A good friend of mine posted this article yesterday on his blog “The Happy Seeker” and it is so timely that I thought to re-blog it on my blog would be a way of spreading his positive message about fear. So, here is Chris Foster’s message as 2016 comes online. Enjoy.

Face Fear and Be Free by Chris Foster

Fear is on the rise in America, or so it seems. That’s what the newspapers and TV say. Perhaps it’s on the rise everywhere. Fear has a way of generating more fear─just as love has a way of generating more love.

Personally, I’ve known a fair bit of fear in my life. My standard response, when fear came up in me, was to do my best to ignore it, or suppress it.

It never really worked, mind you. The more I tried, consciously or unconsciously, to repress my fear, the more firmly entrenched it became, and the more it continued to haunt me. Fear is good at that. It likes haunting people.

But here’s the good news I want to share with you as we pass the threshold into a New Year and contemplate with joy and perhaps a bit of foreboding the possibilities that 2016 may hold in store.

Fear is not the scary, unconquerable monster we may have thought it to be. Believe it or not, fear can be our ally, and teacher.

A couple of months or so ago, I was due for my annual CT scan. I’m a two-year cancer survivor, and Kaiser likes to keep a close eye on me to make sure that there is no recurrence of this feared illness.

As the date of my appointment drew closer, I wasn’t entirely surprised when feelings of anxiety began to arise in me.

What was the result going to be? Would everything check out okay? Or would something suspicious show up?

Then I had an idea. A life-saving idea. An idea that I believe is being beamed from Heaven to all of us in these days.

Instead of trying to ignore my fear, or suppress it, as I have done so often in the past─how about acknowledging it, and feeling it, and then simply letting the fear be?

If a thunderstorm erupts in my neighborhood─as it does at times here in Colorado─I know there is no need to get in a battle with the storm. It would be kind of futile anyway.

Just as a storm has a beginning, so too it has an end.

So instead of fighting the anxiety that rose up in me from time to time when I thought about my coming test, I simply let the fear be. I realized it’s not so different really to a Colorado thunderstorm.

Putting it another way, I let the fear simply pass through me, and as it did pass through me, a miracle occurred. I experienced the truth of my own essence, my own presence, more strongly than ever before in my life. It was a transforming moment, and it was wonderful.

I realized that fear comes and goes, but the truth of who I am, and who we all are, is ageless. It does not change. It was never born. It will never die. It is always present. It doesn’t come and go.

In a strange kind of way, what I had thought of as “fear” became an ally that helped me become more conscious of the inherent goodness and wonder of creation.

So here’s the message I would share with you as 2016 unfolds—face fear and be free.

I wish you a wonderful and blessed New Year. Any thoughts on the above will be most welcome. Also, may I remind you that my new book, The Upside of Cancer, is on sale now at Amazon. It offers a wonderful dose of courage and hope to anyone facing a difficult challenge in their life.

I wish you and Happy and Healthy New Yea!

Dr. Anthony Palombo