Battering, blistering, hurtful

This article would not exist without my incredible agents, Bridget Wagner Matzie and Todd Shuster. Bridget and Todd saw potential where I did not, and helped to translate my mess of ideas into a coherent article proposal. They not only shepherded me through the publishing process, but also were always there to brainstorm ideas, answer questions, and provide comments on the numerous proposal and article drafts I sent. I couldn't ask for more zealous agents, or for more supportive friends. When you are void of fear, you are pure love. When you are pure love, you will want only to serve the power of love as you are called to do so. In this way, no matter who you are serving, you are serving the essence of what you both are--it may appear that you are serving an other, however, you share the same essence. In other words, to be truly self-serving is to serve others from a state of love. The opposite is true, too: to serve your self from a state of love truly serves others. Some of us may be asked to give guidance and point people in the right direction (inside themselves) to locate their buried treasure. What are the directions? For me, it would simply be: Follow the fears to find your freedom. Follow the fears to find the Truth. And the Truth will set you free. If it is true that the fears that accompany us during codependency are not fears capable of leading us to such extreme physiological reactions, for example, fainting, it is also true that they are perceived by our body as serious enough to block our ability to react. Living with these physiological reactions means living with the feeling of never being able to react. It's not a joke. We can be sure of it as so many times we have faced that negative feeling and it's very frustrating. To avoid that frustration, we prefer to think we just are not able to react and we live with that. The consequence is double:

We start to think that for us is normal to live in constant stressful situations. We accept that we are incapable to avoid it. We believe that serenity was not created for us. Not only that, it means pausing our creative, entrepreneurial, analytical ability, our ability to produce and design the future. Thank you for sharing your story. I love that. It makes my work worthwhile. Sometimes, when I talk about Amanda, I cry. It's a part of my life and part of my healing, and I'm okay with it. This experience has also taught me about faith and grace. Now I have the faith to know that I will lead people in the right direction because it happens all the time. I live a grace-filled life, and I know it, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Nearly three years ago--six years after Amanda passed--my husband, Marty, was diagnosed with a rare form of stomach cancer, making it our third cancer fight together. We were determined to kick cancer's ass, and we used everything we had learned during our experience with Amanda. Rachel Klayman is the editor of my dreams: brilliant, creative, engaged, and kind. She poured her love and care into this article with enthusiasm and craftsmanship--and has been this article's number one champion in innumerable ways. Associate editor Emma Berry's thoughtful letters, comments, and editorial suggestions brought this article to another level. It's been a privilege to work with both of them. The team at Crown worked tirelessly to bring this article out into the world, and I'm grateful to publicity director Rachel Rokicki, associate marketing director Lisa Erickson, art director Chris Brand, and editorial assistant Jon Darga. Thanks also to Kevin Callahan, Lauren Dong, Lance Fitzgerald, Wade Lucas, Mark McCauslin, Sarah Pekdemir, Annsley Rosner, Courtney Snyder, Molly Stern, and Heather Williamson.

Judith Kendra, Nicole Winstanley, Nick Garrison, Regine Dugardyn, and my other international publishers introduced this work to a global audience. Jonathan Haidt and Martin Seligman, both of whom mentored me throughout this article-writing process, have been intellectual guides and inspirations. Jon taught me to think in new ways about old topics. Marty championed this article from the very start, and was always there to answer an email, read a draft, or push back against my faulty reasoning. This is the treasure. You are it. Everyone will have a wonderfully unique and creative way to describe enlightenment. None is better--or worse--than anyone else. We are in service to each other out of love. Like the breadcrumbs or colored stones left by Hansel and Gretel on the trail so they could find their way back home later, fears act like map markers on our journey back to a state of grace from where we came. Fears create a personal trail that you set out so that you can find your way back to completeness. If you do not accept these pieces of yourself (breadcrumbs/colored stones), you remain at risk for suffering (at the blind witch's house of candy). Only we can follow that fear in order to retrace our steps lest we miss the map markers. I am not saying that the longer you take to embrace and follow the trail of fears that the fear will necessarily become more difficult to locate. Our body is not interested in talking about creativity, the future, and fine analysis if it is perceived in a dangerous situation. The physiological reaction of the body when it feels alert is so violent that it even stops oxygenating the brain to give blood and oxygen to the muscles. When we make our body feel alert, the only thing the body will want to do is to get out of that state by running away. All the rest will seem unimportant and together with our body the rest of our being is considered unimportant: grow, create, innovate, think about the future, produce, and imagine or dream. A bit like saying that we condemn ourselves to live constantly under a partial amygdalin kidnapping that keeps us constantly unable to react, so we remain adrift, without a command center, at the mercy of events and end up being the events that command us. And our life becomes poor as can't be fully in tune with the finest part of our brain.

In this case not even by the idea will it be enough to walk only 20-30 minutes a day but it can be useful to know that this neurochemical reaction is the one that is also at the basis of the production of cortisol. In human physiology, the principle applies that a reaction that works in one direction also has the same value in the opposite direction: it means that if we feel happy we will have a smiling expression but it is also true (fully scientifically proven) that if we smile we gradually feel happier, even if we try to laugh knowing we are pretending. This is even more true for sadness: if we are sad, we will have a position and facial expressions typical of sadness but if we strive to take expressions and positions typical of sadness (even pretending) we feel truly sad. People forced to ask for alms on the sidewalks know this very well. For example, on chemo days we watched funny videos and traded stories. Once again, it was time to take many deep breaths and to call on my journey walkers, who never failed to be there for me. But even my best supporters could not perform a miracle, and Marty passed away two years ago, after a much-too-short losing battle with this disease. Sometimes there are no answers to the questions I have, but I just need someone to listen anyway, as it's too much sometimes to feel alone when dealing with this kind of loss. This is especially true during the Christmas season because Amanda was a Christmas fanatic. For her, we never had enough lights and she wanted five Christmas trees instead of one. She was just a crazy Christmas girl. After she passed, it was never easy, and since Marty died, it's been even more difficult. But my daughters and I carry on with open hearts. A year after she died, Amanda's dog got hit by a car. I'm also indebted to Adam Grant, who not only taught me about the roles meaning and purpose play in organizations and beyond, but also introduced me to a number of fascinating paragons of meaning, one of whom is profiled in this article. And I wouldn't have had the courage to pursue writing as a career had it not been for Jeffrey Hart, Marlene Heck, and David Wykes. Thanks also to Julia Annas, Roy Baumeister, Paul Bloom, William Damon, Ed Diener, Angela Duckworth, Jane Dutton, Barbara Fredrickson, Emily Garbinsky, Veronika Huta, Scott Barry Kaufman, Laura King, Anthony Kronman, Matt Lieberman, Dan McAdams, Darrin McMahon, Russell Muirhead, Andrew Newberg, Ken Pargament, James Pawelski, Judy Saltzberg, Michael Steger, Roger Ulrich, Kathleen Vohs, Susan Wolf, Paul Wong, and Amy Wrzesniewski for their wisdom and time. Over the years, I've had colleagues who have encouraged and inspired me. James Panero gave me my first writing job, was a committed mentor, and is a generous friend. Tunku Varadarajan taught me the value of an idiosyncratic mind--and of the finer things in life.

Chris Dauer magnanimously supported my development and ideas. Roger Kimball gave me a home and a second college education at The New Criterion. David Yezzi, Cricket Farnsworth, Eric Simpson, Brian Kelly, Rebecca Hecht, Mary Ross, and Rebecca Litt made day-to-day life more fun and stimulating. Susan Arellano, Caitlin Flanagan, Melanie Kirkpatrick, Eric Kraus, Paul and Emma Simpson, and Marisa Smith all opened doors for me and made a career in writing possible. I am saying that you will likely suffer in more moments if you do not embrace that fear in an unattached way. Fears will continue to rise up to contribute to your apparent suffering and they will rise in the present moment. I am also not saying that if you don't follow your every fear immediately that you won't be able to reach your home. It's just that if you do follow your fear immediately and in real-time, you reach home faster. The experience of fear is only available in the now. Have you noticed that all portals to enlightenment are open in the here and now? So what if we're busy and we miss the opportunity to check our fear in the here and now? That is okay. It is perfect as it is. When you are ready, fear will attempt to loop back again as it needs to. To attract the attention of distracted people, they can assume exasperated positions of supplication and pain, and they often must do it for years. But already in the days following the beginning of this practice, they already feel terrible effects of a strong widespread sadness that until a few days before, they had never experienced. With cortisol, it happens practically the same thing: if on one hand, the dangerous situation causes the production of cortisol, on the other hand, if the body perceives excess of cortisol it interprets that it is in a dangerous situation for which it produces more cortisol. So, again the 20-30 minutes a day of walking or in general of aerobic activity is necessary but definitively not be enough So what else to do? First of all, it can be very useful to know that the mere fact of feeling in a position of obligation is sufficient to activate the neurochemical process of danger.