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Twin Bugaboos - Fear of Failure, Fear of Success
publish it - for free - on the web. Then go Goggle yourself and see your name and work come up for the world to see.
Want to give seminars and talks to audiences of hundreds or even thousands for a high ticket price? Give a complimentary talk at a community organization.
How did any of those experiences feel? Perhaps a little uncomfortable, perhaps a lot empowering.
These small steps in the direction you’re headed give you confidence, bring the fear down to manageable size, provide you with many learning experiences of how to continue towards your goal, and begin to clear the path that allows the cosmic web to bring to you your intention as you move towards it.
RISK
Life involves risk, and risk suggests the possibility of failure. Be willing to take risks! Within those risks lie what you need to learn and your rewards.
Another part of this fear-based impedance to our goals is fearing disapproval. Longing for approval you can end up virtually paralyzed. You want to be told you’re doing wonderful things, but fearing to be criticized, laughed at, scorned, ignored, you put the brakes on manifestation. As Wayne Dyer wisely observes, “Your opinion of me is none of my business,” further advising us not to be held hostage by pursuing the good opinion of others.
Do as your inner wisdom suggests. It is not possible to “make” others happy, in any case. That’s a decision they are making for themselves. You must do what you must do. You may accept constructive feedback, but, in the end, you must stick by, and be faithful to, your inner knowing.
“Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering
before them, we made up our minds to walk boldly through them.”
Orison Swett Marden
FEAR OF FAILURE
Failure is central to the process of learning. Otherwise, how will you know how to solve a problem? You not only learn the correct answer to a problem through processes which do not work, but aspects of such a learning experience may provide solutions to other problems.
The idea of failure is simply a negative judgment of your experiences. Failure does not ultimately exist if, when you meet with a setback, you pick yourself up, or make a path around the boulder that landed on your road, or step back and study the complication, then continue to move forward.
Failure only exists when you decide to fail, to stop moving towards your goal. Be a shark, continually moving through your waters, doing what you must to fully honor the Being within you who calls you to your purpose.
Remember – what you resist, persists.
We have not been taught, at least not formally, how to handle experiences which do not fulfill our expectations. We have been given many models of failure, however. For instance, if a child has learned 60 percent of the material being taught in school, the child has failed. Why would that child continue to try? Failure is so inflexibly black or white, so all or nothing. A more appropriate model might be to let children each have their own chart which shows how many points it takes to go to the third grade from the second grade, and how many points they’ve accumulated, without failure attached to it, only varying degrees of success, and watch those lost children bloom into their own desire to earn their points, or see the balloons on their private chart rise (or whatever interesting graphic the kids themselves might come up with).
John Holt, in his book How Children Fail writes, “For many years, I have been asking myself why intelligent children act unintelligently at school. The simple answer is ‘because they’re scared’... fear destroys intelligence... it affects a child’s whole way of looking at, thinking about, and dealing with life.”
“The greatest mistake you can make in life
is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
Elbert Hubbard
EXPECTATION FAILURES
When something you’ve undertaken comes out as anticipated, that’s great! However, that experience doesn’t teach much. That is to say, what you expected to happen, happened. And so that behavior is continued, (which was learned at some previous - fearsome! - point). But when the outcome falls short of your expectation, you need to recover from the “failure” so as not to repeat the same expectation failure behavior again.
Learning occurs by the process of failing. Be not afraid.
FEAR OF SUCCESS
Fear of Success, once again looks into the maw of the fear of the unknown. You may make up pictures of success, but if they are so huge and unfamiliar in comparison to the life you know, it’ll be frightening. Even if your conscious mind is saying, “Oh boy, let me at it!” The subconscious mind is saying, “YIKES! I don’t know that territory, and I’m not moving into it.”
When the subconscious mind is not congruent with the conscious mind, guess which rules? Yes, the subconscious mind will dominate the outcome with numerous actions and behaviors of self-sabotage.
A primary Fear of Success is the fear of accountability. If you raise up a step on the ladder of success it feels like you must stay there, but it’s sort of high, and seems to require constant attention, which is uncomfortable and energy-tapping. It’s not difficult to talk oneself into not taking the step up the ladder in the first place.
There is also the Fear of Success of incongruity, of seeming to be someone you do not feel like you are inside. The Wizard of Oz was quick to say to Dorothy and friends when Toto pulled aside his curtain, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
We all fear a little Toto who will reveal the true, small person, the faker. The solution is to move forward authentically, to give up these self-conscious thoughts to the part of you which knows your potential. (Feed your Toto a little yummy treat, so that he doesn’t go looking for mischief.)
As you will recall, when The Wizard of Oz finally stepped into his own, true, person-sized self, he then became truly great. He became helpful and wise and fulfilled his purpose.
That true Being is in each and every one of us, manifested in a vision of perfection by the creative force.
Another Fear of Success raises up when motivated by vindication or “I’ll show them!”. That emotional terrain does not have a strong support under it. If success is based on vindication, it’s hollow and unsatisfying, because it’s about other people, not yourself. Your motivation must have to do with your ability to do that which calls to you... a discomfort which, if ignored, is noisier than even your fears.
That’s not to say that a bit of “I’ll show them!” isn’t motivating. But it’s not effective if it is the predominate emotional context.
Fear of Success often revolves around guilt. Guilt of doing better than one’s parents, or exceeding one’s peers, guilt of changing the order of things, guilt laced with doubt about one’s choices. If I’m successful at this, is it what I was meant to do? I feel guilty not doing what I’m really supposed to be doing (whatever that is) or not doing what someone else says I ought to be doing. Let That Go!
There is no place for guilt in the process of creation, being on purpose, moving toward your goals, fulfilling your Heart’s Desire. Guilt is the giving up of your personal empowerment to others and therefore will never go away as long as you give it permission to stay. Banish all thoughts and feelings of guilt (which is a very low level emotion) and do not permit others to try to induce this emotion in you. When someone attempts to cause you to feel guilty, this is about their envy, jealousy, insecurities. You can simply lay that guilt on a gilt platter and hand it right back to them, saying clearly within yourself that you have no use for it. Don’t trouble yourself to explain, you do not have to defend yourself, and guilt-makers will not hear you. Keep your vision of your work and your success clear and private... and keep moving.
“I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Frank Herbert
WORKSHOP: FEAR OF FAILURE, FEAR OF SUCCESS
1. Fear, ironically, has the ability to paralyze or to motivate. The choice is yours. If you allow fear to paralyze you, then you’re allowing a phantom to rule you, missing out completely on the amazing power you have to manifest. Choose motivation!
2. Fear motivation - we are driven to build structures from fear of excesses of cold and heat, we are driven to work from fear of starvation, we are driven to war from fear of loss of property, we are driven to reproduce from fears of loneliness.
But these fears are learned. We can learn different emotions other than the emotion of fear. And we can allow different levels of fear... a rainbow of fear emotions, rather than a black-white paradigm of fear which only allows for “I’m not in fear” or “I’m ruled by fear.”
Spend some time making your own rainbow with a range of emotional responses, such as: “this is mildly uncomfortable, what am I learning that I did not previously know?” to, “I am headed in an inauthentic direction, I need to stop and reevaluate my trajectory,” to “I fear I’m about to hurt someone else, what am I learning?”, etc., culminating in something like, “I just stepped out in front of a 14-wheeler semi-truck, that’s objectively life threatening and frightening. What did I learn?”
3. Remember, fears are not objects that have their own reality. Feeling fear is a choice you make, choosing from among the thousands of emotional options you have inside you. If fear makes you uncomfortable, or impedes your motion towards your purpose, then stop, think, and make a different choice. Wayne Dyer says, simply, “I choose to be Happy!”
Make a choice like that, and you will still receive the learning, plus you’ll move forward more effectively, not having to process negating the fear and making the forward motion.
Fears rarely equal consequences. The pictures your fears are making are rarely what manifests. When you feel a fear, ask yourself, “what’s the worst that can happen?” If afraid of public speaking, what’s the worst that can happen? You forget what you’re saying, you feel embarrassed. Okay. Did you DIE? No? Okay, not so bad. Bring the fear down to the tiny thing it is... or, again, choose a different emotion altogether. Why not choose to be happy? I’m happy about public speaking.
Isn’t that a much nicer thought/feeling? Why choose anything else?
4. Fears = Opportunities.
It’s just that simple! Fear equals opportunity. If you only do what’s comfortable you’ll never grow. Grab the opportunity to feel a bit of fear and Grow. When you could only crawl, walking was frightening. But one day, the desire to walk became more powerful than the fear of walking (and, more to the point, the fear of falling, almost the only “built-in” fear). The moment you chose to start walking was the moment you conquered your greatest fear in your whole life. Candidly, the rest is an easy ride. Don’t choose to make it anything bigger than that.
Move from what you believe you know into new territory. Be a pioneer of the self and soul.
5. Confront your fears
Do not accept what your fears seem to be saying to you, confront them! Choose to be a fully self-realized success.
Fears are simply our uncertainties. They are about what you think might happen, not about what you know will happen. Take action, as action eliminates fear. When you act, you quickly find out what does happen, gather the learning and move on.
When you avoid a fear, it remains forever. When you confront a fear, it disappears rapidly.
Courage is mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
Mark Twain
6. Remember to start small when empowering yourself in your relationship with your fears. Put some training wheels on the bike. Take on a small problem that you’ve already identified, and move through the fear and out the other side.
7. Make a stack of positive statements on small cards and carry a few with you. Make some of them general, such as, “I feel peaceful when I think of success,” “I choose to be happy,” to very specific, such as, ”I wrote 2,500 (or 1,000 or 10,000) words today,” “I organized giving a talk at Toastmasters today.” Yes, make these statements in the present or past tense, so the subconscious cannot get in there and argue. When the subconscious hears that something is already done, it doesn’t try to run interference with it’s fear based emotion. In fact, it puts energy into accomplishment, as it has to be brought into being if it is already done (congruence). Confusing to the conscious mind, but perfectly sensible to the subconscious mind, which does not possess a clock or calendar.
8. Read books, go to workshops, conferences, trainings, and listen to teleconferences that make you feel inspired, impassioned, joyful, happy, and that motivate you, reinforcing your intention.
9. Birds Of A Feather - hang out with like-minded, positive people. They say Misery Loves Company. Well, guess what, Success Loves Company too! Join (or start) a Mastermind Group, or a positively oriented writers group/creative group. Jack Canfield of Chicken Soup fame suggests that you hook up with five people who are on a similar path, but ahead of you on that path. Why? Because they model success. Because they are not likely to be jealous or petty. Because they are more likely to have a winner’s attitude. Because they can mentor you, having already been there. Because they often can help you network.
10. And Last but not least, experience authentic GRATITUDE
Masaru Emoto, who accomplished the amazing work in Messages from Water, which was featured in What the Bleep Do We Know, believes that Gratitude is the very highest, most powerful, emotion we have. He says that it is, in his opinion, bigger than love. For myself, I see the two as inextricably linked. You cannot have the feeling of gratitude pulsing through you without love, and you cannot experience true, pure love without gratitude.
So, every time you make your way through some fear, be filled with gratitude for the experience. This lets your subconscious mind, your conscious mind, your emotional/feeling body, your higher self and the cosmos know you are awake and conscious and taking in the opportunities that are presented to you.
Fears will just melt away, leaving you with the path to your purpose open and beckoning.
Happy Journey!
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environment - the air you breath and the emotions you experience - all contribute to your pH (which stands for “potential Hydrogen”).
So Many Paths, So Little Time
There are so many plans and programs, concepts and schemes insisting that this, that, or the other process, substance, supplement, activity or behavior is the best way to be in great health. It can get really confusing and NOISY! I will make it much simpler for you right here and now. Of all those noisy demands for your attention, you would discover for yourself if you tried each and every one in turn, that the ones that work well have at their core pH Balance.
You can jettison the rest.
What Is A Healthy, Balanced pH?
The pH scale runs from 0 to 14. Our blood must maintain a slightly alkaline 7.365 pH, OR WE CEASE TO BE.
Considering the teeter-totter analogy, we can say that the kid at the acidic end is a bit chubby and the kid at the alkaline end is thin...
0 to 6.9 = Acidic /// 7-neutral pH /// 7.1 to 14 = Alkaline
So to balance the teeter-totter, the acidic kid needs to scooch in a bit and the alkaline kid needs to scooch out.
You will have a fun ride through life when keeping your pH neutral. How interesting is this? - 7 days a week, 365 day of the year, our blood pH must be 7.365!
So... that doesn’t sound too complicated or difficult, does it?
However, nothing worth having is without it’s challenges. Which, in simplest terms, means eat mindfully!
For instance, averaging the components of a fast food sandwich, it will come out at between 2 to maybe 3 acid forming. And unless you have a side order of a head of lettuce, you are then trying to get through your day highly acidic.
This is really weighing down the chubby kid’s end of the teeter-totter. Drinking coffee? Highly acid forming with a rating of 1.5. Adding cream or sugar? Take another .5 off of the 1.5 for each. Or a soda? Acid forming at about 2. Diet soda (never mind the cancer producing aspect of the non-food of artificial sweeteners - a whole other topic!) very highly acid forming at a rating of 1.
You never, ever again need to wonder why you have acid indigestion.
“The countless names of illnesses do not really matter. What does matter is that they
all come from the same root cause... too much tissue acid waste in the body!”
Theodore A. Baroody, N.D., D.C., Ph.D.
Eat Your Vegetables!
The next aspect of this challenge - with payoffs that are well worth it - is that Dr. Baroody recommends a 80-20 alkaline-forming diet. That is to say, have 80% of your nutritional intake at not below 5.0 pH. Almost all vegetables range from 5-7 pH, and are alkaline forming and almost all fruits range from 6-7.5 pH, also alkaline forming.
Each number on the pH scale is logarithmic. Something that is a 2 acid forming is ten times more so than something that is a 3, and one-hundred times more acid forming than a 4.
The 80-20 game plan will help arm your hard-working body against environmental and emotional taxing of your system.
Tell Me More About pH Balance & Weight Loss
Why are people becoming more obese, with Americans, far and away, the most obese on earth?
For a frame of reference, here are a few world obesity stats:
Percent of Population Obese
#1 U.S. 30.6%
#2 Mexico: 24.2%
#3 United Kingdom: 23%
#6 Australia: 21.7%
#11 Canada: 14.3%
#23 France: 9.4%
#29 Japan: 3.2%
(Statistics from www.NationMaster.com)
Guess what – it’s not because of calories, per se. An approach of reducing calories will not work to bring about a lifelong healthy weight. Healthy weight is about an alkaline forming diet. Obesity arises from an acidic diet. The relationship between weight and calories is more accurately the relationship between weight and acidity. In general terms, acidic foods have more calories in them. But, to repeat, it is not:
excess calories = excess weight
it is:
excess acid = excess weight
With the exception of folks who have a high metabolism, (who may still be very acidic and unhealthy) the rest of us struggle almost helplessly with our weight - unless and until we learn to balance our pH.
Your body works valiantly to keep the excess of acid, or acidic environment, away from your vital organs. (Losing this battle is why there are so many heart attacks and strokes). What your body must do is find a place to stick that acid, and so it goes into your fat cells, as fat is a pretty good medium to keep acid away from the organs.
A simple test to see if you're too acidic is to pinch the skin on your back. It does not matter if you're a skinny-minnie or over-weight. If you are acidic, you'll discover that you almost cannot get a purchase on the skin on your back (I’ve had very thin people say “that's because I'm too skinny” and overweight people say, “that's because I'm too fat.” But no, it’s because of being too acidic and, again, the body is doing everything in its power to move the acid away from internal organs and out to the fat layer under the skin, filling the fat cells with the poisonous acid.
Therefore, when fat cells fill, a person gets fatter, and looks bloated. Even thin people with acidic imbalance often get “puffy” looking.
What Foods Are Acid Forming?
This is an excellent - and interesting! - question.
In simplest terms, most high protein foods and carbohydrates are acid forming. Fruits and vegetables are alkaline forming.
Here are a couple of interesting pieces of information... although animal products (meat, fish, poultry, dairy) are predominately alkaline, they are acid forming in the human body when consumed.
And conversely, although a lemon is obviously acidic, it is just about the best source of alkaline forming ash in the human body you get!
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