Over at Hopeful Notes from Howie J., life-coach, mentor, all around amazing guy, Howard Parsons shares a tip today on Fear and Patience. How to stop acting out of fear and letting your heart guide the way.

It’s tough, this stopping acting out of fear. It’s tough because our egos don’t like standing still, especially when we don’t know what we’re standing in. Ego doesn’t want to explore the answer to…. How deep is this shite anyway?  It just wants to get the muck off our boots. It just wants to high-tail it outta there into someplace else. And really, it doesn’t care where that other place is, as long as it’ s not the shite you were standing in.

And that’s the rub. Leaping out of one shite pile without knowing where or how or what or why you’re going often lands you in…. yup. You guessed it. Another pile of horse manure, cow dung, elk pellets… You get the picture. Offal by any other name is still awful.

As the saying goes, where ever you go, there you are.

Or, as I like to say, where ever I go, I gotta take me with me. May as well take the best parts, kick the dung off my boots and dance in the rain to clean ’em up pardner! (’cause it’s Stampede time in cow city I’m addin’ in a little western lingo folks! 🙂

So… how does this relate to making a difference? Easy. If you’re standing in horse manure and reacting out of fear, your difference will be kinda stinky.

If you stop, breathe, assess the situation, call for help, even take a moment to search for  diamonds or nuggets of wisdom in the pile, you might find the horse manure isn’t really what you were afraid of. You might find that what you were really fearful of was…..  feeling the feelings of being stuck there, smelling the mess you’re in, discovering the reason you’re in the pile of manure in the first place was because you were doing, once again, what you’ve always done to get yourself into such a mess.

Ego is clever. It likes to trip us up. It likes to convince us it has our ‘best interests’ at heart. But seriously? At the heart of ego is the fear we’ll discover it doesn’t care about our hearts or what’s best for us’, it really only cares about protecting its position as boss, chief, mon capitano, el maestro.

Ego does not like being dumped or ignored. And it particularly does not like being in a pile of horse manure. Because… well…. how the hell did you get there? It wants you to believe if you’d listened to it in the first place you wouldn’t be there, but the truth is, for most of us, listening to ego is what got us there in the first place.

See the vicious circle?

If you don’t… Stop. Breathe. Relax. Breathe again. In. Out. In. Out. Deep, satisfying breaths that rise up from your belly.

Now, ask yourself: “What does my heart want?”

Listen to your heart.

Your heart always knows the way.

And while you’re waiting to hear its beat, start dancing. Whether in cow dung or horse manure, dance.

That’s the other thing ego doesn’t like. Joy.

In fact, it’s particularly sensitive to joy because if you’re dancing for joy, you’re not standing in fear. And fear is really the only emotion ego knows it can control you through.

Anyway, standing in horse manure isn’t all that bad if you’re wearing the right boots. And if you’ve got a shovel, you can easily clear a path out of there, righting what’s upside down, taking out what’s inside out. Working your way out of horse manure rather than leaping from one pile of shite to the next, makes a big difference.

I know.

I’ve stood in many a pile, leaping this way and that, trying to find a path to greener pastures. Until I let my ego stop directing me, until I stopped reacting and calmed my fearful breathing down to deep, steady inhales/exhales, I couldn’t see — the pile of manure ended when I got real clear on my role in getting me into that pile in the first place. Until I stopped running away from my fear of being 100% accountable for my life and moved through courage into being 100% accountable for my life, ego had its way with me.

Now, it’s my heart’s way and I am dancing in the rain, running through wildflowers and laughing when the earth gets kinda mucky. Because in moving through my heart’s calling for me to be all of who I am, in love, joy, harmony and bliss, fear can’t get the better of me!

And when fear isn’t getting the better of anyone, the world gets our best and in our best is the difference we make everyday in every way.