Fear

Why are we so afraid of things in our lives?  I don’t mean spiders or the dark, I mean fear of success, failure, looking bad in front of others, etc.  How many times have you said this to yourself, I can’t say anything, what will they think of me?  Or, they will think I am a joke. I know what you’re thinking right now, I’m not afraid of anything, I can accomplish anything I set my mind to, really?  Then why aren’t you dating a supermodel and flying around in your private jet?  Isn’t wealth and financial independence everyone's goal? I'm kind of making a joke about the supermodel girlfriend and the private jet, because happiness does not revolve around those kind of material things, but I think you get my point. The bottom line is a lot of us are not where we want to be in life and there is a gap or a huge canyon in between where we are and where we would like to be. The question still remains of how do we bridge that gap, how do we cross that Canyon? I think the main component that prevents us from getting where we want to be, true financial independence and deeply connected relationships, is fear.
This fear can look very different for many people but I think for the vast majority of us it revolves around us trying to avoid looking bad to the rest of the world, and doing what we can to look good. If you really think about it and are honest with yourself this is really what it's all about. We say the things we say to people, we behave the way we behave and take actions completely revolved around those two things, looking good and avoiding looking bad. It's why we do not have the honest conversation with our boss about your ideas to improve production, it's why we don't sit our significant other down and express some unhappiness that were feeling in the relationship, it's why we don't pick up the phone and make sales calls we know will produce results. I have begun to realize that literally dictates everything. In some form or another you can boil down your challenges to fear.

After we are aware of this and acknowledge it, the next thing I've learned for myself and want everyone to realize, is that it's all fake. The fear I described is completely invented by your mind. We have invented it as an excuse, a crutch; something to blame when things haven't turned out the way we want them to. When we don't make the sale, because we never made a phone call, we blame it on things like, I was too busy, or the client already made a decision to use someone else. In reality, we were too afraid to make a phone call, we were too afraid of the success and we were too afraid we would look stupid if we didn't know how to answer the questions. The nice thing about having an excuse is that you don't have to take personal responsibility for what didn't get accomplished or would didn't happen. Realize that this fear doesn't exist, let go of the fear and realize that everyone else around you is just as afraid as you are. This might take some deep reflection and is not easy to sit back and ask your self, why am I so afraid.  The answer is it really doesn't matter why just realize it doesn't really exist.

We already have most of the answers. For instance, we know exactly how to lose weight, eat less, eat healthier and exercise more. If you do those three things on a consistent basis, we all know you will lose weight, be in better physical shape and live a longer healthier life. But we don't do it, do we? We find excuses, reasons why it didn't work, whether it is the failure of the new DVD workout program that you bought, or you simply refused to get up and do it. We spend a lot of our hard earned money trying to come up with more and more excuses and more and more reasons things don't happen. The reason why you don't take action is the fear you've invented in your mind. I repeated this same mantra enough in this post that I hope you get my message and stop worrying about looking good and avoiding to look bad and take action to create the future that you want.