More On Fear And How To Overcome It.

I covered fear earlier, but I am going to go over it again now in a little more detail. Fear is one of the strongest of the negative emotions and is usually the underlying force behind nearly all of the other negative emotions. If you allow fear to control your actions, it can override all of the positive emotions, your values and beliefs, and shut down your ability to proceed. One of the most effective ways to conquer fear is to change the way you look at it. Most people view fear as an enemy, which turns fear into a paralyzing force. It is far more effective to see fear as a part of your instinct – a survival tool. When used properly, fear can empower people to do amazing things, to access those unlimited possibilities that are usually hidden just under the surface of what you believe that you are capable of.

Most people prefer to stay in their “safe zone” or comfort level. If you always stay in that “safe zone” or your life, you deny yourself the opportunity for growth and expansion. The most common underlying factor of the comfort mentality is fear of failure – fear of trying new things that may be outside of your “safe zone”. You will never be able to live your life to the fullest if you never take a peek at what is outside of your comfort level.

Fear is an emotion designed to protect you. It is a warning to you that you need to be prepared for something unexpected or uncomfortable. As man has evolved, most fears now are either imagined or constructed out of negative expectations of the unknown. Everyone has them. It is how you respond to them that makes the difference between success and failure. Since fear is an emotion, and emotions can be controlled, then fear can be controlled. You will probably not be able to eliminate your fears – most people can’t – but you can learn to minimize your fears to a controllable level. Anthony Robbins, a great motivational speaker, puts it this way:
“If you can’t you MUST, and if you must then you CAN.”
Read this principle over and over to yourself until you truly understand the meaning of it. More simply put, the fear (I can’t) is replace with must (you have to take action to grow). Once you realize that you must act, then you can do nothing else but the act – you are committed.

In your journal, write down two fears that you have that are keeping you from your ultimate goal.

1 – I am afraid of ______________________________.
2 – I am afraid of ______________________________.

Rewrite these two fears in the following format:

1 – I want to ___________ and I scare myself by imagining __________.
2 – I want to ___________ and I scare myself by imagining __________.

Examples: I am afraid to quit my current job for something else.
I want to quit my current job and I scare myself by imagining I will go broke.

Once you realize your fears, you can take the actions necessary to minimize them and bring them under control.

Motivation – The Thing That Drives You To Act.

Motivation is defined as a reason for you to act. It rarely has to do with capability (your ability to do something), but is more a matter of what makes you want to do something. If you have a reason or strong internal drive to do something, you will find a way to do it. Once you are able to realize why you want to do something, then you will have that needed push to take consistent action to accomplish it.

Motivation has an enormous impact on your behavior and your life. It is the force that drives you to success. If you are constantly doing something that you do not enjoy, then you find that it is difficult to concentrate on what you are doing. When you are truly motivated to do something, then you enjoy doing it and find it not only easy, but also pleasurable to do. The better your motivation, the easier and more consistent your actions become.

Motivation can be used as an effective form of leverage to develop the ability to take action. A good example is in how you would motivate a child toward good behavior rather than bad. Good behavior brings pleasurable rewards and bad behavior brings un-pleasurable consequences. The leverage comes from how pleasurable or un-pleasurable the outcomes are. You can use these same leveraging techniques to help exercise and train your own motivational forces.

Look back through your journal to the goals that you have set for yourself. For the motivational exercise, plan a reward for yourself for completing a goal, and a consequence for not completing a goal. It is up to you to decide what these should be, but try to make them worth something to you, otherwise the leveraging portion of this exercise will not really come into play. Write down your reward and consequence for each goal, then try to make yourself accountable to them – just as you would for a child.

Persistence – The Key That Ties It All Together.

No matter how smart you are or how much ability you have, you will eventually run into some snag or roadblock with most things that you do. How you deal with these roadblocks is what separates success from failure. Do you continue to try getting past these snags, or do you give up and do something else? This is where persistence comes into play. Persistence the main key to success for a lifetime. It allows you to learn how to manage all of the little hurdles in life, gain some personal growth when you conquer them, and achieve great success when you finally reach your goals.

The word persistence comes from Latin and means “to stand firm”. In the context of these newsletters, it means to stand firm in the face of failure. If you think about it, every successful person has at some time in their life had to deal with failure. The great scientists, inventors, world leaders, etc., have all had some sort of failure in the past that they had to deal with before finding the ultimate successes that they now have. Einstein, for example, spent nearly a decade trying to find the one small piece of evidence to prove his theory of relativity. When it was finally found – not by Einstein, but by an expedition of astronomers studying a solar eclipse – he went from semi-crackpot smart guy to the greatest mind of all time. Small and large failures can be overcome if you are set in your ultimate goal and have the persistence to continue to your actions in order to achieve those goals.

Persistence is not an ability that you are born with, but rather a quality that you have to develop with exercise. Think of persistence as your personal weapon that you use to destroy fear and obstacles along your path to success. With proper development, persistence will become your most valuable resource – even more valuable than skill or talent – on you path to success. Persistence requires a commitment to act, not just a decision to act.

Your exercise for today is to take the decisions that you wrote in your journal from step one and turn them into commitments.

1 – write out your decision and exactly what you are committed to achieving. Be detailed and very specific. When you are finished, sign your name to it. It will be like a signed contract with yourself.

2 – Make a copy of this contract and give it to someone close to you. Try to choose someone who is supportive of your goals, but critical enough to let you know when you are slacking off on your commitment, or heading off in a completely wrong direction. Ask them to read the contract and sign it as a witness – very much like a legal contract. Put this contract somewhere where you will see it every day.

How Your Beliefs Affect Your Decisions

What you believe is a very strong part of being human. Your beliefs have a lot of control over your personal behavior. If you have the wrong beliefs, you may find it difficult, even impossible, to make certain decisions. Most people think that their beliefs are given to them and are beyond their control. In most cases, your beliefs are learned from outside influences as you grow from childhood to adulthood. As you follow through with these newsletters, you will learn that your are the creator of your own beliefs. As the creator of these beliefs, you have the ability to change them, to un-create them and re-create them however you want.

A belief can be defined as a sense of certainty about what something means. For the most part, human behavior is governed by the specific beliefs of each individual human being. Most people’s beliefs are formed in their subconscious minds. This happens when your mind makes an association between an event and the feedback you get from that event. When you do something, your mind forms an association between what you do and the resulting effect of it – pain, pleasure, good, bad. By repetition of these actions, your response becomes automatic, based upon your minds emotional association with the action. Beliefs act like a short cut, allowing you to take some action without having to make a conscious decision about what action to take. If you find yourself having to use excessive will power or conscious effort to do something, then there is most likely a belief that you have that is holding you back.

According to Henry Ford, when you say you either can do something or can’t do something, you are right. What this means is that if you believe that you can’t do something, then you will not be able to do that something. If you believe that you can do something, you will find that you are capable of doing it. Your limitations are set by you based upon what you believe that you are capable of. In order to take control of your beliefs, you need to develop the proper mind set by choosing and designing your beliefs to better serve you and your desires.

Your beliefs come from what certain events in life mean to you – nothing has any meaning except that meaning that you place on it. As long as your mind has enough information to support whatever meaning you place on something, then that will become your belief about that something.

Your mind can be retrained to change your beliefs. You can decide for yourself whether to believe something or not. You choose what you believe by the references that you focus on. It is easy to find references or evidence on any subject to support the belief that you choose to have about that subject. What you choose to focus on is a conscious choice.

In your journal, write down one important goal that you want to set for yourself, either personal or business. Once you have that goal set, answer the following questions about that goal and your beliefs that affect your accomplishing that goal – be honest with yourself when you write these down.

Example:

My beliefs about _________________(goal)________________________
1. _________________________(belief)_______________________
2. _________________________(belief)_______________________

Ask yourself “how do you know” about these beliefs. Write down the answer to this question for each belief you have.

1. _________________________(answer)______________________
2. _________________________(answer)______________________

Once you have answered the question for each belief, look at them and determine for yourself if they make sense to you. Write down the beliefs that you MUST have in order to accomplish your goal.

1. ________________________(new belief)_____________________
2. ________________________(new belief)_____________________

If you keep questioning your beliefs in this way, you will find that you will start to doubt some of the beliefs that you may have now that are keeping you from achieving your goals. Once you start to doubt these beliefs, you will be able to change them.


Your Values And How They Define Your Beliefs.

Personal values are those things that are most important to you. They are what you desire most in your life. Personal Values help define your beliefs, and together they give a definite direction to your life. Your personal values help guide you towards that which you seek as well as away from that which you wish to avoid.

Values need to be clarified based on what you want most and what you fear most. If you value success (personal or business), but fear failure (rejection), then you will not be able to fully succeed, since all success comes with some refection. In most online business ventures, the popular ratio is 3% success to 97% failure. Personal success or failure is only measurable by your own personal beliefs and values.

In order to help clarify your values, it helps to make a list of them. In your journal, make a list of the top 5 emotions or feelings that you value in order of importance to you. Examples may be: love, peace, passion, success, health, wealth, vitality, freedom, joy, happiness, etc.
1._______________________
2._______________________
3._______________________
4._______________________
5._______________________

Next, make a list of the top 5 emotions or feelings that you wish to avoid. Examples may be: hate, anger, rejection, failure, jealousy, guilt, sadness, loneliness, depression, fear, etc.
1.________________________
2.________________________
3.________________________
4.________________________
5.________________________

Once you have your list, it becomes easier to define what your life’s values are. Once you know your values, you can define your beliefs around those values, make important decisions easier, and start taking action on your ideas and desires.

Improving Your Thought Process

Improving Your Thought Process

In order for you to be able to influence the Law of Attraction towards giving you what you desire, you need to become more action minded. Just having an idea or desire is not enough. You need to take action on these ideas in order to make them a real part of your life. Remember, you are in control of your life and only you can take the actions necessary to get your life where you want it to be.

In order for you to take full control of your life, to create the life that you want for yourself, you need to develop the ability to take your ideas and act on them immediately and consistently. You need to put aside the fears and skepticism that have been holding you back. Take your ideas, your desires, your dreams, and transform them into the reality that is your life.

Over the next several updates, I will introduce you to some of the universal principles that will help you transform your behavior, your way of thinking, into a positive, action-minded process. If you apply these principles to your own life, then you will be able to control and direct your future – not just blindly follow into it. Walt Disney once said: “If You Can Dream It, You Can Do It”. There is nothing that you can not achieve if you just dream it, and then take the actions necessary to make it real.

Taking Action

If you want to be successful in directing your life towards your goals and dreams, then you must take some kind of action. It does not matter how large or small your goal is as long as there is true desire to make it a reality. Most of us have been told throughout our lives that we cannot live our dreams or have all that we want. This is a lie! The truth is that everyone has the ability to be, do , and have everything that they desire. Once you have an idea in your mind, you automatically have the ability to create that idea into a reality. This ability comes in the form of an action that allows you to transform your idea into physical reality.

What Is Action?

An action can be defined as something that you do – your idea manifested in a physical and mental effort to produce the reality. The basic formula for action is T+E=A (Time + Effort = Action). The amount of time and quality of effort will affect the overall outcome of your action, and only you can decide how much time and effort is needed to produce the action that you desire.

In order to change your life, you need to have an idea of the change that you want, then act upon that idea and make it a part of your life. Once you take action upon an idea, you will produce an effect or result. All actions produce results, either good or bad; success or failure. Action transforms your ideas and desires into reality. You already possess the ability to create action on an idea, all you need is to develop the capacity to use it in the proper way with practice and exercise.

In order to produce the results that you want, you need to take control of your actions and make the results consistent. Success is not brought about by getting is right every now and then, but in getting it right most of the time. You must learn to exercise your mind to produce the action that you want consistently, like a habit. Everyone has habits, although a lot of them tend to be bad ones. Habits help you to perform an action more effectively and more consistently than having to apply constant toward carrying out the action. All you need to do now is develop a new, good habit from your desired action. Practice and exercise are the only ways to do this effectively. Training your mind is similar to training your body. Regular physical exercise will keep you fit and healthy, while regular mental exercise will produce more positive actions. Consistency is the key.

The following three exercises will help you in training your mind to take action. Once you learn to take action on an important idea and produce a positive result, you will find that you are naturally motivated to take more actions.

Exercise 1 – Think of two ideas or goals that you really want for yourself. Commit to taking two actions per day toward completing these goals. If it is business oriented, then do two actions to help grow your business (send a mailer, write a blog, write an e-zine article, surf two traffic exchanges, etc).

Exercise 2 – Become accountable for both your actions and inactions. The easiest way to do this is to write your two ideas in a journal. Keep a journal everyday of the two goals or ideas that you set, write them down, and write down the action taken toward the idea or goal and the result. This is a simple thing to do, but very effective.

Exercise 3 – Do something impulsive every week. By doing something impulsive every week, you will teach yourself how to break out of the rut of inactivity based on routine behavior, or what is considered safe and normal. Don’t do anything dangerous or overly crazy, just something that you don’t normally do that is impulsive to your character. By doing this, you are teaching yourself how to act on your ideas immediately and consistently. Write these down in your journal as well.

The Decision To Take Action

Now we know that taking action on your ideas and desires is the only way to make any progress in your life’s goals. I also explained how consistency in your actions was the only way to experience these progresses on a regular basis. In order to put an action to your desires, you must make a conscious decision to take action.

A decision is defined as a commitment to a specific course of action. When you make a real decision to take action on something, that action is set into motion. The idea becomes reality. Once you make a decision to act, and that action is put into motion, there is no stopping that action. Your desire becomes a reality based on your actions.

Most people make their decisions out of habit, based on past experiences. Such decisions are made in the subconscious mind and are not under your direct control once the action starts. The challenge is to start making your decisions consciously, thereby taking back control of your actions. Once you learn to do this, you can change any part of your life just by making a new decision.

As with taking action, you already have the ability to make decisions, you just need to exercise the ability to make it stronger. The best way to exercise your decision making ability is to just use it – make decisions in your conscious mind instead of relying on habit to cause an action. Don’t worry too much about making mistakes at first – you will get better at this the more you do it. Once you realize that making the decision to do a certain action is the hardest part of the process, you will begin to see that the actions, and the controlling of the actions, is much easier than you originally thought.

It is a common misconception that by not making a decision on something means that you are not responsible for whatever the outcome of that something is. When you make a conscious decision to NOT make a decision, then you release your control over the outcome of that something. It does not matter if the outcome is good or bad. You still retain responsibility since your decision to act would have allowed you to control the outcome. By taking no action, the outcome is probably not going to be the one you desired. If you do not make a decision to act, then some other influence will make a decision for you. In order to take control of your life, you must start making these decisions for yourself, with confidence and commitment, and deny these outside forces any influence over your life.

Today’s exercise will start you on the road to making your own decisions. Don’t worry about if you can or should do something, just make a committed decision to do, and then do it. Don’t just make a preference toward your action – make an absolute commitment to do it.

In the journal you should have already started, write down two decisions for each week, at the beginning of the week. Commit yourself to taking action on each of these decisions until they are accomplished. Keep a record of your progress, similar to the example below.

Decision 1 _________________________________________________________
Action I will take in next 24 hours _______________________________________
Action I will take in next 48 hours _______________________________________

Decision 2 _________________________________________________________
Action I will take in next 24 hours _______________________________________
Action I will take in next 48 hours _______________________________________