Ever noticed your heart racing while watching a movie? Do you get angry, frustrated or sad when you see the latest news? Feel anxiety, confusion or terror thinking about your past or future?
Notice the fight or flight response kicking in just thinking about it.
The mind doesn’t know the difference between a real or perceived threat. Whether you’re being chased by an actual grizzly bear or simply thinking about it, the body’s response is the same.
In the same way, when you regularly listen to the news, watch TV or think (without releasing) you are subconsciously conditioning yourself to feel out of control and unsafe.
Now imagine a young child is in the room next to you watching the horrors on the news or scrolling through your social media accounts with you. Just as we are affected by media, influencers and our own limited thinking as adults, the training begins from a very young age, when you have no ability to discriminate.
Constant, repetition of images of violence, disease, disaster, selfishness, meanness … leave us in a continuous state of vigilance to protect ourselves — wanting to be safe and survive.
So much of what we believe comes to us from the media and most of it is based on fear.
People will say, “I have to know what’s going on in the world,” or “I can’t just bury my head in the sand,” or “This is how I take a break — it’s just entertainment.”
But honestly, does following the news ever make you feel safe? Does watching a movie, browsing the internet or making a plan for your future leave you feeling safe and secure?
We are all creatures of habit. Nightly, we turn on the TV, listen to a podcast or scroll on our phones before going to bed. Then we fall asleep worried about something we heard or saw while being “entertained.”
The next morning, we wake up and immediately turn on our phones, the internet TV or radio to get even more information. Then throughout the day we talk with others about what we saw or heard, our opinions (beliefs) about it and we hear other’s opinions (beliefs) about it. And without realizing it, we are triggered all over again and reinforcing more negative patterns.
We do this to ourselves day after day and then wonder why we feel tense, agitated and exhausted most of the time. The answer is simple.
We’re accumulating negative feelings all day long and even while we sleep, repeatedly programming ourselves with feelings of fear, worry, outrage … but we’re not releasing them.
When we don’t release, we’re not discriminating. When we don’t discriminate we’re not seeing that we are causing ourselves unnecessary stress, fear and anxiety by being on automatic. We are programming ourselves to feel unsafe and insecure. And our thoughts are creating our reality.
When we feel insecure within ourselves, we attract more people and situations to feel insecure about. Because the underlying thought we’re holding in mind is that the world is scary, and I have to survive it.
When these thoughts come up if we would just take a moment to stop and release, we would quiet the mind and see the truth – there’s no one “out there,” nothing’s actually happening so there’s nothing we have to survive.
Every time we release, we quiet the mind. Every time we think, we feed the mind.
If we want to live freely in the world, which makes more sense: To spend more time thinking or more time releasing?
If we used everything for releasing, we’d be free in no time. But we just don’t do it. We get caught up in the drama of the world and the drama in our lives and it leaves us feeling miserable.
If you’re ready to stop trying to survive the world and have it become your playground instead, join in the 90- Day Accountability Mastery Program (February 18th – May 16th).
What would be possible when you know you are infinitely safe and secure?
The Release Technique Team
