Alex Shalman.comPractical Personal Development

This is a guest post by Steven Aitchison.

We have to travel many paths in our lives in order to reach the state of our true self. There are also many caves to enter. Caves are those places deep inside us where we are a little bit nervous to enter, some we have to enter, some we stumble upon and some we avoid altogether.

This article will talk about some of the caves we fear to enter and why entering them can be useful for us.

What are the caves?

The caves are those places in our minds where it’s a little darker and we would rather not explore them. In the caves can hide our fears, our worries, our hopes, and our dreams we daren’t dream. They are not places that are locked away, they are open to explore however the paths to them are less trodden. Maybe it’s time we explored these caves.

The cave of hope

Some people never dare to have hope in their lives for a number of reasons. One of the reasons can be because they think they don’t deserve to be hopeful, their thought’s, actions, and life don’t dare to enter the cave of hope for fear of rejection and failure.

The cave of hope is for every single person in the world to enter, whether your hopes are for love, a new car, a new house or the hope of living without fear in your life, which is a basic human need. Whatever your hopes are it’s perfectly okay to enter the cave of hope and find out what the possibilities of life hold for you.

If you don’t enter the cave of hope your life will be stuck, forever in the same place. Without hope, there is no action, without action, we stagnate. dare to hope for yourself, for others and for the world.

The Cave of Worry

Contrary to the title of this post this cave is where a lot of people spend their time; the cave of worry.

The cave of worry is a strange little place, there are tunnels galore leading off the main cave, there are lots of paths leading to the cave and there are lots of inter-connecting caves leading to this cave however. The cave itself is infinite, there is no end, you could walk for miles in this cave of you mind and you will still not be near the end. It’s never ending because that is where worry starts and finishes, it’s starts nowhere and leads nowhere.

I have a client just now who is worrying about something which might happen in a few months time. He cannot sleep for worrying about it which makes him more anxious during the day. When it was pointed out that the possible outcome of his worry cannot be changed AT ALL by him worrying about it and we channeled the ‘worry energy’ he was expending into something more productive his worry seemed to lessen. ‘What if’s’ cannot help us at all in our lives and it wastes a lot of our mental energy when we think in ‘What if’ terms.

It’s not easy to stop being a worrier as for some of us that’s all we know. However, the worry energy can be channeled into other areas which will help ease our worries.

The cave of our dreams

This is a bit like the cave of hope however different in the way that hope is filled with definite possibilities whereas the cave of our dreams is filled with things we may never obtain like winning the lottery.

Is it worth visiting this cave within our mind? Without a doubt yes!

Dreams, even unobtainable dreams or ones we have no control over, is a form of escapism and it’s no different than going to the movies, or reading a book. It also lets us imagine a bigger future for ourselves. When we dream big, I mean really big, our expectations of ourselves is raised a little bit higher than it was had we not dreamt big.

As an example; Say you currently have a business and your profit per year is $15,000. When you start visiting the cave of your dreams and start to imagine your business with a profit of $1,000,000. You really put yourself in the picture, you don’t really believe it will happen however you can actually feel what it would be like to live the lifestyle of someone who owns a business with a profit of $1,000,000 per year. Now, when you come back to reality and see the figure of $15,000 you raise your expectation of what you can do with the business to double your current figure of $15,000 profit per year. Dreaming allows your mind to think of ways to start climbing to reach what you dream of and it will present ways to try and make this happen.

If this sounds like a lot of nonsense, then just take a look at some of the great business persons of the world; Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Eben Pagan, Kevin Rose, Anita Rodderick. All of these people started small but dreamt big. With each successive small success their dream became a reality.

It’s great to dream big and dream big often, it will raise your expectation of what you can actually achieve.

The cave of fear

This is the best cave to visit, even though most of us try and avoid it. The cave of fear holds all our fears about your life. It’s also the cave that has the potential to change our life the most.

Fear has the potential to control our lives if we let it and most fears are irrational. Like the fear of spiders. What’s the most harm most spiders can do? and I’m not talking tarantulas I’m talking about the common everyday spider. They cannot do anything but put on a few pairs of hiking boots, grab plenty of silk rope, grab a flask of tea, kiss goodbye to the partner and kids and go hill walking up your arm, yet some people are so afraid of them. Most of them cannot bite, so there is no danger whatsoever from them.

The only thing to do to start living a fuller life is by conquering every single one of your fears.

I was afraid of heights a few years ago so I conquered this by doing a bungee jump, a parachute jump, and abseiled down the Glasgow Hilton hotel. Did I get over my fear? yes I definitively did. You see fear is irrational in that we work ourselves up to a state of panic whenever we think about that which we say we fear. If you face your fears, you will grow, learn more about yourself, and develop quicker than by doing anything else related to personal development.

To face your fear there’s no better way of doing it than by doing it head on. If you fear heights, get to the top a building and look down, if you fear spiders go to your local zoo and ask them to let a spider walk over your hand, if you fear going outdoors get outside. There is no other way for it and it may sound flippant to say just do it but it’s the only way and your fear is nothing more than a psychological barrier YOU have put up in your mind.

I’d like to leave you with a quote.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
~Joseph Campbell

Steven is the author of Change Your Thoughts and works as an alcohol and drugs counselor. He has a BSc in Psychology and has a passion for studying belief formation, thought processes and values and principles. His blog focuses on personal development through changing your thoughts but covers the whole personal development field.

Check out Best Practices for Overcoming Obstacles by Alex Shalman at SDN.

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