How to Be Fearless10 Choices that Fearless People

Consciously MakeEvery Day

© Pooja Lohana / Pick Your GoalsFirst Edition: March, 2013www.pickyourgoals.com

This guide was made especially for you.Thank you for being here.

If everybody feels fear when approaching something totally

new in life, yet so many are out there 'doing it' despite the fear,

then we must conclude that fear is not the problem.

Susan Jeffers

Introduction

Fear.

What does it mean to you?

Is it the heavy feeling in the chest?

Is it the gloomy thought you get the first thing in the morning?

Is it the sick taste in the mouth?

Is it the shallow and fast breathing?

Is it pure uneasiness?

Is it the lack of success?

Is it the feeling that “I suck”?

Whatever it is for you, you are not alone. Join the club of millions of people who feel (and acknowledge) fear on a daily basis.

We fear a lot of things – we are afraid of the dark, of flying, of beginnings, of endings, of a new relationship, of an old habit, of becoming parents, of seeing our kids move out, of quitting the job, of starting a business – and the list goes on.

Have you identified your fear yet? What does it say to you? Does it whisper gently or is it a loud thumping noise? How does it look?

Whatever your fear, this book will give you a tour guide of how to identify your fears, acknowledge and do what you’re meant to despite the fear.

I believe fear can be overcome by consistently following some steps. It’s not a disease, it’s not an ailment which cannot be cured and you have to live with it for the rest of your life. It’s really not.

Fear truly is changeable. I want you to first realise you are in control of your ship. Until now, you may have been on an autopilot, doing things just for the sake of doing, living from one day to another without much juice in your life with fear

hovering over your shoulders. However, upon reading this little book, and consistently applying what you’ve learned, your life will change. It should.

Personal Story

Let me share with you my personal story. I used to be a software engineer working at a stable, good salaried, 9-5 job at a multinational e-learning firm. I graduated in Information Technology from a prestigious college in India and literally believed “this is it”.

I got the job even before I was graduated. I took it and couldn’t wait to go out and conquer the world in my own little way.

What happened after is a bit of a surprise. The first two years into it, I started feeling stuck and unhappy. A perfect education, a perfect job, a perfect social circle and a great work place environment – what more could I ask for? It took me five years to realise the answer.

Passion. That was lacking from the very start.

No matter how much you try, if you heart’s not in it, you are not in it. You will perhaps keep doing it for your life if you’re driven by money or if you don’t want to deal with the after-effects, but you will know there is no juice in life.

That’s what happened to me, and I was shit scared. Somewhere in my heart, I knew this was not the place I wanted to be, yet, I continued with the sameness each day. Every morning, I would drag myself out of bed, with my heart crying out that I didn’t want to do this anymore. But being a very logical person at the same time, I kept listening to my head instead.

The much-needed kick in the butt occurred in 2009. In just a few months, I was to move to Australia to join my partner. It was in November that year that I decided to quit I.T. and pursue my passion for writing. By the way, I had no formal qualification, no experience in writing.

Was I afraid? I cannot tell you I wasn’t, but the excitement just by making adecision was contagious! Even my head gave in and joined the “me-party” we were having. It was that good.

I felt a wonderful sense of excitement and liveliness. I consciously chose to focuson this positive and uplifting feeling instead of focussing on the fear of the unknown.

Why Are You Alive?

That’s a strange question. Different people will answer it differently. What’s the point to life? Joy, fulfilment, happiness? Or is it struggle, failure and unhappiness?

Let me take a guess and say it is the former for you. The fact that you’re reading this book is a proof you’re ready for something to change. Something has to shift within you (and something has already shifted even). Your emotions create motion – so your action to buy this book and sit down to read it is also an outcome of your e-motions.

If you’re not enjoying your life right now, you are not living it the way you’re meant to. I’d even go a step further and say you’re not choosing acts of happiness.

Happiness does not turn up in the mail. Unless you’ve attained Nirvana, I’d say happiness can come to you by the actions you choose. Happiness is a by-product of actions or events that you drive in your life, not vice versa.

Remember, you are in control of your life, so if it’s not going in the direction you’d like it to, change the way you’re handling the steering wheel.

My experience with so many clients as a Behaviour Specialist says fear is the reason this is so. Think about it: You want to quit your job and start a home business, but the idea sounds just so impossible. You are a gifted photographer, but you cannot ask for money in exchange of your skills, because, well, you’re not a professional yet. You enjoy dancing but you cannot go to a class and embarrass yourself because let’s face it, what lady is going to dance with you? So many reasons to not proceed. But guess what, “reasons” are just a fancy word for “excuses”.

No matter where you’re coming from, there is the same overarching theme to what you’re doing. The theme of judgment, lack of self-confidence, uncertainty about our own abilities. And why do these barriers succeed? It’s simple: Because our own fear is driving them.

When you follow your own path and dreams, you will find people who are not supportive of what you’re doing. They won’t be on your cheer squad. It could be someone as close as your best friend or parent. I know that sucks. But the question is, Are you on your own cheer squad?

Your Mini-Me

Ever notice that nagging voice at the back of your mind, always giving you reasons (excuses) why you cannot do this, or how you’re incompetent at doing that.

“Run a marathon? Come on Jim, you know you cannot. Why waste time and effort? What’s the point? And think of the embarrassment you’d have to face in front of Nancy. And what would Jack and Nick say? What about your parents? Oh gosh, the pain is too much to handle. Don’t even think of going there! It’s a trap door.”

Your mini-me is the nay-sayer. It is afraid of newness and change. It wants you to be safe, but what the voice fails to realise is that if you don’t move, you will be stuck in a rut for your life.

Think about the first time you took up driving. What did the mini-me tell you? “You won’t be able to perfect it,” or something on the similar lines. Yet, you took action. You felt the fear and stepped through it.

The first time, it was scary. You weren’t sure if you were doing it right. The instructor gave you lots of tips as you drove. At the end of the hour, you felt relief that it was all over.

The next day, you stepped through your fear again despite the mini-me’s disapproval. You went ahead, opened the door, sat inside, ignited the engine and took the instructor’s instructions as you drove. At the end of the hour, you felt relief but also a little better than yesterday.

Third time, the same sequence repeated, only that this time toward the end of the hour, you felt excited.

Fourth time, you felt proud and happy with yourself.

Fifth time, you felt comfortable in your own skin and the mini-me did not show up. By the end of this session, you were looking forward to driving again!

Isn’t this what happens in every new challenge you undertake? At the start, your mini-me is at its loudest, but gradually as you keep taking action, your mini-me subsides and is not to be seen until there is a new change coming up.

So one way to deal with fear is to acknowledge your mini-me first. By doing this, you’re acknowledging your fear. Once you know it exists, say “Thank you mini-me, but I am not buying it this time,” and continue taking ACTION.

Immediate Action

One of the reasons I could “make it” as a successful freelance writer was I took immediate action once I had decided to pursue writing. And by “immediate” I mean I applied for several writing gigs that very evening. I am not kidding. No education, no clips, nothing. I faced rejections, of course, and my mini-me was at its loudest. But I thanked it and continued moving forward.

I won’t tell you it’s going to be easy. What I will say is it is doable and when you keep at it, it will feel extraordinary.

Acknowledging the mini-me or fear creates a great deal of awareness within you. You now know that there is a part of you which is hindering your path, and you take care of it by saying thank you and still doing what you originally decided to do. I believe that awareness is 95% of the journey – so get aware about what’s lying there, deep inside, and you will find it much better to take action.

The Two Types of Motivation

But awareness is also uneasy. It’s a state when you KNOW something’s not right, and it creates a lot of pain unless you take action. For me, awareness has acted as a great negative motivator – meaning if I don’t take action, I will continue to feel miserable.

That’s one way of feeling motivated. You want to avoid pain and want to move away from it. You will do anything to get away from the sick feeling and so you get moving through fear and end up doing something toward your goal. This is called “Moving Away” model of motivation.

Another model is “Moving Toward” where you move toward the goal or “prize”. Some people are naturally moving toward what they want to achieve in life. They have their next big goal and they follow the steps to reach their overall vision. It motivates them and gets them moving.

There is no right or wrong way to feel motivated. Most people are “moving away” motivated because they want to avoid pain. They may even wait until the last minute to let the pain build up so that it drives them to action.

People who are “moving toward” motivated will be interested in the reward, achievement or attraction. They may benefit by making the reward bigger and bigger in their mind, and then pursuing it. For example, imagine you achieving your goal in your mind’s eye. Visualise yourself successful. Now, turn up the intensity, brightness, colour of this picture. Capture it and keep it in a safe place

where you can come back to it every time. This will keep you motivated as a “moving toward” person.

You can also work with different modalities or senses. So instead of visualising, you can hear what other people are saying once you’ve achieved your goal. Or, you can feel what you’re feeling once you’ve done it. It depends on whether you work well with seeing images, hearing voices or feeling/thinking.

A commonly-used analogy in coaching is the “carrot” and stick” example. A“moving toward” person will always be influenced by the carrot (reward) whereas a “moving away” person will take action because he wants to avoid the stick (punishment).

So which one are you? Think of any goal you’ve set for yourself and you’re having a hard time reaching it. Could it be because your fear is not diminished as you’re using a reward as a motivator while being a “moving away” person yourself?

Do this little exercise and see if you can identify what motivates you. When you’re on fire to achieve a goal, why are you really doing this? If the answer is something like “To avoid missing my deadlines”, you’re pain-driven or moving away type. If you answer “Because I want to enjoy the rewards”, you’re most likely pleasure-driven or moving toward.

Once you have this awareness, you have a great tool to bust fear and do it anyway.

One way to know if you’re “moving away” motivated is this: If you tend to keep your tasks pending until the last minute, so that they gather a lot of potential pain for future (not being successful at finishing them) which in turn drives you, you are “moving away” person.

10 Choices of Fearless People

Congratulations! You’ve come to the core of this ebook.

Before we get deeper into the fearless choices, let me say this: There are no fearless people. There, I said it and I even contradicted what the heading says.

Why?

Because really, there are no fearless people. Fear-less-ness is a myth. Every-freaking-body feels fear in their life. The difference is they show UP fully regardless of the fear.

People who wait for courage to knock on their doors will always keep waiting. That’s what they’ve become good at. They’ve trained themselves to wait and wait and wait.

Somewhere in their minds, they still believe that one day, their fear will go away and then they will meet courage and have life their merry way.

Only one little problem here: Fear will never leave your life completely and courage will never show up on your door on its own.

Fear or pain is constant. But suffering is not. At any moment, you can choose to understand that yes, there’s this pain, and move on to take action to whip it. Only to be faced with a new pain, a new challenge. And what do you do then? You take action! This is where you meet courage.

If by now you’re getting a sinking feeling, STOP. If you continue to look at it as a hopeless situation of life, guess what you’ll get more of? More fear and pain. What if you flipped that perspective and looked for pleasure in challenge instead? How would that make a massive difference in your life? I am guessing a lot.

So now you know when I use the words “fearless people” I really mean people who feel the fear and take action anyway.

Choice 1: Know Your Outcome

So many people live their lives on an autopilot. If good things happen to them, it’s a good day. If bad things happen, it’s a bad day. They take whatever comes to them and resign.

Fearless people succeed at whatever it is they start out to do. They are in control of the results they are getting because they are really clear on what they are going for.

If you want to bust your fear, the first step is to really know what your dreams are. Don’t be afraid of dreaming! Dreams are the tools in your Fear Busting tool kit. Once you know what you want, once you’ve realised that yes, this is my outcome, set an intention.

Let me ask you: Did you start reading this book with a clear and precise intention? Did you

know before you started reading this book, why you’re doing this?

If you said yes, good on you! Just like you had a clear intention set for this book, have intentions for every day. What are you aiming to achieve today? I’ll make it simpler for you. Each night, before going to bed, decide on an intention for the next day. The intention must be in alignment with your dream or vision. So if your vision is to live a life full of love and connection, your intention for tomorrow could be “Smile at as many strangers as I can as I walk past on the road.”

Can you see how simple yet powerful that is? The simple intention of smiling at every stranger you pass by will create an entirely new neurology in your brain. Unlike every day, you will be more focussed on your surroundings. You will be more aware of what’s happening around you because you don’t want to miss a stranger with whom you can share a smile!

In life, we get what we focus on. If you focus on a problem, guess what you will get? More problems. The Universe is very responsive in that way. What you need to really focus on is the next immediate best step to solve the problem.

So my question is: What are you focussing on today? Have you set an intention?

It doesn’t matter which area you apply this principle. Know your outcome by first knowing your dream and then setting an intention for everyday. You are going to

improve your results. Once you take baby steps in the form of intention-setting, your mini-me will be quieter because it does not perceive a huge change. Once the mini-me is quiet, the chances of fear overpowering you are reduced manifold.

Choice 2: Take Action

Successful people make decisions quickly and change them slowly. Whereas unsuccessful people make decisions slowly and change them quickly.

Do you get the difference? A person who is doing the do is not necessarily fearless, but they are feeling the fear and stepping through it every time. They have a level of consistency to it. Actions may not result into an overnight success, however, know that even the smallest of actions you take is leading you one step further than where you were a moment ago.

How many times have you had a great plan, a great idea and it died from the lack of action? Will Rogers said, “Even if you are sitting on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” So you’ve got to be willing to take some steps and build up some momentum.

One of the things that I learned from NLP and Tony Robbins is that motion creates emotion. If you’re motionless there’s going to be some pretty ordinary emotions going on. If you build up momentum and build up motion, you’re giving yourself the opportunity to experience some emotions that are going to start working for you. You got to get moving!

There is no substitute for action. The best laid plans don’t become reality if you’re sitting on the couch watching TV. You’ve be willing to act, you’ve be willing to get out there.

Jonathan Mead says “If you only do two things — take consistent action and lose your fear of failure — you’ll already have a 95% chance ofsuccess.” Do you relate to that?

But that could not be it. You may be ready and willing to take action toward your dreams, however you don’t know what that next step is. Not knowing what action to take creates a stuck state. How does one move forward, bust fear and step through it if they don’t know how?

Let me tell you: In the beginning, you will not have all the details. You will be uncertain at the start. It’s a new path, and you’ve never walked on it before. You

are not sure where to next. And that’s okay. The first step is to change your mini-me lingo. Make the mini-me a part of your cheer squad. Your mini-me, once it becomes your best friend, can work wonders for you.

When you’re embarking on a new journey, your mini-me automatically says: “But I don’t know what to do next!” All you need to do in that very moment is to change the lingo from “don’t know what to do” to “I will figure out how to do it.”

Whatever you do, don’t give up just because you are not sure of the future steps. The path will unfold itself in front of your eyes as you start walking. Trust your instincts and your heart, and you WILL figure it out.

A word of caution

Don’t bother about having it all “right”. You can be right or you can be successful! What do you want to be?

Make mistakes, learn from them, dust off your shoulders, get up, chin up and walk again. Once you keep repeating this, you will have discovered the neurology to “do courage”.

And yes, I say “do courage” because I want you to realise you are in control of all your emotions and outcomes. You can either do fear or do courage. You can do uncertainty or do boldness. It’s really up to you. The first step is to make a choice of what you’re picking.

You’ve heard the saying “Knowledge is power”. But without action, knowledge won’t yield any outcomes.

So ideally, Knowledge x Action = Outcomes.

Not having the complete knowledge or knowing how you’ll get to the outcomes is okay – you can start with whatever you have. The key is to start somewhere. To do that, you must take whatever small action steps you know will lead you toward your outcome.

In life, you will always have to tweak and fine tune your action-plan as you go. Planning cannot guarantee results. Action can. The time to take action is now – so what are you waiting for?

Choice 3: Have Sensory Awareness

Let’s say you have set a powerful intention toward your vision. You’ve also started taking consistent action steps in the direction. Yet, you cannot see your intentions being materialised. What’s wrong?

Far too many times, we begin working on our dream project only to realise that it is going nowhere. We’re aware of where we’re going and doing the do, but nothing happens. This is the key moment because this is where most people give up.

They feel their goals are unachievable, they are not competent enough, it’s all too hard or that they did not deserve it in the first place. Guess who’s talking? The mini-me, of course!

Fearless folks would act differently. They utilise their sensory awareness and tweak their actions if what they are doing doesn’t yield results. The question you must ask yourself at intermittent points is this: “Am I getting the results I wanted?” If you answer no, start looking at your life and at your outcomes.

There’s no point in choosing an action and putting your head down and acting, acting, acting even though the results are not what you’re after. There’s no smartness in doing it and never actually having the strength and awareness to say, “Hmm, this looks like it is not working. Will continuing on this way generate the outcome I want?”

Having sensory awareness or acuity allows us to act smartly and fearlessly. People who are successful will always have the sensory awareness and strength to acknowledge what’s not working and do something, anything, differently to fine tune it. And they keep doing this consistently, on and on, until they’ve reached their goals.

You could come to a fork in the road and have to decide your next step. Do you want to continue doing the same things you’ve been doing or change something about your approach? The people who are not afraid to embrace the latter are the ones who are most successful stepping through fear.

Choice 4: Behavioural Flexibility

Once you have identified that your action plan is not working (sensory awareness), it is time to tweak the behaviour. This is one of the habits of highly effective people. They are able to change their behaviour quickly and apply new methods to achieve what they want.

We must have sufficient behavioural flexibility to change our course of action, if we wish. So you should know your outcome, then you got to take action, you then have the sensory acuity to determine “Is this action getting me the result I wanted?” And if it’s not producing the results you want, then you got to have the behavioural flexibility to change your behaviour and do it differently.

So do something different: Go on a trip, take a new course, buy a book, write a blog post – once you look for it, you will know what it is for you.

Now how many times do you change your behaviour? (How many people have asked that question?) You must be willing to change your behaviour as many times as it takes to get the result you’re looking for. What result are you looking for? What action are you taking? What results are you noticing? If they are not the results you want, what do you need to do differently?

And it isn’t just what you need to do differently in terms of behavioral flexibility, it could be changing your beliefs; it could be aligning your beliefs so they are more in line with what you’re aiming for. If you’re aiming to double your salary for the month and you have a belief that says you can’t, then behaviouralflexibility tells you need to change your beliefs to that you can.

In essence, changing your behaviour is really getting out of your comfort zone. I describe a comfort zone as a circle with lots of P’s outside of it. So, your comfort zone has you sitting within it and you can see several “P’s” just beyond its boundary. From where you’re sitting, you can find these P’s as “Problems”.

From where you’re sitting, you cannot quite see what’s outside the circle. In other words, it’s something you don’t know that you don’t know. Make sense?

Our comfort zones are our safest haven. We like to stick inside, overlooking every now and then what’s beyond the edge. But the picture is not clear. The view from within the comfort zone is actually skewed and doesn’t tell you what’s beyond your boundaries.

In order to really know what you don’t know (yet), you got to have the sensory awareness of what needs to be done next and behavioural flexibility of how to go about it.

Only once you expand our comfort zone and step into the unknown will you be able to tap into magic. (Read more about Comfort Zone in Choice 6)

Choice 5: Change Your Physiology

Physiology and psychology are interrelated very closely. For example, if you change your physiology, you change your thoughts. If you keep at it, you tend to create a neural pathway firing neurons which were lying dormant before.

So if you own a physiology of excellence, you are thinking thoughts in alignment with this body language, and as you continue doing this day after day, your thoughts become your beliefs. You’ve just taught yourself how excellent you are! This is a very simple way of explaining how our brain works, but you get the point.

Do this little exercise with a partner: Turn to them and smile. Now, tell them “I am so angry at you!” Go on, try doing this. You won’t be able to do this without laughing out loud. It’s simple: Your face (physiology) is saying something that completely mismatches what your mind is trying to think! It’s a fun way to understand the importance of physiology in your beliefs and mindset.

Make sure that you create a physiology within yourself that’s going to assist you to create the result you want. There’s no point in having a great dream and going for it, and the whole time your physiology and your psychology is kind of indifferent. No way! Have that physiology of excellence. You got to really conspire for that outcome you’re looking for, conspire for your success.

So sit up or stand up really tall, and breathe deeply, keep your shoulders squared and create a physiology of excellence. Create a real physiology that’s going to support you of all the time.

Anybody can have a physiology and psychology of excellence when the going is good. True accomplishers – people who achieve their goals more often – have a physiology and psychology of excellence even when the going is tough.

So make a commitment to step up to the next level in your life. To step up to a level that even when the going gets tough, you step up even more. Your physiology and psychology becomes even more excellent. And think about what the results would be in your life if you did that – when the going got tough you became more courageous. When you got a setback you got more determined.

Now does that mean you will get the results you are looking for every time? Maybe not. Does that mean you can increase the opportunities to get the results you’re looking for? Absolutely!

Choice 6: Shift beyond Your Boundary Condition

Every time you’re aiming for success, you will have a sense of discomfort.

Go back to the last time you were successful at something. It could be gardening or speaking in front of an audience. Pick one. Now really connect with that event with all your heart, mind and soul. Get in touch with how you got started; what steps you did you take; what was the feeling behind each step. You will sense that at some point in your journey toward getting results, you felt somewhat uncomfortable.

Yes, you had the drive. Yes, you may be waking up every morning feeling excited about what’s next. But you also took action and stepped in new territory. You were going places where you’d never been before; you were doing things which you never tried before.

Let’s take public speaking for example. How would one go about it?

- They would first decide they want to take this opportunity and speak in front of their team

- They would then pick a topic- Next comes research- And then rehearsals- Finally, doing it live!

Depending on the type of person you are and your past achievements, goals and drive, you will feel at home with some steps and completely out of your element with others.

But you still do it. You keep going one step further every time until you’ve delivered that first presentation and succeeded at it.

In other words, you look at fear in the eye and step through it. You keep moving, even though it is beyond your comfort zone or boundary condition.

Boundary conditions are the conscious limits of our thinking, the edge of what we know and what we’re familiar with. Imagine a circle around you. That circle’s edge is your boundary condition. It is generally kept unexplored unless you have a new goal to accomplish which may push you outside your safe zone.

It’s true – our comfort zones are our safest haven. We like to stick inside, overlooking every now and then what’s beyond the edge. But the picture is not

clear. The view from within the comfort zone is actually skewed and doesn’t tell you what’s beyond your boundaries.

Representation of your comfort zone: = P (Problems) versus = P (Possibilities)

From where you’re sitting, you cannot quite see what’s outside the circle. In other words, it’s something you don’t know that you don’t know. Make sense?

Now, why would anyone want to move beyond their boundary conditions anyway? After all, it looks like a structure there to protect us.

The answer is simple: The results we’re getting today are based on our thinking and the actions of today. If we want to change the results, we need to change our thinking and actions! So if you are looking for ten percent improvement, you need to change your thinking and actions by at least ten percent.

So if you want to deliver your presentation to the group, you have to stretch yourself to say “yes” to the speech first. Then you keep doing the do, taking small steps toward your goal every day. If you stop or if you are feeling too comfortable in your skin, may be you need to stretch your boundaries bit more and set new goals.

In other words, your goals are either too easy or too hard to achieve if you are not feeling any discomfort.

It’s only when you move beyond the edge that you realise what you didn’t know until now. Isn’t it obvious when you think about it? Every result in your life is based on what you know. What if you knew what you don’t know? Imagine the possibilities!

Your Comfort Zone

Boundary Condition

Take the circle above as your comfort zone. From the inside, you can see lots of Ps just beyond your zone. These Ps are perceived as Problems by most humans.

However, once you’ve stretched your circle to accommodate some of these Ps, you will get a chance to look closer and realise that they really stand for Potentials, not Problems.

So I want you to think about your life, business or relationships for a moment. Do you think you are sticking to the familiar territory? And if you would go outside your comfort zone, what would you discover? What would be out there? What would be a different way of thinking about this? What would be a different attitude you could have? How would you learn what different attitude to have?

Well, what do you need to read? Who do you need to talk to? Who has already succeeded in this area that if you speak with them you’d learn what their attitude was, or their thinking, or their beliefs, or what they valued about this, or what they were willing to do to create success that perhaps you’re not doing yet?

Most of us know how to make $50,000 a year, and we’re good at it. Most of us know how to have ho-hum relationships with one, two or three people at a time. But what if we knew how to make $150,000 a year? What if we knew how to have outstanding relationships? Then we would do that too.

To learn new things and become more aware of what’s out there, you need to push the boundary and step forward. That takes courage. And courage can really turn up when we take action – it doesn’t turn up in mail!

Courage turns up when we feel some doubt, or even some fear and we’re willing to act anyway. That’s when courage will show up. It also takes a willingness to recognise that fear is normal. That if we wait for the fear to subside or to disappear altogether, we’re really going to be waiting for what’s possibly not attainable.

The fear is going be there because we’re stepping outside into the unknown – the greatest fear in the world for everybody is the unknown. So that’s when courage needs to show up – it can only turn up when we’re willing to act with the fear present. So if you’ve been waiting for your fears to subside and the courage to turn up, you need to do it the other way around. Act, meet courage and see the fear subside in the background.

How to Identify Your Boundary Condition

A neat little tool to know you’ve hit your boundary or edge of comfort zone is when you keep asking questions to yourself and at a point get an answer, “I don’t know”. When you “don’t know” something, you are sitting at the edge. This is where the gold lies.

Keep asking yourself: “What can I do?” or “Why am I not able to move past this?” If you hear “I don’t know”, bingo! You’re near an unknown territory aka gold. You’re seeing lots of Ps (Problems) but are they really problems? You will only know if you keep asking “What if I did know the answer?” or “What are the possibilities here?” or “How can I turn this around?” or “For what purpose do I want this change?” Now, you’ve moved outside the edge.

Self-introspection is one of the greatest tools you can use for personal development. The more questions you ask yourself, the more self-aware you become. The more self-aware you are, the better you know yourself and the better chances at success despite the fear.

Another tool you can use is what I call “Knowing the why” of it. When fear finds you, simply ask yourself, “Why is doing this important to me?” If your answer is “Because I want my relationship to work” ask, “And why is that important to me?”

Keep asking until you’ve reached the highest intention or your top-most value(s).

When you have a compelling enough “why”, the “how” takes care of itself.

You can apply the self-introspection and asking why tools in any area of your life. These are empowering and amazing ways to know yourself even better.

Choice 7: Move toward Cause

In life, you have two choices. You can either believe that things are happening toyou or you can believe things are happening because of you. Let me explain.

Some people live each day by complaining how things are not the way they’d like to be. “I’d love to have a greater income, but no matter what I do, my income remains the same.” The person wants more money, but it appears that their life is controlled by an external entity or outside factors which don’t allow them to succeed at making a higher income.

The flip side of this thinking is someone who believes they can do it and it’s all within their reach. If they are making $10,000 a month, it is because their beliefs, values and efforts are in alignment with that amount. If they want to earn $20,000 a month, something has to change – they themselves!

Now I don’t know if the latter thinking is right or true, but why should we care? The idea is not to be always right, but to be happy. And my experience of hundreds of hours with clients says the latter thinking empowers us more and allows us to operate from a Cause perspective, where we are the driver of our own ship.

Every belief you have is actually made-up. All beliefs were ingrained in you at some point while you were growing, or even as an adult. Simply put, a belief is something what you decide to be true – no one can testify a belief is right or true.

So why not choose a belief that serves us in an empowering way over something that puts us in victim mode? Why not choose to be at cause, where you know everything that happens is because you’re doing something to make it happen, that no one is “doing” it to you? Sounds much relieving too, doesn’t it?

What Are Beliefs Really?

It doesn’t matter if your beliefs are true; no one cares if they are testified. Beliefs are possibility filters and you can choose a new one right now.

A possibility filter means that if you believe that something is true, you will filter in that possibility into you consciousness. If you believe that’s not true, you will filter out any evidence of it being true. For example, if you believed it is possible to make a career out of your passion, guess where your efforts will lie? If you believed it is possible to learn Jazz dancing in your 60’s, how differently wouldyou behave? And will your beliefs be true?

None of this matters, except to know that are you filtering in the evidence that’s going to assist you in getting the results that you want.

Let’s look at the flip side of this: People who live at effect. It is your neighbour who is always in a foul mood or your father who doesn’t like the way the world operates. Some people will always have a complaint or a care to whine about. Although they don’t have an intention of doing this, they suck the energy out of you and leave you completely exhausted once they’ve left.

Embracing the effect thinking is too taxing on our mind. There’s always something that’s not right, or an excuse (reason) for why things are the way they are. Things could be better, yes, but how can I do it on my own? If you meet someone living from effect, they will have someone to blame: It’s their partner, mother, father or boss! Or all of them.

To me, that sounds like a very unhealthy way of living. There’s too much dependence on others, external factors and what not. There’s always a reason ready backing the zero efforts. How does it even serve you, apart from the momentarily relief that it wasn’t you?

On the other hand, the extent to which you choose to belief that you create everything that happens in your life gives you so much momentum. It gives you empowerment to make things the way you want them to be. It gives you the maximum opportunity, the maximum potential to create the outcomes you’re looking for.

Because if you dump all the reasons, all the excuses, and all the stories about why you can’t, all you’re left with is the results. Now, if you’re not getting the results you want, that’s great. Acknowledge it. Don’t get upset and blame effects and go “That’s not my fault”. Rather say, “Okay, how can I get the results I want? What do I need to change or do differently?”

Have the sensory acuity to think, “Okay, I’m not getting the result I’m looking for” and now bring in the behavioral flexibility by being willing to do it differently.

Fearless people continuously keep moving toward cause. They don’t waste much time cribbing, or blaming. They may slip into the effect territory every now and then, but quickly realise that and move upward. Others who don’t do this, get excuses instead of results.

So the next time you have a reason, stop for a moment and think whether you’re functioning above the line or below it. Ideally, we’d like to develop a thinking that is based on cause. It is natural to slip below the line once in a while, but the mastery lies in recognising that and promptly bringing yourself back above the line.

The Forgiveness Frame

Sometimes, you are really doing your best to get above the line but it seems impossible to do so. Relax and acknowledge your efforts first. It’s okay, really. The whole idea is to make you step out of your fears and live an extraordinary life, and this is a lesson toward that. This is your mind’s cry to give it a rest. Take a break from that activity and do something else. Come back to the problem at hand later when you’re feeling better. You will find it much easier to see through loopholes and issues this time.

This is called the Forgiveness frame. You’re forgiving yourself to be at effect –you’re giving yourself the permission to feel miserable for a while. Life is not a treadmill which you can switch on and switch off using a simple method. It’s a thriving, dynamic blob of movement. At times, you will be at the top of your world; at others, you won’t find anyone who is feeling as miserable as you. And

Above the line thinking or living at CAUSE:I create my reality, I am the driver of my ship, Life is good, I can change this, I take responsibility, I can do it!

Below the line thinking or living at EFFECT:Things happen to me, Bad things are unavoidable, I try but . . ., It’s not my fault, I can’t!

that’s okay. Sometimes, you have to give yourself the clean chit and not be too hard on yourself.

How to Get Above the Line

It’s clear that taking responsibility of what happens and creating massive change is the way to go forward if you want to live at cause. But I would like to give you a little bonus material here. This will help you recognise your strengths making life at cause much easier to achieve.

There are two tools which can help you reach your goals and beat fear as you build an amazing lifestyle:a. Resourcesb. Resourcefulness

Resources are the things we have around us and we can make use of them in whatever way we like. These are external to us.

Resourcefulness is something that is within us. It is the qualities, beliefs, and characteristics we possess.

You can experience a lack of resources, but no one can rob you of your resourcefulness ever. Why? Because it is who you are. It is a blueprint of you.

In my career as a Behavioural Specialist, many people come to me saying “I don’t have enough money” or “I don’t have the time”. As you may have guessed, these are just excuses, but can be true. However, these excuses are only based on the resources they lack. They have simply forgotten about their own infinite resourcefulness.

I suggest my clients to focus on their resourcefulness instead. What’s it they’re shooting for? A perfect work-life balance? Great, now what does their resourcefulness has to do with that? How can we dip in the sea of our own characteristics and bring out something that’s a match for this situation? Rather than focussing on what’s not right externally, I urge them to focus within them. What’s happening there? What needs to shift? To me, that’s incredibly fascinating and powerful!

Choice 8: What You Focus On Is What You Get

What you focus on is what you get, to the exclusion of everything else. We can only experience what we search for because everything else is outside our experience. We filter anything different out.

Carl Jung believed that we can’t see anything outside of us that isn’t us. What an amazing concept! So we don’t see things as they are; we can only see them as we are.

The external world that we see comes through this filtering lens. Two people can look upon exactly the same situation and see it completely differently based on who they are. They saw what they sought; they see what they expect to find.

Someone who experiences poverty is experiencing what is within them right at that moment. Someone who is experiencing abundance is doing exactly the same thing. If you know someone who says they’re bad at relationships what I want to know is how their relationship with themselves is.

Your Warehouse of Pure Potential

Imagine a Warehouse and you’re allowed to enter inside with a key and a torch light. You’re told that this Warehouse consists of answers to all your problems, pathways to reach all your goals and abundance in all forms. It’s got all the resources you need when it comes to your relationships, career, health, spirituality, money – you name it.

You open the door and shine a torch beam in a corner. This Warehouse consists of every potential or possibility. But guess what does the torch light pick up on? It only picks up where it’s focused, and what if you focused it on a corner of the warehouse that’s just empty? There’s nothing there. What would you think this warehouse contains? Would it occur that it contains every possibility if you only judged based on that emptiness?

Now move your torch light to your left and notice it’s filled with abundance. Not just abundance in the material sense, but abundance of health, and of happiness and of love and relationships, and sharing and contribution, and personal growth. If you first put light in the corner of abundance, guess what your first impression about the Warehouse would be like? You’d believe the Warehouse is indeed full of amazing gifts.

Now, let’s use the torch light to find the main switch to the flood lights. Turn on the flood lights and you get to experience the entire warehouse and see that all potential and all possibilities are there, and always have been, at once.

Choice 9: Failure Is Only Feedback

There’s no failure, there’s only feedback.

When you truly believe in this, you become a learning, growing machine.

Having the perception that you cannot experience failure allows you far more freedom to be willing to play and to explore and to learn and to grow.

Since there is no failure but only feedback, we can tweak our actions, beliefs and behaviour toward something. I remember the day when I held my first in-person workshop. I had five attendees only.

Instead of focusing on the numbers and getting discouraged, I decided to have a ball. And we enjoyed learning and sharing so much that four out of the five attendees signed up for my next workshop!

That tells us a lot about how we look at a situation. Perception is projection, and if you perceive something as failure, you’re not getting anywhere.

Imagine the words “You failed!” Ah… the tonality of this gets you down instantly. The power of those negative words lacks any possibility or openness of discussion. “You failed” has finality to it – it doesn’t invite exploration at all.

Now imagine “You tried and this is the outcome you’ve got. What can you learn from this?” That invites further exploration and is so much more empowering that accepting failure as something final.

Everything that happens, including the results that we don’t want, is simply feedback. It is telling us that we can adjust our choices, we can change our behaviour, we can shift a belief. And as a result of that we can experience a different type of feedback or outcome.

A person who keeps telling themselves “I can’t” is searching for evidence of failure. We only get what we focus on. If you consistently look for ways it didn’t work, guess what you’re going to get?

Let’s flip that for a moment and imagine you focus on what worked for you in the situation. Yes, you didn’t get the result as you’d expected but didn’t you learn something from it? Wasn’t it still worth it?

After my first workshop, I went home and shared what happened with my partner. As I spoke about the events during the day, I became more aware of things. Once I was aware, I could easily figure the feedback for me here. Even though five was hardly my ideal workshop attendee number, I enjoyed the event and learnt loads.

In short, I shifted my attitude toward the event. Eventually, I kept filling my workshops with more and more people. Guess failure was my friend after all.

What about you? In what ways are you self-sabotaging your own success by focusing on failure as something permanent? And how can you take feedback from a supposedly-failed venture and apply it toward your success?

Choice 10: Take 100% Responsibility

In coaching, we believe in the principle that we are 100% responsible for what we have in our lives.

The first time I heard that I was really scared. I was going through a bad breakup. In my defence, I was doing everything I could to save the relationship (including clinging, being angry, fighting and blaming). When I learned I create my life and I am 100% responsible for it, I was in for a shock. “What? I cannot blame anything or anyone any longer?”

As humans, we have a tendency to blame external circumstances or even people in our lives for the choices we make. It’s as if we are puppets and things happen tous. Perfect example of living at effect by the way.

To live at cause, really shift your thinking above the line even when life sucks, is to really embrace this choice of being 100% responsible.

Like I said, when I was introduced to this, I was very scared. But eventually, I realised this discovery was very empowering and freeing. Imagine the possibilities that opened up in front of me right then. I was being miserable yet I could be happy, if I wanted to. There was potential everywhere!

While one side of the coin was filled with fear, the other side was filled with lots of opportunities. I started looking at this other side closely. Whenever I was having a tough time with any area in my life, be it health, career, or relationships, I’d move back, switch into disassociated mode where I was the observer looking myself in the picture doing the things I was doing and making the choices I was making, I could take responsibility for my actions and therefore results.

Guess what did I do next? I looked for how to turnaround the situation. In other words, I focused not on the problem but on the solution. If I was still stuck blaming everything external to me, I can guarantee you I wouldn’t be here writing this today.

Because you’re 100% responsible for all the results you’re getting in your life right now, you also have the freedom to do something else to get the results you want. And if that doesn’t work? Do something else. And if even that doesn’t work either, do something else!

So remember, no one makes you feel bored, disconnected, sad, unloved or angry. You do. And, no one makes you happy, loved, valued, connected, and excited –you do!

You are 100% responsible even when you’re “doing” sadness, or anger for example. Think about the people in your life: Can you name someone who consistently does that? Someone who, perhaps, consistently complains and blames?

I’ve identified such people and I’d say they have one of the two reasons for doing what they do: One is a benign reason and another is hostile.

Let’s look at benign intention first. There are people who constantly like to play the victim because they don’t know how to do it any other way. They are genuinely hungry for love and connection, and by being the victim, they can temporarily connect with themselves (the “poor me” syndrome) as well as gain some form of love and connection through sympathy from others.

Another group of people – thankfully I’ve found them rare – does it purposely and they have hostile intentions behind their acts. They know what they’re doing and why. Their intention is to control others.

Needless to say, both the above strategies are unresourceful. I want you to reflect back in your life and recall when you did this. You could play the role in three ways:

- Victim- Blamer- Rescuer

Which one of these were you? Whichever role you took on at the time, I trust you realize it was a by-product of not taking 100% responsibility for what was happening in your life then.

You might think that the rescuer does not deserve to be on the list. After all, she is not only taking responsibility for herself, but also for others. That’s right, and that’s exactly where the problem lies: the rescuer is stealing the gift of responsibility from other people she’s busy rescuing.

She may feel she’s taking the weight of the world on her shoulders because she must, but in reality, she doesn’t have to. The people she’s rescuing will never grow up to understand they have a choice to be responsible, and that sounds plain selfish of the rescuer, doesn’t it?

To me, this choice is really a belief. It’s a given. And when I find something that works better than this, I will happily swap the beliefs. But for now, I choose this. Do you?

Parting Words

I’ll leave you with a story.

There was once a man who had a beautiful garden. In that garden was a cocoon that this man watched for hours and hours. After a while, he saw a butterfly trying to make out of the cocoon. The butterfly was pushing and straining, trying really hard to get out.

A few minutes passed by and the man realised how tough this is for the butterfly. He also loved the butterfly’s determination and decided to help it out.

He went inside and brought a baby pair of scissors, cut open the cocoon and was pretty pleased with himself. The butterfly was now free to go anywhere without the struggle.

He watched the butterfly dry its wings in the sun, but minutes passed by and it didn’t fly. On a closer look, the man realised the butterfly’s body seemed deformed. The wings were not ready either. The butterfly finally dies in front of the man.

Now the man was very confused, because he surely did a good thing yes? He went inside and did some research on butterflies only to realise that the process of pushing and straining helps the insect to become strong and able for what’s coming after it has broken through the cocoon.

In other words, all that fear and struggle that looks hard is really shaping it up. Can you relate to this metaphor in your life? I trust you do.

With that, identify your personal cocoon (or comfort zone) and how you’re taking steps which scare the heck out of you. But even before you take the steps, tell yourself why you’re doing the do.

That will help you look at fear in the eye and step through it. Good luck!

About the AuthorPooja Lohana is the Founder & Editor of Pick Your Goals. In her other avatar,

she is a Human Behavioural Specialist, Trainer and NLP Practitioner who helps

people stuck at a fork in the road reconnect with their misplaced resources so

they can move forward in ways they haven’t considered before. She is deeply

passionate about all things Personal Development.

www.pickyourgoals.com

www.trulyaccomplished.com.au

Featured front page photo by notsogoodphotography on Flickr.Other photos by freedigitalphotos.net.