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Conversations with Briana: What If

How much do you what if? What if, what if, what if. Do you ever find yourself stuck in a cycle of “what iffing” your whole future and fearing that all sorts of bad things will happen and everything will go wrong…even though you have no logical reason to entertain all these exaggerated worries over and over in your mind? We all do it. In this video, Briana shares a simple yet very effective approach to getting out of these what if mental ruts.

If you have experience with this common problem, or tactics that have helped you shift your trajectory towards a more positive state, please share in the comments below!

4 thoughts on “Conversations with Briana: What If”

07 / 04/ 18 | Linda

Briana,
What if I hadn’t listened to this and deleted it?! I’m so glad I did! It’s simple, realistic and to the point and really got me thinking. Just wanted to say thank you for sharing this. I loved it and will share it with people I am close to also. 🙂

Reply
1. 07 / 04/ 18 | Briana Borten
  
  Thank you Linda.
  
  Reply
07 / 05/ 18 | Jennifer

Thank you, I just emailed my boss about wanting a raise and all I could think was a ton of “What if’s”. This really made me think and calm down. Thank you so very much!

Reply
1. 07 / 12/ 18 | Briana Borten
  
  Wonderful!
  
  Reply

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As with many things of value, we notice it more when it seems to be going away. When you illuminate your tree, light the candles in a menorah, or throw a yule log in the fireplace this season, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to meditate on darkness and light. Darkness is a metaphor for all the parts of ourselves and our lives that we fear or resist. We banish these aspects to the shadowy corners of our minds where we can avoid reckoning with them. But rather than remaining contentedly neglected there, they tend to weigh on us, as if we’re being followed by a murky figure or a long-procrastinated task. In this way, they infringe on our freedom. Have you ever felt completely free? Not just in the ability to do or say what you want, but free in the sense that there is nothing you are trying to avoid. Nothing. It is supremely peaceful and powerful. A starting point could be the non-avoidance of anything within the small range of thoughts, feelings, and surroundings in your current experience. The next step is to venture a bit into the darkness. Depending on what you’ve got stored in there, it can feel quite daunting. But the thing the makes all the difference is that you’re allowed to bring a light with you. I happened upon this realization during an involuntary visit to my own darkness, and I’ll bet you’ve had a similar experience – even if you didn’t realize it at the time. For me, the darkness came without a conscious request for it, and there I was, resisting it with all my might, feeling I would never find my way out of it. Suddenly, a little drop of curiosity fell into the dark. There was a tiny impulse that felt different from the fight and despair. There was a part of me that was just a teensy bit curious about the dark. And as I brought my attention to this curiosity, a thought arose: “Where did this come from?” I didn’t get a clear answer to that right away, but I could feel that the question opened something; my consciousness wasn’t wholly dominated by aversion anymore. So I gave myself over to the curiosity. It wanted to venture into the shadows. Like a cat in a room with a box, it couldn’t resist. I saw and felt some unpleasant things, but only a fraction of what lurked in the recesses of my mind was connected in any rational way to my own life. Most of it was fabricated from a vast collection of disturbing thoughts and images – just a lot of “what-ifs.” As in, What if I have to experience [insert undesired scenario here]? As I went deeper, these what-ifs were more existential, like, What if I lose myself? Or, What if I’m wrong about everything? If I let my mind run away with what I encountered, I felt aversion and discomfort again; but as long as I stayed curious and open, I could perceive the insubstantiality of these thoughts and I remained in a state of relative peace. After a while, my attention returned to the curiosity itself and its origin. I was conscious that I was looking into the darkness, but it occurred to me that people can’t see in the dark. Even cats, whose eyeballs are excellent at making the most of a few photons, can’t see in total darkness. So, there had to be a light source here. But where was it? “Where is the light coming from?” I asked inwardly. And this time the answer was clear. It was coming from me. Not from my mind, but from my Higher Self – from that One Awareness that is the same One Awareness that you access whenever you allow your consciousness to expand beyond your thoughts. This realization made the light grow brighter. As I looked into these undesired stories of my shadow self, I began to see lightness even within them. They became less substantial and they started to fall apart, liberating facets of me that I had denied. At the same time, knowing I had this light, the darkness felt less forbidding. I started to experience a certain softness and stillness in it. I pulled back at first, because the stillness was disconcerting. It felt like what I would have imagined death to be. But then I revived my curiosity and stayed with it. And I could perceive the dark stillness as an infinite container, holding everything, and it was the most peaceful thing. Also, I remembered the many accounts of near-death experiences I had read, virtually all of which focus not on darkness but on the presence of light and an inexorable movement toward it. I began to see that this light is a source of freedom. The recognition of one’s light brings an assurance of not needing to avoid anything. This assurance is further bolstered by the recognition that the light isn’t something separate from us. We can forget about it, but we can’t lose it entirely because it’s what we are. As I was coming out of this experience, I saw a succession of memories – times like this when I had been rescued from despair by my own light – and I got an answer to that first question as a word formed in my mind: grace. I hadn’t really understood the meaning of grace before, but here it was. The Divine reaching down into the muck of my confused mind with a candle. During these dim days, I encourage you to be curious about the darkness. Rather than switching on all the lights in your home, let yourself be aware that we’re approaching the Longest of Nights. The world needs to rest, to bask in the stillness. What has been banished to the darkness of your mind, yet nonetheless encroaches on your freedom? Can you enter your darkness? Can you perceive the light you bring with you? As a final note, I’d like to direct you to the continuity of light in human traditions. For millennia, one torch has lit the next. Each Yule log was removed from the hearth before burning completely, so that it could be used to kindle the next log the following year. Similarly, when lighting a menorah, the tallest candle, representing the Divine Light, is ignited first, and from this one the others are lit. When you engage in merry making this year, notice the ways you carry forth a light that was kept alive by those before you. What happens when you stay conscious of your light as you interact with others? Where is your luminescence most needed? Be well, Dr. Peter Borten [post_title] => Lighting the Way [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => lighting-the-way [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2019-07-02 22:45:38 [post_modified_gmt] => 2019-07-02 22:45:38 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://www.thedragontree.com/?p=6842 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 14 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7172 [post_author] => 5 [post_date] => 2018-11-13 19:26:16 [post_date_gmt] => 2018-11-13 19:26:16 [post_content] => In this video, Briana offers context and tips for cleanly and responsibly sharing energy with others - while maintaining your own energy field to prevent fatigue, confusion, and other murky things that can happen when we intermix energy fields with others and lose track of our boundaries. Feel free to join in a conversation with Briana about this in the comments below!

[post_title] => Conversations with Briana: Being "Clean" with Your Energy [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => being-clean-with-your-energy [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2019-05-29 19:52:00 [post_modified_gmt] => 2019-05-29 19:52:00 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://thedragontree.com/?p=7172 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 7714 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2019-12-03 17:41:59 [post_date_gmt] => 2019-12-03 17:41:59 [post_content] => It’s not hard to get into the routine of buying lots of stuff for your loved ones during the holidays. We want them to be happy, they seem to want stuff, and stuff is on sale. But when we’re breaking the bank to do it, when we feel compelled to go over the top or to outdo ourselves, and especially when the result is likely to be something big in the landfill in a year or two, maybe it’s worth reassessing our motives and options. One of my favorite days as a kid – and my model for healthy gift-giving – was St. Nicholas Day. Each region celebrates this holiday in their own way. In several European countries, kids leave their shoes outside or in front of the chimney and receive small gifts in them from St. Nicholas. Sometimes they use a boot to collect the presents, or St. Nicholas sticks a treat under their pillow. In other parts, people dress as St. Nicholas and leave a bag of goodies outside neighbors’ doors. Dutch children will put out a clog with hay and a carrot for St. Nicholas’s horse. As you can tell, elements of several of these traditions – the chimney, the shoe (which became a stocking), the gift giving, and even the name Saint Nicholas (Sinterklaas in Dutch, which became Santa Claus) – all got rolled together with Jesus’s birthday, Winter Solstice, and many aspects of the Pagan festival of Yule to form Christmas. But in our family, we keep St. Nicholas Day separate – it occurs on December 6^th – and this makes it easier to preserve its specialness. In all cases, St. Nick leaves something modest – it needs to fit in a bag, in a shoe, in a boot, or under a pillow. Because of this limitation, there’s a lot more room for magic and sweetness. When I was young, the bag of goodies typically consisted of some oranges, nuts, a pineapple, a little candy, and perhaps some tree ornaments. This is what we put into the bags we make for our friends today. We put these bags together as a family, and even though nuts and fruit are a regular part of our diets, the kids handle it as if it’s something really special because they know it’s going to be a gift. The best part is walking or driving to recipients’ houses, putting the bag on their porch, knocking on the door and running away (so it’s a mystery!). Our kids get absolutely giddy with the excitement of it (to be honest - so do we!!) When we return home, St. Nick has visited our house too (wink, wink)! Because the emphasis isn’t on size or monetary value, the essence of what we’re doing is a lot easier to see. There’s a surprise element – an unexpected and anonymous gift – which is fun. There’s an unspoken communication – we love you and you matter to us. You add sweetness to our lives, and here’s a little sweetness back. And even if they don’t figure out it was from us, we know it was given in the most unconditional way. What’s your gift-giving tradition like? How do you keep the emphasis on the non-material aspects of the holidays? Share your ideas with us in the comments section below. Love, Briana [post_title] => Making Room for Magic in our Giving [post_excerpt] => [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => open [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => tis-the-gift-to-be-simple [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2019-12-03 18:35:00 [post_modified_gmt] => 2019-12-03 18:35:00 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://thedragontree.com/?p=7714 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 1 [filter] => raw [webinar_id] => 0 ) ) [post_count] => 3 [current_post] => -1 [in_the_loop] => [post] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 6842 [post_author] => 3 [post_date] => 2017-12-19 16:57:00 [post_date_gmt] => 2017-12-19 16:57:00 [post_content] => As we descend into darkness at this time of year, our attention is naturally drawn to the light. As with many things of value, we notice it more when it seems to be going away. When you illuminate your tree, light the candles in a menorah, or throw a yule log in the fireplace this season, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to meditate on darkness and light. Darkness is a metaphor for all the parts of ourselves and our lives that we fear or resist. We banish these aspects to the shadowy corners of our minds where we can avoid reckoning with them. But rather than remaining contentedly neglected there, they tend to weigh on us, as if we’re being followed by a murky figure or a long-procrastinated task. In this way, they infringe on our freedom. Have you ever felt completely free? Not just in the ability to do or say what you want, but free in the sense that there is nothing you are trying to avoid. Nothing. It is supremely peaceful and powerful. A starting point could be the non-avoidance of anything within the small range of thoughts, feelings, and surroundings in your current experience. The next step is to venture a bit into the darkness. Depending on what you’ve got stored in there, it can feel quite daunting. But the thing the makes all the difference is that you’re allowed to bring a light with you. I happened upon this realization during an involuntary visit to my own darkness, and I’ll bet you’ve had a similar experience – even if you didn’t realize it at the time. For me, the darkness came without a conscious request for it, and there I was, resisting it with all my might, feeling I would never find my way out of it. Suddenly, a little drop of curiosity fell into the dark. There was a tiny impulse that felt different from the fight and despair. There was a part of me that was just a teensy bit curious about the dark. And as I brought my attention to this curiosity, a thought arose: “Where did this come from?” I didn’t get a clear answer to that right away, but I could feel that the question opened something; my consciousness wasn’t wholly dominated by aversion anymore. So I gave myself over to the curiosity. It wanted to venture into the shadows. Like a cat in a room with a box, it couldn’t resist. I saw and felt some unpleasant things, but only a fraction of what lurked in the recesses of my mind was connected in any rational way to my own life. Most of it was fabricated from a vast collection of disturbing thoughts and images – just a lot of “what-ifs.” As in, What if I have to experience [insert undesired scenario here]? As I went deeper, these what-ifs were more existential, like, What if I lose myself? Or, What if I’m wrong about everything? If I let my mind run away with what I encountered, I felt aversion and discomfort again; but as long as I stayed curious and open, I could perceive the insubstantiality of these thoughts and I remained in a state of relative peace. After a while, my attention returned to the curiosity itself and its origin. I was conscious that I was looking into the darkness, but it occurred to me that people can’t see in the dark. Even cats, whose eyeballs are excellent at making the most of a few photons, can’t see in total darkness. So, there had to be a light source here. But where was it? “Where is the light coming from?” I asked inwardly. And this time the answer was clear. It was coming from me. Not from my mind, but from my Higher Self – from that One Awareness that is the same One Awareness that you access whenever you allow your consciousness to expand beyond your thoughts. This realization made the light grow brighter. As I looked into these undesired stories of my shadow self, I began to see lightness even within them. They became less substantial and they started to fall apart, liberating facets of me that I had denied. At the same time, knowing I had this light, the darkness felt less forbidding. I started to experience a certain softness and stillness in it. I pulled back at first, because the stillness was disconcerting. It felt like what I would have imagined death to be. But then I revived my curiosity and stayed with it. And I could perceive the dark stillness as an infinite container, holding everything, and it was the most peaceful thing. Also, I remembered the many accounts of near-death experiences I had read, virtually all of which focus not on darkness but on the presence of light and an inexorable movement toward it. I began to see that this light is a source of freedom. The recognition of one’s light brings an assurance of not needing to avoid anything. This assurance is further bolstered by the recognition that the light isn’t something separate from us. We can forget about it, but we can’t lose it entirely because it’s what we are. As I was coming out of this experience, I saw a succession of memories – times like this when I had been rescued from despair by my own light – and I got an answer to that first question as a word formed in my mind: grace. I hadn’t really understood the meaning of grace before, but here it was. The Divine reaching down into the muck of my confused mind with a candle. During these dim days, I encourage you to be curious about the darkness. Rather than switching on all the lights in your home, let yourself be aware that we’re approaching the Longest of Nights. The world needs to rest, to bask in the stillness. What has been banished to the darkness of your mind, yet nonetheless encroaches on your freedom? Can you enter your darkness? Can you perceive the light you bring with you? As a final note, I’d like to direct you to the continuity of light in human traditions. For millennia, one torch has lit the next. Each Yule log was removed from the hearth before burning completely, so that it could be used to kindle the next log the following year. Similarly, when lighting a menorah, the tallest candle, representing the Divine Light, is ignited first, and from this one the others are lit. When you engage in merry making this year, notice the ways you carry forth a light that was kept alive by those before you. What happens when you stay conscious of your light as you interact with others? Where is your luminescence most needed? 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