In James T Mangan’s book The Secret of Perfect Living, he talks about four basic kinds of fears – fears of people, fears of yourself, fears of time, and fears of fear. He also shares how different switch-words can be used to deal with and even overcome these fears.
What are Switch-words?
Switch-words are one-word affirmations or mantras, designed to access the subconscious. It is in the subconscious where all the knowledge lies, not in the conscious mind. When we bypass the conscious, we can skip over all the linear and rational arguments delicately and faithfully built by our ego-mind. Fears exist when the conscious mind believes all the reasons why something cannot be.
FEAR stands for False Evidences Appearing Real. It is what the conscious mind will have us believe.
Switch-words are therefore a device to invite the cooperation of the subconscious. Allowing the wisdom contained there to arise, we can open up to more possibilities. It is what James T Mangan calls going from apartness to togetherness.
4 Types of Fears
Fears of People
Fears of People manifest as fault-finding in others, grudge keeping, revenge, arguing and contradicting, anger, unfairness and dishonesty, among others. These can destroy a person’s own peace of mind, weaken a person’s nervous system and health, fuel the war within a person’s heart, and dissipates a person’s energy.
Often what keeps a person from peace of mind and “self-togetherness” is due to the dictates of the conscious mind – what it believes how things should be. Overly attached to ego and pride, a person may not so easily see the inner destruction (that leads to outer destruction) taking hold.
Negative attitudes poison and cannot change what has come to pass. This is not to say it is always easy to forgive and forget or come to peace with what feels so patently unfair. And to do it from the conscious mind? Yikes.
What switch-words can help loosen the grip from within, from the subconscious, that can allow us to choose with more clarity and self-love?
Some of the switch-words suggested by James Mangan in his book include the following:
- Praise for whenever the need arises to find the “weakness and inconsistency in others”
- Reverse for holding onto a grudge or fueling a feud
- Off for wanting revenge
- Concede for seeking self-satisfaction through deliberately arguing and contradicting others
- Restore for any injustice
- Clear for anger
Fears of Yourself
Now here is an interesting one. The Fears of Yourself can manifest in illness and pain, which can prevent a person from fulfilling their potential. James Mangan reminds the reader that the body is wise and “knows all there is to know about its own chemical and physical functions, and also should know how to relate these functions to enduring the presence of a thinking conscious mind within the same person.” Fears of Yourself can also come through as being fearful of the body’s functions and forgetting or misplacing things.
The suggested switch-words are as follows:
- Enduring for the body to align with the mind
- Change for illness and pain (this can be combined with Together as Together-Change or Change-Together
- Swivel or Reach for missing things
- Quiet for forms of madness – “money-mad”, “society-mad”, or “publicity-mad” – that arise when we try to prove we are “somebody.”
Fear of Time
Procrastination. Laziness. Impatience. Fear of deadlines. Aging prematurely. These do not help our inner harmony. It is as if we do nothing, we do not mark the passing of time. This inaction, and a hope, that things will just action themselves, without our input, without the risk of us making the wrong decision.
The suggested switch-words are :
- Now for procrastination
- Go for laziness, which is another way for us to “kill time”
- Slow for impatience
- Done for fear of deadlines
- Learn for keeping youthful in thinking
Fears of Fear
The Fears of Fear can be experienced as tension, hypertension, nervousness, worry, depression, loneliness,frustration, and fear of failure.
For all forms of tension, use :
- Cover to reduce tension
- Bluff for worry, a form of fear of the unknown or fear of failure
- Up for feeling blue out of the blue
- Circulate for loneliness (or fear that you may be deserted)
- Over for frustration
In The Secret of Perfect Living, James T Mangan shares that after using Bluff for fear of failure, many of the experimenters reported being able to admit to this fear with a sense of levity, rather than tension.
Levity is the suggested approach to using switch-words in your life. Have fun, experiment, and discover your own switch-words. Explore how you can use the different switch-words to dissolve the kinds of fears you may be facing.
