Loving Our Fears

So may of us are so desperately searching for that best friend in someone else when we have a golden opportunity to give this gift of friendship to our own selves. And just because we were not taught how to connect with our own self doesn't mean its not important. It just means humanity is still learning and evolving and growing and has a long way to go before we become conscious again!So starting today I invite you to set aside a few minutes to talk to your own self because healing always only begins inside your heart and then travels to the rest of your body and then extend outside of your body into this world!

A mother is murdered in her own home and leaves behind an 11-year-old son and her husband. A father in his forties is diagnosed with cancer and dies and leaves behind his 10-year-old son and wife. A medical mistake ends up killing a 52-year father who leaves behind 3 kids and his wife. A woman spends years of her life trying to bring a baby into this world. COVID kills both kids in a family leaving behind just the parents. A woman is forced to live her life in pain because of 2 car accidents. The point is that I can spend hours talking about all the stories that I am aware of, and I only know a few people's stories out of the 7.5 billion stories that are living and breathing on this planet today.And if you were to ask all these people, they would probably say that none of their stories match the idea of life they had in mind while growing up. For some, the story of their life maybe better than what they imagined growing up but nevertheless most of humanity continues to struggle with the shadows of their past. We spend entire lifetimes living our lives out of these stories which are filled with pain, suffering, neglect, frustrations, deceits, failures, defeats. 

If there is one thing that I can share based on my own learnings from living a life in constant state of anxiety and physical health challenges is to stop fighting – stop fighting with your body, with your thoughts, with your negative feelings, with your diagnosis. And this shift in thinking will allow you to also take care of your body by letting go of all limiting and fearful beliefs that you have been holding onto for all these years which have been chipping away at your mental and physical health. 

If you look at the current COVID crisis from a spiritual perspective, one of the biggest lessons for the human race is to learn how to lean on ourselves, how to rely on ourselves, how to find that strength and courage within ourselves to show up and deal with whatever it is that life is sending our way. This crisis is pressing us to stop looking for the helpers in others and find and connect with the lost helper within!

Suffering is an opportunity to get in touch with the lost YOU! The you which got buried deep inside your heart and got lost because of everything you had to face in your life so far! The circumstances, the people, the rejections, the heartbreaks, the heartaches, the losses, everything! But the key is to allow yourself to feel your suffering. So, the question is are you willing to stop hiding your pain and suffering and start sharing?

Hello Beautiful Souls, I am back with Loving Our Fears Podcast - Season 2!In season 2, I will be reflecting on my family's recent COVID crisis and the lessons I learned from it! I will share my own experiences of coming face to face with fear again and what helped me get through it..again! 

If you have been actively following the social media content over the last few years, you will notice that the topic of failures has been extensively discussed over these past years. And in those discussions, a number of perspectives have been shared on failures. Some of those perspectives tell us how we should view failures as a steppingstone to success while others talk about finding the lessons in failures. A few other perspectives talk about how great things can happen when you allow yourself the risk of a failure while others stress on the importance of trying again and again after failing until you meet success. And even though every single one of these perspectives has value and may resonate with people who need a different lens to view their own failures, however, what these perspectives have in common is that their purpose is to inspire people and give them hope after they have failed so that they can keep going and keep trying even when they don't believe they have it in them to get to the finish line. 

Do you find yourself hustling from one task to another, one goal to another all the time? Do you feel like the life you have today doesn't quite meet your expectations of how your life should be? Do you feel if you can just get that next job, the next promotion, the next car, the next house, the next relationship, it will bring you the happiness and satisfaction that has been missing from your life?Even if this entire world of humans may disagree that we are all the same and connected with each other but the one thing we will absolutely agree on is that all of us either consciously or unconsciously are wanting to become happy. Happiness seems to be the ultimate goal or aim or nirvana in our lives and the purpose of our lives seems to revolve around the attainment of this happiness goal. 

One of the most beautiful things that a human being can ever feel in his lifetime is love. Our ability to love someone and to be loved by someone is pure grace, its God itself. Love is the reason we want to wake up and love is the reason we want to do anything in life, with life. Love makes us forget pain and suffering. Love makes life worth living. Love is the truth.Yet if you turn on the TV or access social media right now, you may need a lot of assurance to believe that love is in fact the truth, it is in fact what's keeping this world alive. Because from what meets the eye, this world seems to be acting like a highly strong-willed toddler who is in the middle of a really bad tantrum. And even though this toddler is in pain and wants to be loved and hugged so that she can calm down, yet, her ability to allow herself to be loved and hugged has been hijacked by her own emotions. 

Are you someone who believes that you should do it all?  Or are you someone who believes that you should have it all? It's important to be aware of what you believe because based on what you believe is what you may be experiencing in your life right this minute. If you are someone who wants to do it all you may be experiencing burnout because Burnout is caused by wanting to do it all!If you are someone who wants to have it all then you may be experiencing stress because Stress is caused by wanting to have it all!

Positive thinking seems to be receiving a lot of attention these days especially since the onset of COVID where a lot more people began struggling with their mental health. And one of the many ways to lead your mind towards creating positive thoughts is to intentionally focus on the things and people that you are grateful for in your life today because when you feel grateful, that feeling feeds into your thinking to generate more of such positive thoughts. But if you have ever tried to feel this feeling of gratefulness, you would know that being grateful requires practice mainly because a human mind tends to mostly focus on the things or people that are lacking from life. our mind likes to focus on everything that has either gone wrong in our past or the things that could go wrong in the future. 

So many people in this world are trapped in the reaction of anger. And because they react with anger, they become even more angry at themselves for reacting the way they did and it may feel like they are trapped in this non-ending cycle where anger is the only reaction they know and they can't seem to break free from it. And if you are one of those people, have you spent some time figuring out what makes you angry?  

What do you believe? Do you believe this world is a safe place to live or do you believe it's full of dangers? Do you believe life is very hard or do you believe it gives you exactly what you need to grow? Do you believe you are unlucky, or do you believe during hard times something greater than what you can see will carry you through your life's situations? Do you believe you have to struggle to make it or do you believe everything will fall in place when it's the right time? Do you believe you deserve all the goodness this life can offer, or do you believe you are unworthy of all life's many blessings? What is it that you believe because it matters what you believe? 

Last week the death numbers from COVID in the united states crossed the 500,000 mark and its estimated that around 4 million people are currently grieving the loss of these 500,000 lives. Although death is nothing new and its part of living this life in human form and chances are most adults have already come face to face with this reality where they may have lost loved ones and have gone through the grieving process, however, its still mind boggling to think about these numbers especially because all of these lives were lost within a very short period of time. The period of time that has been making history around the world! 

Have you ever wondered, why do we feel what we feel? Where do our feelings come from? Or why don't we allow ourselves to feel what we feel? Maybe you have or maybe not but what's incredible to me is that as a human society we have spent lifetimes learning about how to make the most money and even spent that same money building walls and getting ready for wars because of all our differences. But only if we had spent a fraction of this energy on getting to know our own selves, our minds and how it operates, we would know that we are more similar than different. We would know that we share more in common than what meets the eye. 

Why do Some of us who are still healthy feel afraid of catching the virus and getting sick?Why do Some of us who are not yet sick feel afraid of dying when we hear about the rising deaths due to COVID?Why do Some of us feel resentful of others who don't seem to take this virus seriously? Why do Some of us feel like other people have gone too far with this whole virus thing?Why do Some of us feel left out and helpless? Why do Some of us feel lonely and sad?Why do Some of us feel life is not fair?Although our feelings may change by the hour these days, however, if you look closely at all these feelings, you will notice that they seem to have their roots in fear!

Loving Our Fears podcast is Shikha Rastogi's way of saying Thank You to this powerful Universe which has been guiding Shikha through the darkness of her own numerous fears into the light of peace. Through this podcast Shikha would like to share everything she has learned from her own experiences of breaking free from a constant state of anxiety not by fighting with her fears but by accepting and loving them. In sharing her experiences, she wants to give people hope that breaking free from fear is possible. She also wants to show people how it's possible to still feel peaceful amidst our fears by helping them view their fears from another perspective – a perspective of love rather than fear itself. This podcast is also a gift to her daughter to show her that you don't need to be someone big to share your gifts to this world!