Hello World,
Why are we afraid?
What is stopping us from taking that next step? Why do we just stop at our dreams and go back to living our daily routine? Is it that we can’t accept change or is it just because we are deeply afraid of failure?
It’s human nature to always focus on the Cons vs. Pros when we are making a decision. We tend to look at what may go horribly wrong rather than what might turn in a very positive, fruitful outcome. Let’s say we have a friendly neighbor named Bob. Bob is a 30 year old male who hates his daily life as a boring Banker. He is stuck in a dull repetitive cycle and he wishes he could change that at any cost. Bob’s dream is to start a his own Financial Consulting business. The Pros to this decision; Bob will be his own BOSS! His finance will grow faster than it does now. He won’t have to work 9-5. He will have the freedom of making his own decisions. Bob will living his dream, which in other words mean that he will be very, very HAPPY! But instead Bob would be more focused on the Cons of this decision: He might fail. There is no job security. Money will not flow in weekly. He might lose tons of money. He will be judged by others because he is incapable of running his own business. He won’t be able to get back up after he loses all this money in a failed business. He doesn’t know how much work and time this business might ask of him. The list of Cons are endless. Hence Bob decides to keep his daily 9-5 job and gives up on his dreams.
BUT WHAT IF…
But what if we are over-thinking? What if it’s not as bad as Bob, our friendly neighbor, is making it to be? We are all neurologically wired to over evaluate how bad the outcome of our decision would be. We fear the risk of stepping out of our comfort zone. We fear not being in control. We fear failure. We fear being judged. How good we are at taking risks and chances has a lot to do with social and cultural impact as well as our childhood programming.
Fear has always been tagged as being negative, but without fear we would do really stupid things! In my case, if I had literally zero fear, I wouldn’t stop being 24/7 dare devil which in turn would mean 206 broken bones in my body! But when it comes to chances related to progress in life then we have to do something to subside this overwhelming fear.
“Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.” ~Isabelle Allende
How can we deal with fear of taking risks? We fake it, till we make it and use positive affirmation. How do we use positive affirmation? Let’s say Bob is weak at math, his worst subject is fractions. Although he is putting is work to increase his marks he would still do anything to get out of that horrible math class. When he speaks to his school friends, he mentions how much he sucks at the subject and he can’t do it. Bob ends up convincing himself he can never over come fraction and sets a pretty weak impression on others as well. This mindset of self doubt ends up having a negative impact on his grades. But if Bob uses positive affirmation instead of being negative, and say’s, he is amazing at math and he is working on his fractions. This skill of positivity would keep his confidence high and the fear would decrease. You are your own worst enemy, therefore use reverse psychology to convince yourself that YOU CAN DO IT! If you are afraid to take the next step, positive affirmation is the way to go. You will be fine!
But then comes, if I fail those people standing their will laugh at me! I will be the joke of the town! They will judge me! But honestly who cares? Trust me, if you try to impress every one, you will never be happy. If you don’t let people judge you, you will never find out who loves you and who likes your work. Let people judge you and get feedback. If you are holding back because you are afraid of criticism then you are limiting yourself to grow. You are missing out on the opportunity to find out what to improve on.
Comfort zone is a big one! People would rather 9-5, eat, sleep, wake up and repeat, than pursue what is out of the norm for them. They come up with all these excuses to keep them from taking the risk, I’m too busy, I don’t have the money, or I don’t want to disappoint others. But they don’t realize most retired people now complain, hey should have taken more risks, settled less and spoken up more often. Not saying we have to take risks every chance we get, but we have to take quality risks to bring a change and create more learning opportunities. Why live a stagnate life when we have potential and opportunity to achieve way more than we could imagine. We think if something is not working out then it will just sort itself out or if something is just going the way it is, changes will come on it’s own, ONE DAY! NO! If there is no progress in your life, then I am sorry you are doing something wrong! And changes won’t just come to you, you have to work for it! At this day and age people with physical disabilities with the right mindset have achieved more than we can even imagine and we limit ourselves to daily norms?! If we don’t push out of our comfort zone and work towards our set goals and dreams then we will be stuck where we never wanted to be at the first place. Remember when we don’t become our dream, we actually get smaller.
All this talk is good but many of us are logical. Many of us are afraid that once we take that risk we won’t be in control of the situation and therefore it will back-fire and hit the ground immensely hard! Fear of not being in control. But that is what chance is right? You don’t have control over the situation. I am not saying to take chance like you are playing the lottery, or you are betting in a casino! Please don’t do that! Remember too much risk equals imbalance in life. When you are taking a risk, make sure it’s a calculated risk. If you are preparing to launch a business, study the market, do your research! If you are going skydiving, read the guidelines, study and make sure you pay attention at the training sessions. We might not know what the outcome will be but we want to make sure the odds are in our favor. Chance favors the prepared.
Think about it, you have one life and limited time to achieve certain goals. Would you rather just fit in or achieve your goals whether it be Health, Wealth, Relationship, and Education. Take a risk, the odds are better than you think. Failing is far more productive than doing nothing at all!
Thanks again,
DLA