Bliss Of Being : Our Natural State

How to Make Good Decesions

By Wayne Hoover

The difference between being guided by love and being guided by fear.

Guided by fear

To be guided by fear is to do things because you are afraid of not doing it. When I do something out of fear I am usually persuaded by thoughts like “If I don’t do this then I might be in trouble in the future.” To be guided by fear is to always be thinking about the future- in a sense- it is to live in the future. When I am guided by fear I do things because I am afraid not to- not because I actually enjoy doing them. When I am being guided by fear I usually think like “i’ll do this- for that.”

Guided by love

To be guided by love is to do things because you love to do them for their own intrinsic value in the present moment. When I do something out of love I don’t have to be persuaded by thoughts of reward or punishment in the future- I do them because thats what I want to do right now. To be guided by love is to be present in the moment- enjoying life as it happens right now.

An example

Tonight I got a phone call asking if I wanted fly to Boston to become “trained” in an expensive proprietary development platform- something which could potentially be pretty lucrative. Instead of being guided by fear and thinking towards the future- I realized that this “training” was definitely not something that I wanted to be doing with my time- it was not something that I wanted to be doing right now. Instead of thinking about what I didn’t have and what I could have had- I looked at my present situation and realized that this payed training was not something that I actually wanted to do. If I was more aligned with fear in that moment I might have taken that opportunity thinking “I want to do this because it will give me more money in the future.” Instead in that moment I was more aligned towards love and in the present moment which totally screamed that this was not something that I was going to enjoy doing.

Basically- to be guided by love it to do something for its own sake- not for its fruits. To be guided by fear is to do something for the fruits and not for its own sake. Ultimately there is nothing wrong with being “guided” by either; love or fear. What it comes down to is how you want to live your life. Would you rather live your life doing things you don’t like for something in the future- or would you rather live your life doing what you love right now?



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