“There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt … we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They’re opposites. If we’re in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we’re in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear.”

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross¹

I first came across these words many years ago but didn’t fully appreciate them until I started worked with people in private practice. It was then that I began to recognise how easily we focus our minds on the things we don’t want (our worst fears), instead of what we do want (our hopes and dreams for happiness and love).

Each day I notice how easy it is for clients to tell me about what they struggle with rather than what they excel at; what they can’t do as opposed to what they can! They ruminate over worst possible scenarios and outcomes instead of realising their capacity to shift into flow states of freedom and choice.

These fear-based defaults keep our brain and body locked in a perpetual cycle of anticipating danger. We assume that we will ‘fail’ and get things wrong, and we dread shame and the judgement of others.  When we live in a constant state of fear, our body and mind switch onto ‘high alert’. As fear-based emotions trigger the release of stress hormones such as cortisol, it’s not unusual to experience an increased heart rate and rise in blood pressure, and as our heart pounds, our chest feels constricted and our body tenses as it prepares for high risk and danger. It’s utterly exhausting, isn’t it and if we had the ability to switch off this fear-based response, we would, wouldn’t we?

The good news is there is another option for a healthier, happier brain and body response as we can train our brain to shift from fearful thoughts to a love-based mindset. When we come from a place of love and gratitude, affection and warmth, compassion and kindness, we feel socially connected and experience multiple health benefits such as enhanced happiness and overall sense of wellbeing, that ultimately represent freedom and choice. Love is an elevated and joyous emotion which always overrides fear. This makes it easier to release past emotional problems and accept things as they are, rather than how we think they should be. As Kübler Ross points out – fear and love are opposites, so if we are in a loving state, we cannot be in fear.

So, let’s live from love, not fear and embrace some powerful and efficient mindset hacks along the way by trying out the following activity which I’m sharing with you from my latest book Sex & Cancer: Connect with your body and rekindle your spark²