Overcoming Fear

What is the one thing that prevents you from living the life you always wanted, the one single factor which prevents you from exploiting all of your choices in life, from recognizing and appreciating opportunities as they present themselves to you, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, freezes you into non-action? you guessed it. Fear. Fear, you see is a defensive mechanism. When we are afraid of something we tend to stay away from it and avoid it altogether. This is a survival tactic in nature and it keeps preys down the food chain alive, as they flee from their would-be predators. For us, however, fear isn't just something we feel when we are afraid. It is also what we feel when we are in doubt and when we are unsure. Apprehension is also fear.

How then can we cope or deal with this limiting factor in our lives? Fear doesn't have to limit you. I know when we are in our comfort zones we are afraid to try something new because it's different from the normalcy we have grown accustomed to. Even if it would mean would mean a drastic improvement in the quality of our lives. How else do you think overweight individuals keep losing their battles against being overweight? The situation is that it would be easier for them to grab that piece of pie than spend the next two hours trying to burn it off. Again the notion of instant gratification prevails. Breaking way from this norm isn't easy but you have to learn how. HERE IS HOW: LEARN TO USE FEAR TO YOUR ADVANTAGE. Notice I didn't say ignore your fears.

Use your fears to make you more attentive, to make you more aware of the situation. Learn to gauge the gravity of it as it presents to you and isolate contributing and non-contributing elements. Contributing elements are the cause and effect types, in other words they are what you get when you ask yourself, "why am I afraid of this?" Non-contributing elements have no relation to the present situation at hand but serve to distract you from honing in towards a solution or an option. They are the "what ifs", the doubts you experience, the background noise.

Learn to weigh your options and always take the path of least resistance. Don't make it harder on yourself by complicating matters. Keep your options open and leave room for last minute changes should the need arise. Be CONFIDENT that you CAN overcome and you WILL. Overcoming your fears take a lot of inner strength and the following pillars should provide the foundation you will need:

1. Be confident of your capabilities.

2. Trust in what you know and what you are familiar with. Don't stray towards uncertainty on a gamble.

3. Don't lose sight of your goal. Know what you are fighting for.

4. Will yourself to succeed.

5. Think of a white room with a small hole in the wall. You are sitting in the middle on a white chair. You get up towards that small hole and throw the following items into that hole; Worry, Apprehension, Doubt, and Negativity.

Overcoming your fears is never easy but it can be done. It takes time, the right mindset, and conditioning in your part to DEAL WITH YOUR FEARS and not RUN AWAY from them. Let me ask you this;

" How far could you have gone if you weren't afraid?"

Until our next post,folks. Stay tuned. Bigger and better things to come to make you FEEL BETTER TODAY and FEEL GOOD about yourself. Do take care of yourselves, and learn to love more as well as being kinder to the people around you. Surround yourself with positive energy and you will emit positive thoughts and do only positive actions. Again, thank you for your time. JowelMD signing off...

Dealing with Failure

We all fail. That's a fact of life. Even in the face of our best laid plans, the notion that there is still a possibility that things will go wrong looms over us. Life may still want to throw us a curve ball on some idle Tuesday and we are left groping for answers. Answers and options. You ever wonder what the most successful individuals have in common in their respective fields of discipline? They have failed more times than they care to remember. Do you find it hard to believe that failing is sometimes a necessary learning curve in order to succeed? It's true. Some of life's lessons we can only learn if and when we fall. They wouldn't have as much value or impact to you if they weren't presented this way. The question then isn't so much about our failures but how we take those failures and apply what we have learned in order to succeed.

If there is one thing we have to remember it is this; we will always experience one failure or another in our lives. We aren't made to be perfect and that statement in and of itself basically means we are flawed. But I want you to see the word failure in a different light. I don't want you to adhere to the negativity associated with it. Rather, try to remember that it simply is the way of life; we fail, we get up, we dust ourselves off, then we take that first step and go on, ahead always ahead. I know this sounds like an overwhelming crusade towards positivity but the truth is successful individuals don't stay down for very long. They don't even think about how and why they failed. Practice has instilled upon them almost a second nature desire to just get up, try something new, and keep going. As I have said before, attitude, it's all attitude.

But let's take real world applications here. Let's talk of a scenario whereby, for instance, you failed miserably in something and it is this ONE THING that will really make it or break it for you. How would you deal with it? Do you:

1. Hide from the world in general, feeling remorseful and shameful?
2. Harbor feelings of regret and blame other people for their lack of support or inattentiveness to your cause?
3. Feel depressed?
4. Fell anger, frustration, and be closed minded?

Let's face it, folks. We all felt like that. I fact we probably felt like ALL of that. Notice that the list above all harbor negativity and doesn't really do much to our outlook. I need you to focus on this next statement; SEE FAILURE AS A WINDOW TOWARDS NEW CHOICES, NEW DECISIONS. Gauge the effort needed to make that one final step in order to succeed. LEARN from your experience and APPLY what you have learned. That is being productive AND effective. Remember that no one will do it for you, you must do it alone and there is no sweeter victory. Let me repeat that; There is no sweeter victory. Overcoming your weaknesses and changing your weaknesses to strengths is what winning is about in life. If and when you fail, deal with it and leave it behind you. Focus your energies on what needs to be done still or if a different approach is necessary then by all means take it. Don't let the pain of failure consume you. You are better than that so there really is nothing much to prove. Just forge ahead and do what you do best.

Dealing with failure is never easy. When we commit ourselves, our resources, our time, and our energies to a cause for a long time, it WILL HURT when things go wrong. Learn to pick up the pieces and move on. Give yourself time to heal and find areas of positive diversion. Gather your marbles and plan again. Recovery takes 2 phases; First is Realization and Acceptance, Second is Consolidation and Convergence. Dissect where you had gone wrong and accept. Gather or consolidate your resources and formulate your new strategy and converge on it, use every arsenal at your disposal. Remember to focus and not to lose determination. I know we all know what the 3 D's are when we strive towards a goal ( my junior high softball coach in PE back in the day used to yell "3D,3D,3D!!", in our ears till we got sick of Desire, Determination, and Discipline, but hey, it worked!).

Lastly, don't be afraid. You are never alone. A lot of people out there had it worse than you and they are still up and about trying to make it work, striving still to succeed. So my question to you now is,"why can't you?". Until our next post...do take care and keep on striving. No effort goes unwasted, only results, and even then we can still learn. Think positive, be positive, and do positive. Thanks again for your time.