Fear, dealing with fear, crushing fear!

I love this topic. We all have felt it. Not knowing how to deal with fear and anxiety can really mess with your head. I’ve also been there: life feels dark and depressing, it feels like you’ve obtained a handicap, you start to question if things ever improve. We’ll… I’m here to tell you that they do improve…a lot. If you're struggling with anxiety, you should check out these anxiety symptoms to see if you have it.

Fear of heights, fear of darkness, fear of spiders - these are easier and I’m not going to get into this. I’m going to talk more about pressure and social fear. For example you are afraid you’ll let people down or you’re terrified of public speaking. It might even be something minor like talking to a girl at school/bar or making cold calls at the office.

So why do we feel fear? And why some people are more afraid of certain events than others? It really comes down to thought-patterns and beliefs. We might create fear because of past embarrassment. Sometimes when we have a small fear of some event and we put it off, it might also grow the fear of that event. It can just be something new and you are afraid to fail at it. It’s not in the DNA or lack of talent. The truth is that we can all handle each situation as the most confident man in the world.

I listened to this interview with Dave Chappelle who is a stand-up comedian. He talked about his early years and how he dealt with fear of public speaking. He didn’t have a big problem starting off but one time he got boo’d off the stage. When family and friends asked him how he was feeling, he told them that he was relieved. Why was he relieved? Because it was the worst possible outcome of public speaking and he had experienced it. “It wasn’t so bad”, he said. He wasn’t afraid of it anymore.

Most people are so busy “looking cool” that they never want to fail. DON’T BE AFRAID TO FAIL. Failing at something is good when you learn from it! Go out there and do the thing you’re most afraid of – if you fail, f*ck it, try again. If you accept the possibility of failure you most likely wont even fail. Noone can laugh at you for trying your best every time – if they do, then you know they wont get far because they feel the same way about themselves. If you apply this to your life, you will not be scared of fear again.

When you fail at something and let people down – don’t feel guilty. Empathy is good, guilt is not! And NEVER let anyone push guilt on yourself. If it happened, it happened, accept it. Feeling bad is not productive, it’s a lose-lose situation. Learn from it and move on.

Excuses create more fear! “I can’t right now, I’ll wait for..”, “I need to prepare a little longer” – sounds familiar? We’ve all heard that voice in our heads. There is no better time than NOW. Whenever you feel that inner monologue, repeat this out loud: “I am a person of action and I will act NOW”. When you say it, you can’t think anything else at the same time and you start to feel the enough power inside to take a chance.

You cannot lose fear completely. But you can make it irrelevant. Soon fear will not be something that holds you back. It’s just something that takes a little more effort. The paradox here is that when you start thinking like this you will actually start feeling less fear. When you manage to step on this road, you will feel the most liberating feeling you’ve ever felt.

For some people it’s a huge step – you have to look at life from a totally different perspective. It is however worth it! Think about it for some time and when it’s time to act, forget the thinking, just act. Otherwise you will just rationalize yourself out of it. That's why a lot of people who over-analyze things, experience much more fear.

Nike had it right: "just do it!"

Next topics: Relationships, judging, Time-management

Thank you! Since English is not my first language, tell me whenever I have made spelling mistakes or typos.

Goals, setting goals and motivation

Imagine playing a game of soccer without the two goals. It’s pointless, it’s aimless. If you don’t know exactly where you want to go, the chances of being successful are basically zero. Everyone needs goals. It’s obvious we need our dreams and ambitions, they are here to help us grow as an individual and as a group.

Setting goals is a skill by itself. A lot of people set too high goals and soon enough they get discouraged and quit. It’s almost always smart to set lower goals and exceed them. This keeps you motivated 24/7. Remember, that humility sets stability and accelerating growth. Be patient – don’t worry about what other people do, just focus on your stable growth.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn't dream BIG. NO!...you should always dream big but you need to cut the goals up to bite size chunks. For example a goal which is set to 1 year from now should be divided to months and those smaller goals should be divided to daily or weekly tasks.

It doesn’t always work like that because sometimes your goal is directly connected to results of some skill. For example a goal in sales. When you’re starting out, your results aren’t as good but you grow and your results get better. So you shouldn’t plan the same amount of sales on the first month and the twelfth month.

For some people it’s actually a good idea to set a goal which isn’t directly connected to results. For example when trying to lose weight, sometimes it’s better to have a goal of running 20 km a week than to lose 7 pounds in a month.

Motivation is not a flash like you see in the movies. Often you feel the urge to tackle your obstacles and say to yourself:” YES! C’mon ! Let’s rock! Let’s do it!” It’s not bad but in a couple of hours you wont feel like that anymore. Motivation is this fire which builds up inside you step by step. You take confidence from last success and your motivation grows. It’s something deep which you can’t put into words – you can’t force it, it appears when you have clear goals and when you know what you’re doing is right.

You shouldn’t see yourself as a fast sports car which avoids obstacles and tries to get to the goal as fast as possible. You should imagine yourself as a tank going downhill – slower but stable and crushes every obstacle on its path while the speed is building up.

It’s usually recommended to share your goals with other people so you would get the pressure of not letting other people down. I actually don’t agree with that. It might work for some people and with smaller goals but what i’ve learned is that it’s always better to keep your goals to yourself. When i share my goals with other people i already feel the illusion of having done something and it takes away from motivation. I feel that personal goals should be private...it’s your own, it’s you! For other people it seems that out of nowhere i accomplish something great and my ego loves it, when they say :” Oh my god, where did that come from? He is so talented!” But we all know that talent is an illusion.

While working towards your goal remember to drop the drama (see my previous post on drama). When something goes bad – don’t read much into it. Learn from your mistakes and never feel bad about it. Failing is part of the success – always get up and don’t waste your energy on self-pity. This takes a little practice. Don’t think about it – MOVE ON!

In conclusion i’d like to say that you all rock...no matter what. If you have a plan, you improve it through time and you stick to it - i promise that you’re going to succeed!

Next topics: Fear, relationships, judging

Drama

There’s a lot of drama in our lives. All that stress, worry, anger, self-pity, frustration and so on. But why? Is it because a lot of bad things happen? Is that drama good for us? Where does it come from?

People have a hunger for all that! If you turn on your TV and watch the news, listen to music or watch a Hollywood flick – all you can see are people who are struggling and we have some kind of respect for that. Let me explain... Every Hollywood film has its underdog who at the last minute does something incredible, saves the day and wins over everyone's hearts. Those are the people who we remember and have respect for...in movies OR in real life. Everyone wants to be THAT guy.

At one point when shhh starts hitting the fan you over complicate the situation and self-sabotage yourself. Soon after that you realize that problems are much worse than you expected! A lot of people enjoy the next part too much – self-pity. It’s our EGO which wants us to drown in self-pity. You dwell in your own sorrow for a while and when you’ve had enough you take action or give up. After that you will just repeat the circle.

This is what i want you to do: Drop the baggage! Lose the drama! Stop overanalyzing and overthinking!

Admit it! When you look at the whole Universe with its complexity and then compare it to our issues you can see how irrelevant our small problems are. There is no good or bad!- nothing in this world is worth crying over or feeling upset about. If You can’t change it...accept it! I’m not just talking about small stuff. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. I’m not saying that it’s wrong to feel bad about your friend dying but most people exaggerate the situation. Learn to notice the honest feelings which are much deeper inside you!

Try this out for a couple of weeks – don’t give any situation any value. Good or bad. Get joy from just taking on challenges and goals – not by completing or winning them. Just give it your best on every situation and don’t think about stuff too much(it will only cause fear,worry and illusion). Soon you will realize how awesome you are and how much you can really accomplish with the right mindset.

Coming soon – Goals, Fear, Relationships.

The truth about your Life!

Hey guys! I have waited for this moment for so long! I have thought about writing down all my thoughts about life, goals, success, failure, fears etc. There are 2 reasons why i will be doing this:

1) if I put everything in writing- it will all become clearer to me as well.

2) most of the self-help books totally ignore the truth. The reasons are kind of obvious – they are afraid that if they were honest, their books won’t sell.

So in this blog I am going to give you tips & ideas which have helped me become successful in various areas.