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.