sometimes a 20 year-old unaddressed buried issue could flare up into our conscious awareness when we least expect it. Such issues may cause us a great deal of stress, sometimes with more potent venom than its initial impact many years ago.

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What is depression?
When we continue to fail in achieving/obtaining/maintaining those items or objects that we regard as the essential keys to our survival and happiness, we begin to lose interest and motivation to set new goals, to plan and develop our abilities to strive forward toward those perceived key objectives. We develop this belief “why bother?” when history has proved over and over again that there is no point trying anymore: “It can not be achieved”.

Negative aspects of depression
Such negative beliefs create a strong sense of hopelessness, despair and withdrawal. The severity of the depression is dependent upon the number of previous disappointments a person may have encountered in life and also the individual tolerance and strength for trying things in the face of adversity.
If depression of a mild nature is left unattended or unresolved, it has potential, especially when accompanied by other subsequent reconfirming experiences of failure, to develop into a more serious and endogenous problem.

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Lack of motivation/goal setting and drive
The human mind is naturally creative, it constantly sets goals and drives us to achieve them. The depressive state actively tries to prevent the mind from setting goals and without goals we can not be driven forward. In a normal state, we are interested and curious about our surroundings for what they may offer that could be used to assist us on our path to achieve our goals. In a depressive state, we lose our enthusiasm in things around us as nothing matters, nothing can capture our attention or excite us in anyway. This is because we have no defined direction or goals to inspire us in our surroundings. A typical expression from a depressed person is “I can’t be bothered with this or that”.

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What is fear?
Fear is a number one certainty in life. Every day in our lives, we come across situations and experiences that can invoke fear within us. Depending on the individual circumstances, we could encounter fear on a mild, medium, severe, or very severe basis.

Fear being an emotional experience, it is always immediately accompanied by some form of physical reaction. The reaction is produced in two ways. The first reaction is our internal bodily expressions such as a fast rate of breathing, muscle tension, excessive heart beat and so on. The second reaction is our behaviour and our actions in response to the event that caused us to experience fear in the first place. For example, when our car is sliding on ice and fear for our safety begins to develop, our first body reaction (internal) is to increase the tension in our muscles and sharply increase the rate of our heart beat. And our second response (outward) is to grip the steering wheel tighter and try to manoeuver the car out of trouble.

What is phobia?
The more severe the fear, the more chances for our reaction to be out of our normal range of behaviour. An extreme case of fear is usually referred to as phobia, which often causes panic and certain responses that may be viewed as irrational or labeled by some people as something outside the commonly accepted range of reactions to an event.

Fear is not necessarily bad - It is actually the mother of all development in mankind
Many schools of thinking discredit human fear as a negative force. In their views, fear should be thrown out of our lives, as it does not serve any useful purpose in our daily existence. Many therapists believe that by getting ride of our fears the problems will also go away. You often hear the commonly used phrase from many experts saying “get rid of all your fears” so you can feel much better as a person. Such professional views, if not delivered in an appropriate context, can be misleading and damaging to individuals suffering from fear. In my view, fear is the mother of all growth in mankind and without it we can never rise up to be a refined and evolved human being.

You can learn the real nature of fear, and understand how it can be used effectively to make you more powerful by facing and experiencing it than avoiding it. You can also learn how fear can become damaging and turn into phobia if it is misunderstood and mismanaged within you.

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What is guilt?
When we act out side of what we believe to be the correct society approved code of conduct, we feel personally responsible for making the wrong choices. In other words we are guilty for choosing the wrong path/behaviour/action. Guilt always has to be followed by the exercise of justice that is usually referred to as punishment. For thousands of years, guilt has been the greatest cause for psychological pain in mankind. Our aim should be to address and realistically examine the underlying rules that makes us feel guilty and replace them with forgiveness and understanding of our actions. These rules drive us all the time and they are the real cause behind our judgmental views of ourselves and others.

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What is anger?
When we believe there is an injustice taking place in an event in life, we look for someone or something to pay for such injustices (i.e. someone is guilty). The instrument that carries the penalty is anger. Anger is the externalisation of our inner resentment of wrong doings.

The grievances may build up for years and as the cup that holds them become fuller, the inner resentment becomes more unstable resulting in anger becoming more pronounced in its ferocity and unleashing frequency. This is often referred to as “short tempered/short fuse” behaviour. As we get older, if these underlying resentments are not resolved, we become more and more angry with ourselves and the people around us.

We often do not see what triggers or brings our anger to the surface, but we owe it to ourselves to search internally for the real causes of our frustration and learn to stop punishing those that have nothing to do with our inner traumas.

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What is regret?
Regret is the continuation of feeling guilty and the need for us to be constantly punished. It also means that we can not be kind to ourselves and forgive ourselves for having made mistakes in the past. The truth is that whatever decision we make in life we always have the intention of doing the best we can. We never set out to deliberately fail. Therefore there is no point looking back and wishing for something that we had no control over. We can learn to understand that we do not have those choices we think we have.

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What is lack of confidence?
The topic of confidence or lack of it is something that constantly keep us busy wherever we go, it is right there staring at us and confronting our thoughts, emotions and behaviours. We are always in this never-ending pattern of questioning our abilities in every task we undertake in life. We often talk about lack of confidence in relation to our daily life experiences and the way it causes us to feel inadequate to overcome such perceived shortfalls. Deep down within us there is a fear of being exposed and found out for what we really are. The worst part is often the humiliation and embarrassment that follows when we are unmasked and when the terrible sense of shame washes over us. In other words we become ashamed of who and what we are for failing to be as good or as capable as other people around us.

Question and face your perceived shortfalls
Ask yourself what is it that makes you feel inadequate in front of others? What are the reasons that cause you to doubt your self-worth and values?

Follow facts not fiction
Confidence is what you are born with. All children have confidence. Look at every newly born child. Observe how they command things and how they express themselves without fear of criticism. They cry for milk, they tell you what they want and when they want it and they do it without any concerns for their actions or fear of making mistakes.

In the process of growing up something happens that causes us to apparently lose some of this confidence and come to the view that we end up with less than what we have started with. What is it that makes us think, feel and believe in this way? The truth is that our confidence does not dissipate. It is our perceptions and views of our abilities that change over the time.

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