Given this is internationally celebrated Self-Awareness Month, what better way to celebrate than to work to let go of fear? Here is guidance for releasing ourselves from fear from The Essential Laws of Fearless Living, by Guy Finley (Red Wheel/Weiser, 2008).

Have you ever wondered if other people see things in the same way that you do? For instance, thought it has gone on for decades, there has been a recent rash of over-the-top white-collar crime. It would seem that having multimillions isn’t enough for some folks, so they steal money from their own companies, leaving employees out in the cold.

Now, couple this blatant criminal behavior with the following curious fact: Many of these wildly successful executives admit they are haunted by a daily fear of failure. Now what seems obvious (to me)–and yet no one seems to see–is this: Our present-day definition of success makes no sense at all! What sane person would envy living in the kind of environment in which insatiable greed and fear are always prowling around in the back of one’s mind?

So, either our whole notion of what it means to succeed is mistaken, or over time we have become identified with a wrong idea about what it means to be a “winner.”

Following is the true meaning of a successful life. Please read it at least twice so that something of its subtle nature has the chance to stir your mind:

Real success is a creative state of being that comes with living in conscious relationship with an intelligence that never fears because it never fails to achieve its end–in spite of changing conditions.

The following three insights are designed to help us look at our old, familiar fearful reactions in a whole new way.
1. Self-awakening, and the new order of freedom that attends it, begins with seeing through what is not real.
2. No fact is frightening unless it runs into conflict with what we want.
3. It is in our power to discover that who we really are has nothing to fear, but that we make ourselves fearful each time we look outside of ourselves for some power to make us feel fearless.