overcome fear – Alphadog Success

How to Overcome Your Fears and Step Out With Courage

How to Overcome Your Fears British adventurist Sir Ranulph Fiennes has been called the world’s greatest living explorer. He’s navigated some of the world’s most challenging and inhospitable places on earth including trekking the Antarctic and both North and South Poles, unsupported and on foot. When Fiennes was in his 60’s, he decided to overcome his severe fears of heights by climbing Mt. Everest. On his second attempt, hundreds of feet short of the summit, he suffered severe chest pains, at night, dangling from a rope on a near vertical ice wall at 29,000 feet. Frozen and in pain, he turned around and somehow managed to descend. He lived to tell the tale, running a marathon a mere 16 weeks after his near fatal heart attack. When it comes to facing your fears how daring are you? Do you turn tail and head in the opposite direction? Do you waver and hope the feeling passes? Or, do you, like Fiennes, stand firm and always face your fears head on? Picture what your life would look like if you consistently faced off against your fears, both big and small, with the fearlessness of someone like Sir Ranulph Fiennes. What would it feel like to boldly stare down and confront your fears, never letting them interfere with what you want to accomplish? Imagine what you could achieve if you never again let fear get in your way. The truth is, the closest most of us will get to scaling Mt. Everest is flying past it en route to a comfortable vacation destination. But there is good news; you don’t have to be an adrenaline junkie, risking life and limb, to be fearless. Life offers plenty of everyday opportunities for us to face our fears. Whether it’s asking your crush out on a date, speaking in public, or asking for a raise, no fear is too big or too small to challenge – and we all have within us the potential to be fearless. The first step to overcome your fears and become more fearless begins with understanding fear. What it is, what scares us (and why), and how fear holds us back from living a full and fulfilling life. Once we gain some insight into our fears, fearlessness can become second nature. If you want to be more fearless, more often, let’s start by exploring what scares you. “Don’t be afraid of your fears. They’re not there to scare you. They’re there to let you know that something is worth it.” C. JoyBell C. We all know what fear feels like – dread, tension, difficulty breathing, rapid heartbeat, sweating, racing thoughts, and ‘butterflies’ are just a few of the feelings we associate with fear. It’s no wonder so many of us choose, one way or another, to sidestep our fears. After all, who wants to feel those uncomfortable feelings? What if these fears aren’t designed just to scare you? What if, instead, your fears were a doorway into new and exciting prospects? Could fear be an opportunity for personal growth in disguise? What is Fear? The word ‘fear’ derives from the Old English word faer, meaning sudden attack, peril, or danger. Simply put, fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat. It’s primitive, powerful and universal. Fear is like an internal alarm, it’s design warns us and protects us from danger. There are two types of fear responses: biochemical and emotional. Biochemical Fear is a natural emotion resulting from a perceived threat and its design makes us more alert and responsive as a way to survive. When this happens, our bodies respond in specific ways such as sweating, increased heart rate, increased awareness, and high adrenaline levels. This state of fear is often referred to as a “fight or flight” response. Emotional Fear differs from person to person. Because fear involves some of the same chemical responses in our brains similar to happiness and excitement, feeling fear under certain circumstances can be seen as fun. For example, the fears you experience with watching a scary movie, riding on a roller coaster, or venturing into extreme sports, create emotional fear. Some people like emotional fear, however, there are others who have negative reactions to emotional fear and try to avoid fear-inducing situations all together. Although the physical reaction is the same, this type of fear may be perceived as either positive or negative, depending on the person’s perspective. What are We Afraid of? While most of us aren’t facing the same threats our ancestors did, we still face threats in our day-to-day lives that cause us stress. What are we so afraid of? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Public speaking, flying, and death are often touted as the things we fear the most and, while those fears are real, our dread go much deeper and wider than a potential bruised ego, gravity, and our inevitable demise. According to The Chapman University Survey on American Fears, our biggest fears of 2018 include: government corruption, the state of the environment, danger befalling loved ones, and personal finances. Fears that didn’t crack the top 10? Public speaking (#59), death (#54), and flying (#82). Regardless of ranking, the survey suggests there is no shortage of fears to keep us up at night. The survey also suggests more people than ever are afraid, and fear, in general, is on the rise. All this dread is having a significant negative impact on our lives. For example, fear can make us; hesitate, procrastinate, experience creative blocks, and be averse to risk, all of which can lead to low accomplishment. That can cause stress. That stress can lead to cognitive impairment, an increased risk of heart disease, premature aging, relationship conflicts, depression, and more – and a cycle of fear is born. That cycle can leave us feeling like we’re just going through the motions of life without really living. “My life has been filled with terrible misfortune most of which never happened.” –Michel de Montaigne Putting

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Master Your Inner Critic to Be Successful

Our inner critic says, we get told the world is the way is and you just have to live your life inside that world as best you can. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. Don’t step on toes, don’t be too cocky. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call ‘life’ was made up by people that were relatively no smarter than you. So, if you want to change something in your world… you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use too. You are more useful than you know. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again. This is the advice I learned from Steve Jobs. You know that billionaire guy with the Apple fetish? He rocked. And more than that, he knew he did. That was the biggest secret to his success on and offline – like you, he initially thought ‘I don’t want a job. I want to be an entrepreneur’. Most of us end there and then let self-doubt cloud any potential of getting any further. We make a few bucks, we live pretty comfortable and we dream realistically. We see the obstacles. But obstacles don’t stop us from going further, as we may think – it is actually how resourceful we are in dealing with them. We can’t let a few trials dictate to us where our ceiling of success is. And while being safe instead of bold is a good strategy if you like this life… there is no harm in a little self-love. It is this that creates the boldness, and ultimately the desired results. If you wonder what being bold has to do with being successful or you think that talking about self-love is a little too ‘new-agey’… then let’s get scientific. 55% of all of our communication (that is how we present ourselves to the world) is not what we say or the words we decide to use. It is our body language. It is what we do with our face and our tone. The words you say are a side note. And so, it is essential to believe in yourself each day before you ever set foot online thinking you’re going to make a million because – heck – if you don’t believe it and you are not congruent, not one customer is going to believe that you’re the one to solve all their problems either. So next time your inner critic says ‘I don’t want to sell myself’ or ‘I’m not sure people will like my product’ or ‘Am I charging/asking too much?’, make sure that the answer to that is in line with how much you value yourself. Be the value and people will pick up on it. Tell yourself you have lots to offer and that you can do it. And why not… many people talk to themselves negatively all day long and have nothing to show for it. So why not try looking at things differently? I’ll say it one last time… you want to succeed. Do it from the inside out – believe you can first. Don’t let your inner critic run the show. Believe you are worth that money. It is from a place of fear and worry that most people never pick up that phone and call when they should, most people never ask for what they want (at the price they want) when they know they should. That’s what separates the people that do things from the people who just dream about them. It’s up to you to take action. You must be willing to fail. You’ve got to be willing to crash and burn. And when it is all done and it’s time to get up, it’s not your legs that will lift you… it’ll be your self-belief, not your inner critic. Take a deep breath and say it out loud – “I am worth it!” Now get to work.

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Finding Confidence To Embrace Life’s Big Decisions & Overcome Fear of…

Confidence comes from a latin word affīdāre which means “to trust oneself”; therefore, finding confidence is just having more trust in one’s self and fear of failure. Confidence is a state of being clear headed either that a hypothesis is correct or that a chosen course of action is the best or most effective. I talk to a lot of sales professionals and entrepreneurs, people starting their own businesses, and they want to learn: “How can I develop more confidence or even just get myself a bit more confident so that I can be more successful in what I do?” In order to make this happen, we have to realize where confidence comes from and what finding confidence means. Finding confidence is basically your ability to take action and feel good about yourself and the results of the action. Feeling like whatever it is you’re about to jump into, you can do a good job and you can come out of it looking and feeling good. Now, this doesn’t happen by accident. When you look at the way confidence shows up in our lives, it appears as a result of doing things over and over again and developing a proficiency from it. Confidence, in and of itself, is not something that you’re born with or not born with. It’s something that’s developed over time through practice and repetition. When you first learned to walk, at 12 or 13-months old or whatever it may be for you; you weren’t very confident at walking. In fact, you couldn’t walk at all. But you were determined to try, and determined to succeed. You stood on the side of the sofa and you pushed yourself off and you would fall. You would try it again and you would maybe balance for a bit and then fall. But you would do it over and over again. Your level of confidence in the beginning was tiny. In fact, there probably was no confidence. But you were so determined to do it, that you kept going regardless of the outcome. Eventually you took a step, you followed that with another step, and soon enough you were walking and now you’re an adult and you can walk from one room to another, you can walk for miles as an exercise or whatever, and not even think about the act of walking. It’s just something that comes naturally to you now. If someone were to ask you your level of confidence on a scale of 0 to 10, how confident you are that you could walk across the room, you’d probably say 11. It isn’t even something that you ever think to question…You just do it. The same thing goes for finding confidence in all areas of life – including your professional life. Let’s say your success right now requires your ability to sell. Doesn’t matter what it is. To sell a product, to sell an idea, to sell a service, sell a training program. I don’t know what it is for you. You might not be confident in your ability to communicate value in a way that exceeds the expense and closes a deal. So the important question becomes, how are you going to find that confidence? You weren’t born with it. Thinking about yourself going into a situation where you might have to sell somebody, makes you nervous or self-conscious. How do you get to a point where you’re confident in doing it no matter what you are selling? First, it’s natural to feel fear whenever you are stepping out of your comfort zone…it’s a biological response we have maintained from our “caveman brains”. Luckily there are many other, more evolved portions of our brain we can counter it with. So, the next time you’re feeling fearful, just try to put it into perspective. Recognize that fear is only a feeling, a chemical response to a thought. Fear can feel very, very real. But it’s only an emotion that survives and thrives when we feed it with our attention. The first step in mastering your fear of taking massive action is to remember to tell yourself that fear isn’t real – that it’s only a feeling that can’t hurt actually you. Remember, everyone experiences fear Everyone experiences fear before they try something new. Think Tony Robbins hasn’t experienced fear of failure? Sure he has, and I’m sure he would tell you that himself. Everyone has experienced fear of failure, the fear of looking like a fool, the fear of losing friends, the fear of being judged, a fear of being called an imposter, the fear of ending up worse than when you started, whatever it may be. In fact, statistics show that a whopping 85% of the population has some form of self-doubt. When a moment of panic comes over you, image your role model and remember that they too have experienced fear. But they moved through it anyway. Sometimes you’ll just have to do it afraid. Do it anyway. Take the first small step We’ve all heard Newton’s 1st Law of Motion: A body at rest tends to stay at rest, while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Notice that feeling of fear, and then take that first small step in spite of it. Fear is a natural and required part of the process. Accept your ability to work through fear and do it anyway. You’ll learn from it and you’ll make mistakes and you’ll fall on your face, just like you fell when you were first learning how to walk. But you do this once and you’ll get a little bit of feedback, and you’ll get a little bit of insight. Maybe you can even find a manager or mentor to review your work and see a couple of things that you could improve on in the future. This is incredibly valuable feedback. Go to the next project, make the corrections, make a little bit of an improvement, and you will increase your confidence. Maybe you don’t close the sale, but you go to

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The Science of Analysis Paralysis: How To Overcome Over-Thinking

Let me start by saying that I’m a millennial. I can barely remember before the internet made all collective knowledge accessible for any question that crossed my mind. Unfortunately, despite having more access to high-quality information to help us make life’s decisions, it hasn’t made decision-making any easier. We can now research the pros and cons of each and every option available to us. A simple search can often open a time-sucking black hole of link clicking, article reading, video watching. That search may end hours later…with no new answers. Psychologist Barry Schwartz coined the phrase “Paradox of Choice”. He says, while increased choice allows us to achieve objectively better results, it also leads to greater anxiety, indecision, and dissatisfaction. Instead of making better choices, our unlimited access to information often leads to fear of making the wrong decision. This can lead to us spinning our wheels in analysis paralysis, all the while getting nowhere on our important projects. Naturally, I was curious about what goes on in our brains when we experience indecision; and what we can do about it. How overthinking decisions is holding you back Delaying action while over-analyzing information doesn’t help anyone get things done. In fact, a 2010 survey showed that employees spend more than half their workdays receiving and managing information. This takes away from time spent actually doing their jobs!(Does this sound like you?) Unfortunately, that’s just the start of the bad news. Studies in psychology and neuroscience reveal that analysis paralysis impact our productivity and well-being more than just the lost time. Here are four not-so-obvious ways that overthinking your decisions is holding you back: 1. Analysis paralysis lowers your performance on mentally-demanding tasks In short, our working memory is like computer RAM, allowing us to focus on the information we need to get things done. Unfortunately, our working memory is in limited supply. You can think of it like our brain’s computer memory. Once it’s used up, there’s not much we can do. Studies have shown that high-pressure, anxiety-producing situations lead to lower performance on cognitively demanding tasks – the tasks that rely most heavily on working memory. Furthermore, the more participants want to perform well on a task, the more their performance suffers. Researchers believe both anxiety and pressure generate distractions that take up space in our working memory. When you overanalyze a situation, the over-analysis, anxiety, and self-doubt decrease the amount of working memory you have available to complete challenging tasks. This causes your productivity to plummet even further. 2. Analysis paralysis kills your creativity A recent Stanford study suggests that over-thinking not only impedes our ability to perform cognitive tasks, but keeps us from reaching our creative potential as well. “Participants in the study were placed into a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine with a nonmagnetic tablet and asked to draw a series of pictures based on action words (for example, vote, exhaust, salute) with 30 seconds for each word. (They also drew a zigzag line to establish baseline brain function for the task of drawing.) The participants later ranked each word picture based on its difficulty to draw. The tablet transmitted the drawings to researchers at the school who scored them on a 5-point scale of creativity, and researchers at the School of Medicine analyzed the fMRI scans for brain activity patterns. The results were surprising: the prefrontal cortex, traditionally associated with thinking, was most active for the drawings the participants ranked as most difficult; the cerebellum [the part of the brain traditionally associated with movement] was most active for the drawings the participants scored highest on for creativity. Essentially, the less the participants thought about what they were drawing, the more creative their drawings were.” These findings suggest that overthinking a problem makes it harder to do your best creative work. 3. Overthinking eats up your willpower A fascinating (and rather alarming) study published by the National Academy of Science looked at the decisions of parole board judges over a 10-month period. They found that judges were significantly more likely to grant parole earlier in the morning and immediately after a food break. Cases that came before judges at the end of long sessions were much more likely to be denied. This phenomenon held true over 1,100 cases regardless of the severity of the crime. As a lawyer – this was important! The judges were experiencing what psychologists call decision fatigue. Each decision that we make, from whether or not to hit snooze to what outfit we’ll wear to what we’ll eat for lunch, draws on the same limited supply of willpower. You can think of willpower as a muscle (I like to think of it as MANA from a video game).The more you use it, the more it wears out, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. That’s why so many dieters start out strong at the beginning of the day with a healthy breakfast and lunch, only to succumb to the temptations of junk food from the office break room in the afternoon. Actions that we take automatically, like brushing our teeth, take little willpower. However, when we agonize over a decision, we deplete our limited supply of willpower much more quickly, causing us to feel exhausted and overwhelmed. Not only does this decision fatigue inhibit our ability to clearly assess the situation at hand, it also makes us more likely to choose unhealthy food, skip exercise, and put-off working on side projects in favor of watching TV. In short, analysis paralysis makes it much more difficult to make high-quality, long-term choices later on. 4. Analysis Paralysis makes you less happy Essentially you are either a Satisficer or a Maximizer. Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project says: “Satisficers make a decision once their criteria are met. When they find the hotel or the pasta sauce with the qualities they want, they’re satisfied.” In contrast, “Maximizers want to make the best possible decision; even if they see a bicycle that meets their requirements, they can’t make a decision until they’ve examined every option.” Research suggests

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How To Overcome a Fear of Taking Action

Fear of taking significant steps towards our dreams is a common experience we all share. It’s essential to understand that fear is a natural reaction to leaving our comfort zones. However, acknowledging fear is different from allowing it to immobilize us. To transition from fear to action, consider these strategies that can help you gain perspective and move forward effectively. Understanding Fear as an Emotion Fear, while intense and sometimes overwhelming, is just an emotion. It’s a relic from our ancestral past when physical dangers like predators were a real concern. Today, our fears are often psychological, rooted in concerns about social acceptance or financial stability. By recognizing that fear is an internal response rather than a reflection of external reality, we can start to diminish its power over our actions. Universal Experience of Fear Remember, you’re not alone in feeling fearful. Even the most successful people, like Tony Robbins, have faced fear of failure or judgment. This universal experience means that fear isn’t an insurmountable obstacle but a common hurdle that everyone encounters. When you feel fear creeping in, think of those you admire who have pushed through their fears to achieve great things. This realization can be a powerful motivator to act despite fear. Initiating Movement with Small Steps The hardest part of overcoming fear is often just getting started. Inspired by Newton’s 1st Law of Motion, taking the first small step can set the stage for continuous progress. This initial action, no matter how small, can shift your mindset from fear to empowerment, sparking a cycle of positive actions and outcomes. Once you start, the momentum you build will make the next steps easier and more exciting. Seeking Support When Needed If fear seems too daunting to tackle alone, it’s okay to seek support. Reach out to friends, family, or professionals who understand your goals and can provide encouragement. A simple conversation can offer new perspectives, alleviate fears, and strengthen your resolve to move forward. Having a support system can be incredibly reassuring, providing the extra push needed to take action. In conclusion, transforming fear into action requires self-awareness, understanding, and a willingness to take small, consistent steps towards your goals. Remember, fear is a common emotion that can be managed and overcome with the right strategies and support. Embrace the journey of personal growth and let your actions define your path to success.

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