Fear is a liar, and if you listen to the voice of fear, you will never live your dreams.
When fear speaks, don't listen to what it's saying.
When I was sailing through the Bab Al Mandeb in the southern Red Sea, I had fifty knots of wind on the port quarter, and I was soaked to the skin by breaking seas crashing into the yacht.
Although I was wet and cold, there was no fear in my heart.
My options were to sail on into the night and get extremely tired and wet, or to find an anchorage in the storm and hold on. Fear was not an option.
It’s all too easy to focus on the storms of life and worship at the altar of fear. It’s easy to forget that storms come and go, but dreams can last forever.
In more than fifty thousand miles of offshore sailing, we have had winds to fifty knots on only three occasions. That makes about six days of gale force winds during an eleven year sailing voyage around the world.
If you stay out of the higher latitudes and don’t sail in hurricane season, it’s unlikely you will ever encounter a storm that poses a significant threat to your yacht. That’s the real world of sailing.
The fear mongers would have us live in a very different world.
Every year, they predict hurricane season will be one of the worst on record. There will be more storms and storms of greater severity than at any time in recent history.
Fear makes you tune in to the Weather Channel so you can listen to their forecasts of doom and gloom.
The Apostles of Fear would have you believe that we live in a dangerous world, because fear is big business.
Capitalism has embraced fear and wants you to buy their particular antidote to fear.
I am not buying what they are selling.
Whether I am on land or sea, I am not afraid, but I am tired of listening to the fear mongers.
I wish they would go away or go silent. They are boring me with their negative and toxic palaver.
I listened to the fear mongers tell me how dangerous it was to live in the Middle East, and contrary to their prophecies of doom, I lived in Saudi Arabia for sixteen years without a problem.
I listened to the fear mongers tell me about the perfect storm and how dangerous it was to sail the seven seas, and contrary to their predictions, in eleven years, I never sailed in winds over fifty knots.
I listened to the fear mongers tell me that catamarans were dangerous to sail offshore, and I sailed one around the world without a problem.
I have figured out that when people tell me I should be afraid, they either don’t know what they are talking about, they are trying to control me with fear, or they want to sell me something as an antidote to the fearful world that they are trying to cultivate in my mind.
I’ve got my mental ear plugs in, and I’m no longer listening to their gospel of fear.
I won’t let them control the focus of my mind or steal my dreams.
Instead, I’m focusing on my dreams.
I’m projecting my dreams onto the motion picture screen of my mind so they can expand into my life.
I know that life is good. I live in the Land of Possibility, and I sail on the ocean of my dreams where there is no limit to how good my life can become.
I have been tested in the crucible of life, and I know the truth. There is nothing to fear, and focusing on the storms of life is a waste of precious time.
Storms come and go, and they are few and far between.
Dreams are different. They go on forever.
That’s why I focus on my dreams.
That’s why I live as if my dreams are possible and work each day to make them happen.
That’s why I’m an Unstoppable, Consistently Positive, Endlessly Persistent, Doer of Dreams.
Many times I felt like I had taken things to the limit, but on further examination, it was clear I simply had enough. I was done and was unwilling to do whatever it takes to continue. Hitting the wall of absolute limits has never been a problem. The envelope of possibility is infintely large, and the likelihood of encountering absolute limits is infinitesimally small. There are no limits. There are only limiting beliefs.
In the grand scheme of things, my grand schemes seem fairly insignificant. In a global sense it's easy to feel as if my life counts for nothing, or at most, counts for little. When someone tells me that I shouldn't be doing things that are important to me, and that I'm wasting my life, they are really saying that my dreams don't count in their scheme of things.
I am a daktari without borders. I am not sure when and where borders disappeared from my mind, but sometime in the last quarter century, I became a citizen of the world. Wherever I am on planet earth, I feel at home in my borderless world. Find out what it's like to live without borders.
When my life is over and on judgment day I stand in the final line up with all the rest, I hope millions of people can point their finger at me, pick me out of the line up, and say, "He's the one. That's definitely him. He's different from the rest. He didn't conform, and he is guilty of living his dreams.
You are never safe from negation. Unchecked negativity can rapidly flush the achievements of a lifetime down the drain. If you ever reach your dreams, it will be because you stopped listening to the voice of fear and negation. You stopped looking at your limitations and stopped constructing barriers that exist only in your mind.
Faith isn’t something that must be present before you move in the direction of your dreams. Rather it’s something that develops after you start moving. When you start out, you don’t see how your dreams are possible. Nevertheless, the moment you take the first step, faith instantly comes into your life. Never look at faith as the path to a life of leisure. God gave you faith so you could see things other people can’t see and do things other people can’t do.
I could write an entire book called, "Things I Feared That Never Happened," and follow that up with a second book entitled, "I Feared The Wrong Things." Almost always, fear is a waste of time. Most of the things you fear will never happen, and you fear the wrong things. When the hobglobins of fear start dancing in your mind, it's time to refocus on other things. Learn how to squelch the voice of fear with a positive focus!
For me, the dream is all about adventure, freedom, and being really alive. Although I like seeing the sights wherever we go, I think it's the sense of adventure coupled with the freedom to do what I want to do with my life, seasoned with a pinch of adrenalin that makes it all worthwhile.
The first step in moving toward your dreams is to doubt your limits. Once you doubt your limits, it's almost as if you are born again. You get an entirely new life with radically different rules of engagement. You enter the Promised Land of Imagine, Believe, and Receive. I know this to be true because I have been there.
WHO IS DR. DAVE AND WHY IS HE BLOGGING?
More than two decades ago, Captain Dave (aka Dr. Dave) started writing and creating websites as he sailed around the world on his sailboat, SV Exit Only. Those early websites and books evolved into the Positive Thinking Network you see today.
Captain Dave lived overseas for twenty-eight years in his globe trotting lifestyle until he became a Flying Doctor with the Indian Health Service working for ten years in the American Southwest flying out to deliver health care to the Apache, Hopi, Hualapai, Havasupai, and Colorado River Tribes.
Dr. Dave completed his work with the Indian Health Service in Arizona, and now runs the Positive Thinking Network full time either from his catamaran or his Land Rover Defenders as he travels around the world
The Positive Thinking Network has a global outreach sending a positive message to 196 countries, and it is your definitive source of positive thinking on the World Wide Web.
With hundreds of positive websites, and more than a million pages and podcasts downloaded each month, it's where you come to learn everything you want to know about positive thinking. The Positive Thinking Network focuses on positive self-talk, positive spirituality, winning the battle against depression, PTSD, and positive adventure.
Hundreds of family safe websites stand ready to fill your mind with positive things.
Dr. Dave and the Positive Thinking Network work around the clock to change the world, one person at a time, one web page at a time, and one podcast at a time.
