Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure… it just means you haven’t succeeded yet. ~Robert Schuller

What you want in your personal development journey is to get positive results. There are many things that people want to work on and here are some of them

1) Relationships
2) Physical Health Being
3) Financial Abundance
4) Finding Purpose In Life

What you want to get out of all these is to get positive results. However, most people don’t get significant and positive results because of the brake that is holding them back.

The fastest way to get from point A to point B is to fully floor the accelerator and not taking your leg off until you reach your destination. But most people drive with the brakes on and this is why they don’t see results fast.

The Brakes That You Can’t Release And Why You Need To Release Them

Brakes – Fear of failure.

Many people think that fear is a bad thing. In fact, it is a good thing. Fear helps us to stay away from dangers that can harm our life. However, fear can also stop us in our track.

If you don’t know how to handle fear, you let fear run your life. When your life is run by the fears that you have, you can be very sure that you are not living your best life.

Fear causes us to become timid and make decisions that seem safe to us. But no one win games by playing defense all night.

When you get rid of your brakes, you start to accelerate. You do things without anything in your mind to hold you back. When you commit fully to something and work on them whole-heartedly, the possibility of your success is higher and there will get better results in your life.

How To Overcome Your Fear Of Failure And Get Results Faster

1. Worst Case Scenario

Always ask yourself what is the worst that can happen if you fail.

For example: Whenever I build new niche sites, I fear that it will flunk and there isn’t any traffic or money to be made. But what is the worse if that happen?

I think the worst thing that can happen is I will lose a couple of dollars for the domain and since I am using a VA now, I will waste some time and a few hundreds of dollars for the work.

However, I can sell the site to others to minimize the loss if I want to. It doesn’t look too bad even if I fail on that particular niche as compared to failing in a brick and motar business. I don’t have a huge fear of such things now since I do my research properly before taking the plunge. This is taking calculated risk

2. Ask Yourself This Question – Will I Die?

If you don’t die, you have no problem.

Seriously this is one of the best idea that I ever got. I forgot whom I got this idea from but I would like to thank that person for sharing this idea.

There really isn’t any problem if you won’t die if you fail. If you fail in your business, you won’t die. Yes, you may lose money but you can earn it back. All you need to do is to get up and try again. If you fail to get the cell number from the girl that you like, it doesn’t mean that you will die from it. It sucks and you may be depressed for a while but you can always try again another time. Life keeps moving forward and you will be stuck in the same place if you allow your fear of failure to stop you from taking any action.

3. Think Of Failure As Feedback

There is no failure except in no longer trying. ~Elbert Hubbard

Don’t think about failing at all. Failing is an event and it is a form of feedback. If you fail to convert a sales call, it does not mean that you had failed. It simply means that you do are not using the correct triggers (process) to close the deal.

All you need to do is to accept the feedback, learn from it and try again another time. The key is to learn from your feedback and keep trying.

It is rare to get something right on the first few try. So keep learning and keep trying.

I don’t think it is normal to have no fear of failure at all. Even I experience fear and I fear to fail too. But the key is to acknowledge the fear, accept it and know that the fear of failure is an indicator for us to step forward to expand our comfort zone. Once you are able to keep on taking action without letting the fear of failure to hold you back, you will be surprised by how fast you get positive results in your life.

Let me end this post with a quote from Samuel Beckett and I hope this quote will inspire you and let you look at your fear of failure in another light.

Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
~Samuel Beckett

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Recently, I had attended Chris Guillebeau’s Art Of Non Conformity Meet Up in Singapore. I didn’t know about the event until Chris tweeted about it. I saw the tweet the day before the event and I wasn’t sure whether I want to attend it.

Let me give you a brief introduction about Chris Guillebeau – he is an author and the blogger behind the successful blog www.chrisguillebeau.com. He traveled to 159 countries and he had written a book to teach others how to live an exceptional life. He writes about personal development, travel hacking and teach others how to break out of the norm and live the life that they really want.

Why I Didn’t Want To Attend The Event In The First Place

To be frank, I am a shy person and more of an introvert than an extrovert. If possible, I would like to do my own work in my own space instead of networking.

To go to this event alone seems like a daunting task to me. I tried to find someone to attend the event with me but in the end, no one was free to go with me. There was fear and many countless (useless) doubts that filled my mind.

It is easy to choose to stay in my comfort zone and stay on my bed. However, I chose to get out of my comfort zone and go for the event.

In the end, I decided to go for it and I used this exact process to help me get over my doubts and fear.

1. Decide
2. Benefits
3. Facing your fears and doubts
4. Make a commitment

1. Decide

I know that if I don’t attend the event, it is because fear is holding me back. If fear is the main factor behind your decision, most probably it will be a bad decision. I made the decision on the spot to stop thinking and just go for it. The most powerful moment you can experience is to decide upon something and follow through.

2. Benefits

Instead of focusing on the 101 things that can go wrong in the event, I focus on the benefits that I will gain if I attend the event.

I believe that if I choose to show up for the event, I will be able to:

1. Build my confidence
2. Meet Chris in person and get some new ideas that I can implement
3. Meet awesome and like-minded people – Concept Of Mastermind
4. Network and get new readers. I think I got maybe a handful of new readers. I know it isn’t much but this is the benefit of just showing up.

3. Facing my fear and doubts

When I choose to face my fear and doubts, I am able to make some mini breakthroughs. The key to growing is to make sure you do something that you feel uncomfortable everyday and you will experience tremendous growth.

Some of the fears that hold me back include:

1. Being awkward during the event
2. Not able to talk to anyone during the event
3. Being out of place
4. People belittling my tiny little blog
5. Many other stupid excuses created by the marvelous mind

Some of the fears are totally irrelevant and it makes me feel stupid to think that those fears are my obstacles. However, fears and doubts do pop out of nowhere when you want to get out of your comfort zone. They serve as obstacles to prevent you from getting out of your comfort zone and the only way to get out is to face your own fears and overcome them.

However, there are certain fears that can really happen if I don’t do something about it. For example, I fear that nobody will talk to me at the event. I can easily overcome it by taking the initiative and talk to others first. Taking the initiative to talk to others means that I can avoid the fear from becoming a reality.

4. Make a committment

Once you face your fear and decided to get out of your comfort zone, make the commitment to do something immediately. I decided to go for the event after evaluating my fears and I signed up immediately. Once I took action and signed up for the event, I couldn’t back off. I am accountable to turn up when I click on the ‘register’ button. This is the power of momentum.

Conclusion

In order for me and HMS to grow, I have to push myself out of my comfort zone regularly. One thing that I really need to work on is to network with other bloggers more frequently.

So are you working on your growth everyday by trying to get out of your comfort zone? What is it that you think will make a big difference to your life if you get out of your comfort zone and just do it. Share with me in the comment section below.

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Post from: Health Money Success

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Image courtesy of lorri37

Every living creature on the planet has their own survival instinct. This instinct is able to help us to protect our life so that we can prevent our species from extinction. An animal will be fleeing with unfamiliar scent, sight or noise. A plant will grow towards light and avoid darkness so that it can receive the sunlight that it needs in order to survive.

As human, we also have this basic survival instinct in us to help us survive in the world. This instinct comes in handy when we are living in the jungle with predators hunting us for food. Our survival instinct will instruct us to avoid the unknowns, get our adrenaline rushing and escape from immediate dangers.

But the situation had changed. In the world we are living right now, we are no longer threatened by predators such as tigers or lions. However our basic survival instinct is still in us. In our modern and complicated world, this instinct turns out to be a double edge sword and we will hurt ourselves if we are not careful with it.

Our Most Basic Instinct

Our survival instinct guides us away from danger. This means that anything that poses a danger to our life, we will avoid it at all cost. If we are still living in the jungle era, this will be a handy skill to have. We wouldn’t want to be caught sleeping in a cave filled with tigers.

Even though our natural predators are removed from our environment, our strong survival instinct is still in us. It is still trying to protect us and want us to keep on surviving. The dangers and risks have changed but our survival instinct has not. It is still trying to keep us away from things that are unknown or things that are out of our comfort zone.

Things that we do not know and things outside our comfort zone tend to bring a feeling of fear in us. This fear is activated by our survival instinct as it wants us to avoid things that we are not certain about or things that can possibly “hurt” us. Our instinct has mistaken these unknowns as something that pose a danger to our life and want us to stay away from it as far as possible.

How Our Survival Instinct Limits Us

Our survival instinct that is used to keep us safe from harm can be back firing and limit our potential growth.

Some examples would be…

• Fear of approaching the girl of your dream due to fear of failure.
• Avoid starting a business because of the fear of failure.
• Fear of learning a new skill because it may prove not to be a worthy investment. (Uncertainty)

As you can see, these are the situations that do not pose any danger to our life. However these situations are pushing us out into the unknowns and there is a possibility that it will fail and “hurt” us in some ways.

How Win Over Your Confused Survival Instinct

Imagine how much growth you would attain if you are able to take action to accomplish anything without your instinct kicking in and telling you to stop? You will go out there and start your own business, approach the girl or guy of your dream or speak to a huge audience without any fear. I bet anyone who is not obstructed by uncertainty is able to move forward so fast and achieve huge success in his or her life.

To achieve this, you will need to have your survival instinct standing on your side instead of against you. You will need to convince your instinct that not doing something (starting your own business or approaching the guy or girl of your dream) can cause you much more harm and pain in the long run. When your survival instinct knows this, instead of stopping you, it will be edging you to go for what you want.

Here are the steps to follow to get your survival instinct on your side.

• Grab a piece of paper.
• Write out what you want.
• Write down why you are not achieving it yet.
• Write down what is it that you will lose out or be inflicted with emotional pain if you did not achieve the thing that you decided that you want in your life time.
• Visualize the pain of not achieving. Think of the worst that can happen. Think in pictures and add in painful emotions.
• Make a decision to go for what you want and start setting goals and creating action plan and strategies to achieve what you want.

When you start to write out and visualize how you will suffer if you do not achieve, your survival instinct now comes to your aid. Because you will be feeling the pain if you do not achieve what you want and your survival instinct guides you away from pain and towards pleasure. This means bringing you towards the direction of your goal.

Parting Words

Our survival instinct can hold us back from achieving what we want but if we are able to get it to stand on our side, we can tap on the unlimited potential of it to help us get anything that we want. This instinct is so strong because it is what that has helped the human species to survive up till now. So is your instinct standing against you or standing on your side?

If it is standing against you, get it to stand beside you now use it to achieve your goals in life.

To your success,

Vincent

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Image courtesy of smanography

Questions anyone?

One’s first step in wisdom is to question everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Everyone went through the education system where we are suppose to sit in the classroom and ask questions when we don’t understand. However I discovered that as we grow up, our ability to ask questions goes in the opposite direction. It may be due to shame, embarrassment, ego or maybe the fear of standing out in the crowd.

Asking questions is one of our natural way of learning. Whenever we are confused, asking questions help us to gather more information to understand the subject better. But when we are scared to ask questions, we will not learn as well as we possibly could.

Why People Are Afraid Of Asking Question?

Notice how children always love to ask questions? They are always curious for answers and that is why children are such great learners. They tend to ask the “why” questions. They want to know why things happen and they usually get their answers from the adults. But sometimes even the adults couldn’t answer their questions.

Children have no qualms about asking questions. Their curiosity about the world makes them want to learn more about what is happening around them and they do not have the fear to stand out, embarrassment or pride to hold them back from asking questions. Being able to ask questions and get immediate answers help them to learn quickly.

Adult on the other hand fear to ask questions because due to fear and ego. They hold themselves back from asking questions because asking questions may seems like they are lacking in knowledge and look stupid.

Fear is another factor that cause them to refrain from asking questions. When we are an adult, we mind what others are talking about us more than when we are a child. When a child ask some questions that cause an eruption of laughter,they will just laugh it off and goes on to ask another question. However if this scenario happens to an adult, most probably he/she will be embarrassed by the situation and will promise themselves not to ask another question again to avoid looking stupid. That is why people say that children are better learners but not because they have better brains, but they are always fascinated by their surroundings and they would not give a second thought about asking questions to satisfy their curiosity.

The moment when we have decided that asking questions is a sin and we should stop asking question to protect ourselves from embarrassment, we are giving ourselves obstacles to obstruct us  from learning.

How To Start Asking Questions Again

Stop thinking that you know everything – People who think that they know everything will stop asking questions. They will just be like a cup filled to the brink and a cup(person) filled to the brink will not be able to take in any more water(knowledge).

Let go of your ego – Acting like you know something when you don’t know can cause you to stay a fool forever. If you don’t understand something, ask necessary questions to help you understand it. Rather be a fool for a moment than a fool forever.

Don’t worry about looking stupid – Most people think that the question they want to ask will look stupid. But most of the time, others also have the same question. Just see yourself as doing a favor for others by asking the question.

Have the courage to go against the crowd – In the classroom, majority of the people don’t ask questions. Raise up your hand and ask a question when you don’t understand something. Only a few people will raise up their hands to ask questions, be the minority who understand instead of the majority who chose to stay as a fool.

Parting Words

Humans have a strong fear of looking stupid and also the desire to belong. That is why we refrain from asking questions as it can cause us to look stupid and we also try to stay the same as the majority of the group by not asking questions.

I know it can be embarrassing to look stupid when asking questions and people prefer the herd mentality rather than going against the crowd. But all these are things that don’t really matter if really want the answers to your questions. You can either be a fool for a moment or forever. Choose your pick.

Cheers,
Vincent

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Fear Of Stingray

The above photo was taken when I went to the underwater world at Sentosa in Singapore. There are a few attractions there  and the one that I particularly enjoyed was the stingray aquarium.

It is the feeding time for the stingrays when I reached there and I decided to pay 3 bucks to buy some sliced fish to feed it. I was told to put the piece of fish between my fingers, put my hand into the aquarium and let go when you can feel the stingray sucking at the food.

It is rather scary to dip your hand into a pool filled with stingrays and it doesn’t help when they are really huge. I dropped the first piece of fish immediately when one stingray approached me as I was scared by its huge presence. The above photo was taken on the 3rd or 4th try when I decided to just stick my hand there and promised myself not to remove my hand from the pool until I can feel the stingray’s mouth on my hand. I succeeded as you can see in the above photo. After the feeding session, I felt empowered as I had overcome the fear of stingray at that instance.

Why Do You Want To Overcome Fear?

Your fear is your limit. It stops you from achieving what you really want. I believe everyone have that moment when you wanted to do something but decided not to because of your fear.

Here are some examples:

1. Fail to start a business because fear of failure stops you from doing anything.
2. Fail to confess to the girl you really like because of your fear of rejection.
3. Fail to put in your best effort in something because you fear that your effort won’t be enough to help you succeed.

Imagine what if you could overcome your fear and start doing things that you really want to do instead of accepting things that you don’t really want due to fear. Will you be happier? Will you achieve more out of life? I believe you had answered ‘Yes’ to both the questions. If you decided to live your life to the fullest, here are some ways you can use to conquer your fear.

4 Simple Steps To Conquer Your Fear

1. Your Fear May Be False Evidences Created By Yourself

Fear is due to the negative images you had generated in your mind. For example, when I wanted to feed the stingray, images such as the stingray biting me and the slimy feeling of its skin came into my mind. That is why I dropped the piece of fish immediately when the stingray approached.

However when the stingray came in contact with my hand when I was feeding it, I find that the stingray is not slimy and it won’t bite. The stingray  is actually soft and nice to touch and this shows that my fear is actually false evidences created by myself.

Face your fear and capture those negative images that come to your mind. Acknowledge those negative images are false evidences that you had created and you will receive a little bit more of courage to help you to conquer your fear.

2. Replace Negative Images With Positive Ones

Once you had identified the negative images, you need to replace them with positive ones. Think about the benefits and use those positive images to replace the negative images. I replaced the image of a fierce and slimy stingray with a image of a cute and fluffy stingray(I created a cute cartoon of a stingray in my mind). I ran the image through my mind a few times and this helps to diminish the fear.

If you want to start a business but fear of doing so, business failure may be one of the negative images that you have. Replace the negative image with a positive image of you succeeding in the business and run the image in the your mind for a few times. Doing this can help to empowers you to take action and conquer your fear of starting a business.

3. Do it.

Just Do It. ~ Nike

Thinking breeds fear and doing overcomes it. Use the positive images to empower yourself and just start taking action. Stop thinking and start doing because the more you think, the higher the chances that you won’t do it. Once you start doing what you feared to do, your fears will disappear away quickly.

4. Use Momentum To Conquer More Of Your Fear

Once you had conquered one of your fear, you will gain a new positive belief that you can conquer your fear if you want to. Use this belief to help you conquer other fears that are holding you back in life. You will be amazed at what you can accomplish when you knock down your fears one by one. That is when you truly enjoy your life to the fullest.

Parting Words

I knew that fear will limit my potential and I will lose out opportunities to try things that I have never done before. Those things I missed out due to fear may be enjoyable or rewarding. In order to enjoy life to its fullest, I decided that I need to overcome all the fears that are holding me back.

I may want to start a business, do some public speaking, diving, sky diving or anything that may interest me. Look forward to my stories and I hope that you can face your fear and start living your life to the fullest.

To your success,

Vincent

**P.S** If you think you need professional help to overcome your fear, you may want to drop Tim Brownson a mail. He is a master practitioner of NLP and he will be able to help you conquer your fear.

**P.S.S** I had wrote an article titled “How To Deal with Criticism” at AlexShalman.com. Do visit it and it will be great if you can give me some feedback on the article.

If you like this article, it will be great if you can digg, stumble or bookmark it in de.li.cious. Remember to subscribe to my blog via Email updates or RSS feed so that you won’t miss out on my upcoming articles. (It is free!)

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Photo by darkmatter

“Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.”
Swedish proverb

How many times have us let fear breed in our mind and hence leading to inaction. Fear can be helpful for survival when it warn us of the dangers that we are facing and cause us to be more mentally prepared to deal with the problem. It definitely serve us well until it got to a point that it is inhibiting our ability to take actions.

How do we overcome fear? First of all, we need to determine what is the cause of fear.
Fear is basically what you are thinking and portraying it to your brain. Basically it is all about thoughts. How you think about something will make it either scary or not.

Breaking your personal comfort zone is one of the trigger to fear. When you want to quit your current job, you will feel fear. When you are going to give a first speech in your 30 years of life, you will feel fear. When we break out of our comfort zone, where we are entering is an area of unknown and most people hate unknown areas.

The funny thing about fear is sometime things that we worry and fear about doesn’t come true. It is just the accumulating of negative thoughts in our mind that cause it to snowball into a huge issue. This mean that all the time you spent on worrying and fearing for something that most probably not going to happen are actually wasted.

Let me state an example.

Scenario: Giving a speech in an auditorium packed with 1000 people

You are still joking with your friend a moment ago until one of the backstage staff came over to you and inform you that you have 15 minutes more to your speech. Suddenly your brain switch to high gear and start churning out images of you stuttering, tripping and fall, audience don’t laugh to your jokes and you are booed off the stage. Your face suddenly turned pale, you feel the butterflies in your stomach and your palms start to sweat. Fear had conquered you. But will most of the things happen? No. It will maybe happen if you keep thinking of all the negative ideas and start to act them all out.

Can fear be overcome? Yes! Definitely.

Tackling Fear

Let us decipher the word, FEAR

F – False
E – Evidence
A – Appearing
R – Real

Whenever there are time when you feel fearful, remember this and self talk to yourself and decipher the word FEAR.

Be Positive

When negative images start to fill your head. Stop! Control your thoughts and think of positive images. For an example, think of how the crowd cheers for you and the amount of applause you will receive after the end of speech. You can fill in your own positive thoughts for any scenarios.

Nike Just Do It!

I love Nike’s slogan “Just Do It!”. Learn from it and apply it in your life. It can help to crush fear. It is due to inaction and too much thinking that cause you to breed fear in your mind. Whenever you want to do something, don’t allow fear to have the time to breed, just do it!

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
Dale Carnegie

Learning from Fear

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

The quote from Eleanor Roosevelt states that once you look fear in the face and face it bravely, you will learn from the experience and be able to deal with the fear that come next with more confidence and strength. Doing things that you fear will turn it into part of your comfort zone and this this mean that fear is conquered.

One more lesson from a quote.

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”
Bertrand Russell

If the Wright brothers and Thomas Edison fear of being eccentric and being laughed at, what will happen to us now? We will be saying good bye to air planes and light bulb. Welcome ferries and candles.

Being Curious

Being curious is the opposite of living in fear. Curiosity empowers you with excitement of venturing into the unknown areas for greater rewards. It spur actions and actions are the seeds to success.

Leave a comment if you got any ideas to share on overcoming fear.

Cheers
Vincent
Self Improvement Blogger

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