Your true potential will be elusive if you are fearful of change. In fact, if you want to expand the vision for your life, you will have to stop looking for the status quo. Most people have warning signs that they need to move on before things get to the point of crisis. Yet they tend to react and cling to the known world, misery and all, instead of empowering themselves to respond proactively.

“Never let a good crisis go to waste.” ~Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago

Why is this? While there is an element of the brain’s need for predictability, I believe our resistance goes beyond natural selection. Actually, once in a crisis it can provoke us to make quantum leaps to our next level of positive growth.

Most of our fear of change is conditioned by our culture, society, and well-meaning people. For example, we are taught to avoid disappointment. We are taught not to risk failure and avoid risk-taking by staying in the box. We are taught to focus on worry and what we don’t want, which is a horrible idea.

The brain functions by trying to get you what you focus on with feelings. Now imagine that you are focusing with fear on what you don’t want. Do you want that? The brain doesn’t even process the word ‘don’t’. It thinks in pictures, the picture that follows the word ‘don’t’. Chances are you are more likely to get it than not if you keep focusing on it. This is totally backwards thinking.

Instead, we can change our perception and our brain will change the way it looks at things. Why not focus on what you want? Why not feel gratitude and feel good instead of complaining and feeling fear? For example, disappointment can be meant as “make another choice” or “try again a different way.” It doesn’t have to mean embarrassment. Maybe you feel sad, but then sad is a part of living! It’s time to stop the judgment and labeling as ‘bad’ and ‘good’. I like ‘high’ and ‘low’ better. Feel it and let it go. Feeling lower-vibrating feelings comes with the territory of life.

Believing you can avoid them is only creating suffering. Likewise, believing that we are only going to feel good 24/7 is another way to create suffering. Then there is failure. What if we saw it as ‘learning’; how about that? Thomas Edison sure did, and because of it he and his collaborators helped to change the world for the good of us all.

All of this is rooted in perception. We can either see a crisis as an opportunity to improve, reach more of our true potential and expand our mind, or we can run screaming and terrified and, in the process, self-destruct. It’s up to you. You may not be able to control what’s happening, but you sure can control how you respond to it.

There is a trick to this, though, as you will have to make the time to slow down and reconnect with your inner real “True Self.” You will need to make friends with feelings to reprogram how you respond to change. You will need to stop seeing yourself as a victim and take your power back. You will need to stop acting like a human ‘doing’ machine and reacquaint yourself with what it means to be a human ‘being’. How are you handling the crisis of the day? Is it friend or foe?

Author's Bio: 

Valencia Ray, M.D. teaches business owners and corporate leaders how their amazing brain can actually hijack personal power -- not in the abstract, but in the context of integrating business and personal life. Dr. Ray, a board-certified eye surgeon and medical business owner for over 20 years before selling her practice, shares her own life changing process. By sharing her story, she helps others to expand their vision and learn that by living with purpose and confidence, it is possible to have a more integrated, healthier lifestyle – with less struggle, more inner peace and more abundance.

For more information and to contact her regarding dynamic, inspirational keynotes, trainings in collaborative leadership and team building, entrepreneurship and coaching programs, visit her website at http://www.ValenciaRay.com