The Zen of What If
By Dina Bachelor Evan - Dr. Dina Bachelor Evan is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in California and a life/soul coach in Arizona working with individuals, couples and corporations. For more information call 602-997-1200 or email her at Drbe@attglobal.net or visit www.DrDinaEvan.com

"OK, so what if I break up with my boyfriend? What if I lose my job? What if my girlfriend is cheating? What if the economy gets worse? What if? What if? What if?"

Many of us get that sick feeling in the pit of our stomach, or that electric sensation of terror that claws it’s way up your back, when you start scaling the walls of catastrophe and what ifs. We want answers…and at the same time that there are none—because what if has not yet arrived and may never arrive—we also have the answers before it does. And if it does? If it does, each of us would do whatever we had to do to be all right. In the process we would discover the strength of character and level of compassion that makes us astonishing and unique.

I am amazed at the human spirit; the mind and teachings of Stephen Hawking doubled over in his wheelchair or the immense courage of Jill Bolte Taylor, the Neuroanatomist, who watched the process of her own brain becoming disabled as she had a stroke. Think about Randy Pausch the professor who has pancreatic cancer and who chooses to spend his last days lecturing on the beauty of life. And then there are the millions of heroes and heroines that are not so well known on YouTube, T.E.D. or Oprah. You know, the ones I mean; the women and men who raise children alone, the gay couples who marry on the steps of the I.R.S. or the Capitol, the families who spend nearly $4 a gallon on gas and still make ends meet and the invisible families of choice and origin that still struggle with the ravages of A.I.D.S. where "What if," is always just around the corner. Sometimes just living is an act of courage on it’s own.

Do the struggles make us heroic or are we heroic before they arrive?
Either way it’s about how you choose to face them, not whether or not they will come. The bottom line is that we can’t control life, other people or the unforeseen circumstances in life that arise. The only thing we have any control over is our response to all of it. So, perhaps it’s not life that we don’t trust–it’s that we don’t trust ourselves to be OK when life arrives.

I could probably give you some slick, therapisty tools for over coming fear but the truth is I don’t think you need them. I think all you have to do is look behind you. If you spin around inside your head, you will see the mountains you have already climbed over, the challenges you have already met with courage and the adversity that you have already overcome.

If you are a minority, a gay person, a woman, a single parent, an entrepreneur, a person on a spiritual path, a person who has been really ill, kicked an addiction, a person getting older or if you have ever left home, you can relax. Have you forgotten that before you came here the application said "Wimps need not apply?" You have already proven that there is not much you can’t handle. As long as you don’t have bag lady DNA you are going to be OK.

We are flooded with messages that make trusting ourselves a challenge. Our fanny isn’t round enough, our teeth aren’t white enough, our abs don’t ripple enough, we are not young enough or old enough and there is always some entity; the government, the doctor, the sage or the decorator, who knows more than we do. Or not!

With all these messages, we can lose a sense of ourselves, and our own inner wisdom. Unlike the fearful ego’s cocky message of " I can handle anything," self-trust comes from assessing your real skills and abilities and what we know to be true about our selves. It is about what you have in your emotional, spiritual and intellectual tool bag. Chances are you have been through enough life lessons that your bag is pretty full of varied experiences, things you have learned and new skills you have gained since you were born.

So even in this time of great change, take a breath, relax a bit and know that even in the worst of what ifs, should they actually arrive, you’ve got your own back and as history shows, we have each other’s.