Love or Fear

A few years ago I was grappling with some of my kids behaviors and thoughts about things. I wanted to be a good parent, they were always seeming to “mis-behave”. I felt frustrated and so would push harder to get them to behave the way I thought was appropriate and what I thought they “should” be doing. One day I was reading an article about figuring out if we were doing things based on love or fear. I thought everything I was doing was from a place of love, but realized it was really coming from my fears. One of the best books I have read on this topic is The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz.


When you think about what is motivating your actions does it come from fear or love? Ruiz believes that all emotions are generated from one of these two base emotions. When I think about this it makes so much sense. Look at these emotions and ask yourself could they be generated from any other source?


Fear - Anger, Resentment, Abandoned, Overwhelmed, Selfishness, Unkindness, Jealousy

Love- Love, Hope, Caring, Delightful, Generous, Kindness, Compassion

When you can really get in and ask yourself WHY you are thinking something and then are willing to see the real reason, it can be a game changer. Fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of failure are powerful motivators. Many of our emotions are just fear masked. But are they what you want to motivate you?

I have been studying this and trying to implement this for a long time. For sure, it is a practice right now for me. Sometimes it sounds beautiful and I can knock love out of the park and other times I hit a lot of wrong notes and foul balls. One night I read this passage in The Mastery of Love and totally woke David my husband up because It was so profound.

“ Love is ruthless; it doesn’t feel sorry for anyone, but it does have compassion. Fear is full of pity; it feels sorry for everyone. You feel sorry for me when you don’t respect me, when you don’t think I am strong enough to make it. One the other hand, love respects. I love you; I know you can make it. I know you are strong enough, intelligent enough, good enough that you can make your own choices. I don’t have to make your choices for you. You can make it. If you fall, I can give you my hand, I can help you to stand up. I can say, “You can do it, go ahead,” That is compassion, but it is not the same as feeling sorry. Compassion comes from respect and from love; feeling sorry comes from a lack of respect and from fear. Love is completely responsible. Fear avoids responsibility, but this doesn’t mean that it’s not responsible. Trying to avoid responsibility is one of the biggest mistakes we make because every action has a consequence. Everything we think, everything we do has a consequence. If we make a choice, we have an outcome or a reaction. If we don’t make a choice we have an outcome or a reaction. We are going to experience the consequences of our actions in one way or another.”

So how do we get in and do the work of answering the love or fear question. Here are the basic steps, if you are learning and practicing R.A.I.N these are going to sound familiar.

  • What am I feeling? (Realize that you may have many feelings that are truly based in fear, try not to judge them too harshly. If you can do this with curiosity it will help you so much more.)

  • Why am I feeling this way? (Be honest with yourself here. Also, writing your reasons down can be super useful)

  • Identify if it is coming from love or fear. Then you get to decide to keep feeling this way? Is it serving you? Only you can answer this question and it is going to look differently for everyone.

Next Monday we will talk about the final part of emotion processing in R.A.I.N. so practice this for the next few days if you get a chance. Ask the WHY? See what it brings up and how that feels inside of you.

Try looking to see if you are acting more from love or fear. When I did this, I realized I was coming from fear almost 90% of the time. In the last five years I can say that has changed more to about 60% of the time. I am working on getting it to about a 50/50 ratio. Fear is always going to be present. My brain is most likely going to jump to fear first, to protect me. But, I am finding I go to love a lot more than I used to. I jump to the benefit of the doubt, to tolerance and compassion so much more now and when I don’t, I can still get there quicker than I used to. I hope you will join me on this journey. I truly believe that thriving comes from love. So I hope you will choose to thrive.

Emily McAllister