Trust

Fear of flying – Addicted to anxiety

by Marc Itzler

plane

Until quite recently, every time I have flown, I have had this little moment – right at the point where I stepped from the air bridge walkway on to the plane.

I looked at the doorway in front of me, the mechanisms and rivets and bolts and levers. Looking for something, a stain, a dent, any imperfection that might alert me to something, I didn’t know what. In fact, I didn’t know anything about what I was looking at. I’d see the bored faces of the ground crew milling about outside the aircraft, and the relaxed easy smiles of the cabin crew waiting to greet me as I entered, and found reassurance in their seemingly uneventful day.

I stepped through the door and in that moment, surrendered myself to the will of fate. I willingly incarcerated myself in a metal tube, knowing full well that it would soon lurch me and my fellow prisoners forward to a speed of 150mph before somehow elegantly lifting itself up into the sky.

Thrust back into my seat as we heaved forward, I’m thinking to myself, “keep it straight, keep it level, go go go! Isn’t this fast enough?” And then, the ground would gently tip away and drop out below. A little lurch to left, “Whoa!  Ok..we’re ok we’re up we’re up”.

My grip on the armrests gently loosened, as everything began to smooth out and quieten down. Then the cabin crew unbuckled and began their duties, I could breathe a little deeper. With a gentle ‘bong’, the seatbelt sign disappears, and I come back to myself. Out of the window, I watch the tiny cars below streaming along the roads, snaking out into the distance.

It was always incredible to me. Always like a child in awe at the fact that I was thousands of feet above the ground screaming along at over 400mph. As we climbed out into the sky, breaking through the clouds to the stars or the sun, I settled in for the journey.

But then, came the bumps!  A little shudder at first, then a heave and a drop, “Why does it always start just as I’m about to eat or have a drink? I hate this, please stop!”  I just couldn’t let go and accept what was happening.  I was trapped in a superstitious belief that if I relaxed, I’d be punished with even worse turbulence or even the unthinkable. I actually thought that my fear was necessary to hold the plane together. A totally irrational but overwhelming emotion.  The turbulence passed as we moved into clear air, and once again my body relaxed and I dropped down in my seat, exhausted with the tension released.

Then, a few years ago, something changed. Something deep inside shifted to a new place.

I received a Birthday gift. A flying lesson at a local aerodrome in North London.

I arrived feeling a bit nervous.  After a half-hour explanation of avionics and the basics of how a plane works, we headed out to the little Cessna aircraft.

Buckled in and headphones on, I was watched carefully as my instructor prepared the plane, started the engine, and headed off towards the runway.  After a quick ok from air traffic control, he threw the throttle to full and we roared off, weaving and bumping along the grass field. We climbed gently up to two thousand feet, just below the scattered clouds. The rolling green fields of Hertfordshire spread out below us.

“Ok, ready to take control?” He asked. “Uh yeah, Ready.” I responded, not really sure if I was.

“Ok, you have control.”

I gripped the wheel tightly. “Ok, I thought, “keep it level, nose a bit up, what else?” “What else did he say I have to do?” “Are you ok?” He asked, sensing my clear tension. “Just relax your grip, let the wheel move freely. The plane will stay level.”

I loosened my grip so that my hand was more or less just feeling the wheel but not gripping it. All was well. The plane bobbed a bit but yes, it was staying level.

“That’s better.” He said “Just have the lightest touch on the wheel and keep an eye on the instruments.”

We puttered about for a few more minutes before I noticed we were heading for some rather thick clouds. “what do I do in a cloud?” I said.

“Nothing.” “The plane will bounce and heave around a bit, just keep your hand near the wheel.” “Let it find its own way.” “Ok,” I thought. “I can do that.”

We entered the cloud and immediately the plane started bobbing left and right, a little lurch and heave, but I kept my hand loose and relaxed. The plane hopped and dropped, wobbled and lurched but I felt the movement through the wheel, like a car going over a pothole. It stayed level and straight. Then we popped out the other side back into sunshine and all was smooth again.

“Ok, we’re going to head back in now, would you like to do the approach?” He asked

“Yes, I would”. I was relaxing and gaining confidence.

I guided our plane, under my instructor’s watchful eye, back and down towards the runway.

“I’ll take over at forty feet.” He informed me. “Forty feet? I gasped.  “ok… I think?”

We descended under my control in a perfect approach and at what seemed like the very last second, he took over and we touched down, rumbling along the grass.

The engine roared as we slowed and taxied back to our parking spot.

I was totally pumped. “Thank you so much, that was fantastic!”

I said goodbye to the instructor and headed off to my car.

Driving back through the Hertfordshire countryside, I was struck by the fact that cars were zooming past me in the opposite direction at over fifty miles an hour with barely eight feet between us.

“Driving cars is so risky.” I thought. ” I do this every day but  never realised how close we are to each other.” ” Flying is so much…safer.” That was it. The moment I let go of my fear of flying.

But it got me thinking,  Maybe, this was a lesson about more than just flying. Maybe this was a lesson in trust and surrender. That I can relax my grip on life, give it some room to move, trust it. I decided there and then that I wanted to try to let go of anxiety and tension in my life, to see what would actually happen. To call the bluff on my fear. It was tested soon enough.

I was about to fly to Cape Town – a twelve-hour overnight haul from Heathrow.

Stepping onto the plane, I felt a deep sense of calm and surrender. I was in a totally relaxed state. I settled into my seat feeling content. I just knew that whatever was to be was to be. It had less to do with actually flying and everything to do with an inner shift from anxiety to trust. From fear to acceptance.

As the plane roared along the runway, all that I felt was excitement about leaving the British winter, getting to Cape Town, and having breakfast in the warm sunshine of a southern summer. As we gently banked over the sparkling lights of London and headed down over Surrey, I was free of any anxiety or concern.

We cruised on into the night, and as is normal when flying down over deepest, darkest Africa, we encountered some tropical stormy weather. I awoke at 4am to the lurch and heave of the plane as it plowed through the wild night.

But now, I was totally undisturbed! No fear and no tension in my body. I visualized the plane bouncing over the clouds like a bus on a bumpy road, feeling the speed of the plane adjusting and steadying itself naturally, through the jolts and bumps.

Rocked and soothed by the movement, I drifted back to sleep. Four hours later, I awoke to a silky calm sunrise over the red dunes of Namibia.

As I stepped off the plane, I felt refreshed and ready for the day ahead.

It was clear that something inside me had dissolved. Yes, I had lost much of my fear of flying but it was more than that. It was deeper and bigger. I had to some degree, successfully lost a fear of life itself!

What had become so real and embodied in me was that, just as the plane did not actually need my fear to keep it in the sky, so did life not need my anxiety, to keep things from falling apart.

It was like I had experienced a new perspective in microcosm.  How fear dominated my experience of life, every day and in every way. But even more, how because of this irrational belief that anxiety and tension had served me in some way, I had become addicted to it. An insane notion that without a mind and body overwhelmed by negative thoughts, fear, tension, and stress, everything would collapse around me.

I realized how I had allowed external forces beyond my control, to throw me around. From fear to relief, tension to relaxation, and back again. Bounced around on the turbulence of circumstance, like my plane in the night, bouncing from cloud to cloud, heaving into warm air and dropping into cold.

I saw how I was always throttling back, unsure of the path ahead, and consequently always losing height,  perspective, and vision.

But just like me, my plane was designed to handle rough weather. Its body, designed to be flexible and soft, to absorb and deflect the massive forces set against it.  Its mind, capable of re-adjusting toward the destination, keeping it level and moving, moving, always moving forward. Without motion, there could be no lift, and no ability to navigate or steer a course. Without forward thrust, there was only one way to go. Down.

This has now become an understanding from which I aspire to live. To understand that stress, fear, anxiety, and tension, have only ever caused me to become brittle and inflexible. Easily shattered by the winds of fate. A victim of circumstance. Now I choose as much as possible to move with the wind, to roll with the changes. Money in the bank, or no money in the bank. A woman by my side, or no woman by my side. Clarity of purpose or just foggy confusion.  Good health or poor health. Taking a risk or deciding to wait until the right moment.  But whatever my state of mind, I know that I have to keep moving, always moving forward, gaining lift and speed. Climbing ever higher, expanding perspective to a distant horizon. Letting go of my addiction to fear and anxiety. Realizing that it never has, and never will serve me.  Accepting the truth that I am free to fly.

Tears – Our Healing Force.

by Marc Itzler

The Science of Crying. Tears Can Reboot your Genetic Code!

Repression kills our emotions. All of them. Our sadness, despair, and abandonment are all safely locked away, out of sight and out of our conscious mind.  Repression also buries our joy, our feeling of connection,

of being loved, valued and accepted for who we are.

From our earliest moments of life, we are compelled to control and inhibit our natural expressions of laughter and crying. We are forced to abandon the most basic and uniquely human form of language.

It is well known and understood.  That in order to begin to ‘feel’ again, to live with an exposed and open heart, we have to risk encountering loss, grief, and loneliness. So we find ourselves trading in intimacy and emotional bonding in order to avoid the emptiness and fear born of our deep, hidden painful memories. Our un-expressed and unheard cries for safety and security, for love and acceptance.

In his groundbreaking book ‘The New Primal Scream’, Arthur Janov describes how our brains handle extreme trauma and emotional overwhelm. He explains that the brain has a particular way of coping with more stress than the body can handle. He states…

“Ordinarily, neural information about hurt is relayed to the Thalamus. When the pain is not overwhelming, information is then sent to the hypothalamus which initiates a variety of responses, including crying. That makes up the healing process.  When repression exists, information and tears are rerouted away from the hypothalamus. If this did not occur, the excesses of hypothalamic activity in blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, for example, would be lethal. It is therefore important that the hypothalamus not accept all of the input. The excess neural energy of the pain is rerouted and finds its neurotic destination in the Limbic system and it is because of this bifurcation that full healing cannot take place”.

Basically, he is saying that as infants and children, when we are forced to deal with more fear, trauma or pain than we can handle, the brain puts some of the emotion into deep storage where it is locked away, and so we can no longer cry and release this element of the wound. It does this to protect the organism, to keep us alive!  Over time, the Limbic system fills with more and more ‘censored’ pain and the effects on our bodies and lives from this emotional pool of unfinished business manifests as many dysfunctions. These can include psychological problems including self-sabotage, addictions or other types of anesthetics, which allow us to function with some sense of normality. It also affects our physiology. Our bodies become sensitive and we may develop allergies, intolerance to certain foods and damage to the immune system. It can even repress diseases that can lie dormant in our systems, unable to be exposed and treated and so continue to poison us throughout our lives.

But there is an even more dramatic effect that is less well known about what happens to our bodies during a lifetime crippled by early repression.  Stinted by the inhibition of our freedom to express both our pain and our joy. Our evolutionary pattern or genetic code that runs our bodies during our life can actually stall in the face of deep repression! This means that we are running on a faulty code, a fundamentally dysfunctional system breakdown at the level of our DNA. Our ‘operating system’ begins to crash.

So when we begin the process of reactivating the lost pain and traumatic memories, when we begin consciously healing ourselves by allowing the limbic system to re-open and slowly release the old wounds. We are actually allowing our bodies genetic code to reboot. We are in effect, switching ourselves off and on again! This is why it so crucial to find a way to open this portal and begin the process of revisiting and releasing this deeply buried mass of pain and sorrow.

Janov goes on to write…

“Weeping is healing. Feeling is healing.  Repression is ‘anti-healing’. Every process of our brain and body has an evolutionary rationale.  To block weeping is to run against the sweep of evolution. That is why those who weep deeply seem to ‘restart’ the evolutionary process – beards begin to grow at age forty, wisdom teeth develop at forty-five, breasts begin to grow at age thirty-five.    

The genetic code can now proceed to its destination;  that destination is growth, healing, and health.  Not a bad job for minuscule droplets of moisture. Imagine!  Tears have the power to transform our physiology, change our personality and re-fire the evolutionary engine. What has seemed like weakness to so many of us turns out to be one of the most powerful forces on earth”!  

“Hey! I’m just telling the truth!” Welcome to the Dark Side of Honesty.

by Marc Itzler

In 1979 at the age of 15, while living on his Ashram in Pune India, I asked a question of my Guru.

“How do we stay true to our own honesty and still be sensitive to other people’s feelings?”

I don’t remember the whole answer but the gist of it was that we are all responsible for our own feelings and deciding that we are ‘being hurt’ by others is always a choice and a reflection of our own insecurities. If someone feels hurt, that is their pain for them to own and deal with.

I took the answer and agreed with it in principle but I still had to figure out how to apply it in my life with the people I related to and cared about. This has proved to be a lifelong challenge and is still a work in progress.

What I have discovered is that there is so much more to honesty than just telling the truth. We have to also have integrity, authenticity on many levels and also vulnerability if we are to be sensitive to others while ‘telling it like it is.’

Being honest is a favourite tool of passive aggression and can be used to intentionally hurt or diminish another while hiding behind the veil of perceived truthfulness. Everything from “yes honey, actually your bum does look big in that” to “I can’t keep it in any longer, I am seeing someone else” can be a way of punishing and controlling another, especially when we know they are vulnerable or fragile. We all tell white lies to children or anxious friends and relatives because we love them and care that they don’t worry unnecessarily. We are protecting them. We also restrict and monitor ourselves in relationships to ensure we don’t push buttons or activate triggers. this is a strategy to protect ourselves from the consequences of ‘authentic behaviour.’

There are schools of thought that promote absolute authenticity as the only way of living an honest life. But authentic to what?
Ourselves, our partner, our children, our community, country or spiritual practice? Can we always override those around us so that we get to be honest and ‘authentic?’ Is that utterly selfish and if it is, is that ok or not?

In the end, it must come down to our intention. The conversation we can have with ourselves is, “I really want to be honest right now but why do I want to be honest”? Am I doing this to manipulate and control another’s emotions or thoughts? Am I doing it because the truth needs to be heard, the wound healed and the connection deepened, or because I don’t really care as long as I get to unburden myself and speak my mind freely?

If we can be honest within ourselves first as to our intention, then we can make a decision as to how, or if at all, we need to confess, judge, inform or enlighten someone else. That is true multidimensional authenticity, that is how we be true to ourselves, remain clear in our heart and soul and still take care of others and their feelings.

I believe it is important to remember that being authentic starts with our behaviour, not our words. If we betray someone’s trust, that is the issue we face. keeping it a secret is just a strategy, neither good nor bad. The act of betrayal, the lie, the conceit is where we lose integrity, where we become inauthentic and that is what can create pain and suffering in others, not the secret itself. Attempting to heal ourselves through so-called honesty and ‘coming clean’ have nothing to do with being true to ourselves.

So Honesty has a light and dark side, depending on our reasons to keep quiet or not and on our taking responsibility for how we feel first about what we are communicating.

What is the difference between ‘Letting go’ and ‘giving up’?

by Marc Itzler

during this time of uncertainty and change, it seems that so many people are finding themselves at a crossroads in their lives.

In our careers, in relationships, health, and well-being, or in the never-ending quest for meaning and purpose, we can often find ourselves in a very different place from where we first set off. Inspiration can wither; ambition and vision can blur and dissolve. We’re left wondering ‘What the hell was I thinking?’

Disillusioned and confused, struggling with an inner battle between head and heart, we start asking the question, ‘Am I letting go of something that has run its natural course? Or am I giving up and not completing a task that I set for myself – breaking a commitment I have made?”

Some of us may fall into the role of the victim; desperate to find all the reasons why this business, or that relationship, or that health goal didn’t work out for us, even though we tried so very, very hard.

Others choose to take it all on board and wallow in the shame, guilt, remorse, and regret of a bad decision,  a poor judgment call, or a hard lesson learned. “I didn’t try hard enough, it was all my fault, I have let myself down, I’m a failure”.

We may, at various times in our lives, experience both of these realms of introspection. Sometimes it is so hard to know which one we are in. Are we running away, or actually stopping and turning to face our demons? Are we avoiding and rationalising? Or are we seeing the end of an illusion? A reality check, a hard truth?

Maybe we can never really know at the time. Perhaps it is what comes next, that informs and educates us to be better attuned to our own intuition and instincts, and to develop our discernment.

How often have we looked back, and realized that if certain events that at the time, seemed utterly awful and confronting had not occurred, then the next set of events could simply not have happened? They didn’t exist or were not available to us at the time. That book had not been published, that offer or opportunity had not arrived in front of us, or that person was not in our lives.  The door wasn’t yet open. We were not ready for that experience.

The extent to which we try to engineer and control our lives is also the extent to which we have to deal with disappointment and frustrations. We create our own expectations of ourselves or worse, we allow others to impose theirs on us. So what is the difference between letting go and giving up? Between surrender and defeat, between acceptance and absolving?

The key may lie in our ability to respond to the flux of life.   Can we feel all the pangs and cringes of so-called failure and self-judgment, and just let that be there in all its gory glory?

Like learning to ride a bike, it often hurts like hell, but something is always learned, something develops. Consciously or not, we grow and change. To reflect on this truth is to become more adept to handle the next challenge with just a hint more strength, and a bit more determination, but also it’s a relaxation into our imperfections. In that, is the liberation of letting go. Therein lies the surrender, and humility in the face of our vulnerability and exposure. It will always be a time of accelerated growth and development if we can stay with the pain, forgive ourselves, and stay trusting. Then we can say we are letting go, letting the river take us downstream to an unknown ocean.

Giving up is just a position. It’s a reaction to disappointment, or a refusal to relinquish the illusion of control. We can have aspirations, ambitions, goals, and desires, but in the end, life is chaotic – stormy and unpredictable. Sometimes, when the clouds part we find ourselves in uncharted territory. This is where we can learn to IMG_6197let go and trust in our ship. To ride the waves of the next tempest. We learn to better navigate with our own inner compass and our true North Star by seeing not just where we are headed, but from where we have come.

Failspace

by Marc Itzler

Falling-BabyBefore we reach the age of judgment and self-identification, we instinctively know that there is no such thing as failure. We fall a dozen times a day as we learn to crawl, walk and run. We mess up words and phrases as we learn to talk and sing. we burn our hands in fire, cough and splutter as we learn to swim.

Failure is the process of achieving success, it is the fundamental right of every human being to fall and rise and fall again, as we grow and develop as people, as partners, as parents, and as entrepreneurs.

Society, media and conventional education have often sent out the message to us that failure is moving in the ‘wrong direction’. We get marked down for ‘wrong answers’. We are taught to avoid failure at all costs, to minimize mistakes and risk so that we stay safe and protected from ridicule and disappointment.

Fear of failure is the killer of creativity, the end of adventure and exploration. It makes us wary of our imaginings and stifles our ability to act and manifest beauty into this world.

Always protect your right to fail, to adjust the direction of travel, to compensate for the winds of life and re-set your course. When you want to use the word Failure, just swap the word for ‘learn’ or ‘grow’. It will bring immense liberation to your life and help you realize that success is not a destination or an outcome. It is a state of being, your failspace.

The One Basic Concept That Can Completely Transform Your Relationship With Your Children And Yourself!

by Marc Itzler
Trust + respect = influence.
Trust +respect= influence.

I have, with their mother, raised two boys, now aged 29 and 30, and a stepdaughter aged 37. They are inspired, energized, healthy and balanced individuals because of one very basic but critical concept. Getting this new understanding and applying it can change the actual viewpoint from which we parent and so transform the very experience of raising a child.

Many of us feel that our children need to be protected and directed in order that they turn out as successful individuals. Others believe that parents should befriend their children to maintain trust and a happy relationship, by giving them space to evolve, without being controlled or coerced into a future that we think is best for them. In my experience, both these approaches lead to disaster!

Either a child experiences domination and suffocation or the alternative, being neglect and ‘boundary-less’ choice paralysis.

So how do we care for our children, help them and protect them? How do we decide which approach and how much stick to carrot is the right balance?
Well, here is a concept that can create an environment of healthy communication, clear, empowered roles and functional family connections.

The Concept is simply to move from having expectations of our children…. to having aspirations for them. That is it.

Just shifting our perspective from one to the other, switches the focus to where it belongs; with the child. Moving to aspiration means that we want the best for them. We want them to be self-reliant, inspired, creative, and healthy but inside ourselves, we accept that it may not turn out that way. Our children may face challenges, suffering and difficulty in their lives and on a deep level as parents, we need to accept that as a possibility and realize that they are here to live out their own stories.

When we think, speak, and direct from a place of expectation, we are attempting to engineer our children in order that they live out our story. In expectation, there is an agenda presented to the child and this is felt within them as invalidation, as disrespect, and as an experience of the parent, in essence, becoming the child.

We expect them to be successful not just because we love them but also because we need to be validated as parents through their achievements. A child feels this as an energetic abandonment, even if we are supportive and apparently ‘focused’ on the child.

This is the birthplace of unhealthy rebellion, of seeking identity through a separation that is beyond the natural desire to leave the nest. It is the root of self-sabotage. Where failure becomes the power, where identity is developed in a negative self-evaluation. This core issue is the environment in which the relationship between child and parent becomes conflictive, abusive, or even violent. This is how we can potentially cripple our children for life.

It’s not an easy shift but when we realize that we can, in aspiration, guide, support, care for and encourage, facilitate and organize, teach, and connect. Then we see that our children open up to the experience of our role in their lives.

In aspiration, we can build trust and influence, the two essential ingredients needed to protect and inform our children.

So the concept of aspiration allows for all the important dynamics of parenting; guidance, wisdom, support, and nurturing but also sincerity, boundaries, and responsibilities. It creates clear roles, for authentic modeling and allows for appropriate, lifelong friendships to develop within a safe, creative, and loving family space. This has been my experience and I am filled with gratitude for the strong and solid bond that I have with my children.