What is stopping you from getting what you want in life?

Your friends?

Your family?

A sense that failure – or success – might change your life and that feeling uncomfortable?

A sense that the people around you might disapprove of you aiming for what you want, of you succeeding or failing.

Essentially it boils down to fear. The big roadblock, sometimes the massive wall in the middle of road that keeps you from getting what you want.

How to overcome it? Here’s some useful ways I have found so far.

1. Taking small steps

This is good for fear that can seem overwhelming at first.

For instance the strong feeling – it can almost feel like a flight or fight-response – just before doing public speaking or asking someone out for a date. If you’re for instance nervous socially you might not feel able to ask people out on dates right away. The fear of being rejected and that others might think less of you if you get turned down can make many of us feel unable to ask the question.

A solution is to take small steps instead.

Steps like first just saying hi to people. Or starting to talk more to people online via forums and Instant Messaging. And then trying to be more involved in conversations to exercise your conversation-muscles.

I guess one could say that you gradually de-sensitize yourself to social situations or whatever you are afraid of. Or, seeing it in a more motivating way, building courage and expanding your comfort zone in this part of your life (which is something that often bleeds over to other areas of life too.)

So, identify your fear. Then make a plan with some smaller steps you can take to gradually lessen your discomfort.

2. Getting some concrete, positive motivation

Getting to the stage where you really feel that you need to stop waiting – or need stop reading one personal development book after another – and take action can take some time. One way to get moving is to replace some of your negative thoughts – that creates negative feelings – with clear, positive reasons to get going.

Take 5 minutes. Take out a piece of paper and a pen. And write down all the wonderful ways you can come up with how making this change will improve your life.

Lack of motivation can get you stuck while contemplating how much your life sucks. If you don’t become clear on you motivation it can become hard to get going and knowing why you are actually need to change.

Writing down all the wonderful things you will gain in your life by overcoming this fear can be powerful. Focus on those positive things to get motivated and inspired. Revisit your page of paper when you feel discouraged, uncomfortable or afraid. Even if it loses it’s inspiring effect gradually, it can be the initial trigger to unstick you. The spark to get you started to take those first actions that sends you into an upward-spiral of thought and action.

3. Seeing failure and rejection in a new light

Often it’s easier to not do something because we fear failure and rejection. We may fear failure when starting on a new career-path. And rejection from friends, family and the people around us if we fail. Or we might be afraid of being rejected when asking someone out.

However, as I have written before, the definition of failure we are brought up with in society might not be the best and most useful to have. If you look at the most successful people you quickly notice that they have a different response to failure than the more common one.

They don’t take failure or rejection that seriously. They know it’s not the end of the world if they fail. Instead they look at each failure and see the good part about: what they can learn from it and improve next time.

They have an abundance-mentality. They know that if their first business-venture fails it feels like crap for a while but it’s OK in the long run. They learn from it and then they try again.

If they are rejected for date, do they give up? Probably not. They know that next week or the week after they might find someone else that’s interesting and ask them out.

They know that there are a lot of good people out there. That there are a lot of good business opportunities out there. But they have also learned that to become successful at anything you have to fail perhaps 5, 10, 20 times or more.

The morning of day when you learned to ride a bike you fell of it time and time again. But you just brushed yourself of, perhaps cried for minutes or two and then you got up on the bike again. And towards the afternoon, or the next day, you probably started to become pretty good at riding your bike.

The same applies here. You have work on your skills to sharpen them. See failure or rejection not as something incredible negative that might end your life if it strikes. Redefine it in your mind to lessen the negative emotional impact and the fear. See failure simply as feedback on what you need to improve on. Listen to the advice the failure gives you and you will improve.

And success will come.

4. Being in the now

What this means is to keep yourself steadily in the now. Not letting your thoughts and emotions run away to the future or the past. That doesn’t mean that you don’t make plans, of course. You might think about asking someone out. You make plans on when to do it or perhaps what to say.

But being in the now means to not getting your mind stuck in a kind of psychological and emotional headspace that is placed in the past or future. It means not dwelling on what has gone wrong before and what could go wrong tonight or tomorrow. Such thinking will only create and ramp up your fear to the point where you feel unable to do anything. And just feel like running away.

Instead, make your plans. Then just be and don’t think about the future. Focus on the now and what needs to be done now. The future will be the now soon enough. And when you’re arrive there it will be much easier to get things done when you have created a minimal amount of stress and fear within your mind.

Whenever you feel fear, your mind is often dragged into a hypothetical, future scenario where you think you might fail. Your brain is over-analyzing a possible situation, which leads for many of us, to a negative, downward spiral of thoughts. This expands and empowers your fear to the point where you become almost paralyzed. So, how do you beat the fear in such situations?

You stop fighting. You surrender.

How to surrender:

Let me explain. By surrender, I don’t mean that you should give up and go home.

Instead, when you feel fear then accept the feeling. Don’t try to fight it or to keep it out (like many of us have learned throughout life).

Say yes to it.

Surrender and let it in.

Observe the feeling in your mind and body without labeling or judging it. If you let it in – for me the feeling then often seems physically locate itself to the middle of my chest – and just observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just vanishes.

I’ve mentioned this technique in several different articles already. And, yeah, I’m still amazed of how well it works. :)

As you surrender to the fear instead of fighting it the negative energy will pass through you and your body will release it. And you can return to focusing on the now once again.

Focusing on the now not only reduces fear but also increases the chances of you succeeding as your mind is focused, your confidence ain’t shattered and your thoughts become clear. It also makes it easier to succeed because when you are in the now you are not that self-conscious – something that quickly can lead to insecurity – but instead focused on the outside world and people you are interacting with.

5. Redefining you, me and reality

To change yourself and overcoming fear you have to be prepared and willing to redefine yourself.

You have to be willing to try these things out for yourself and keep practicing. No one can do it for you. But if you do that you can make what may seem to you to be big progress pretty quickly. And when you get used to it and these things become more and more habitual you will start to do them naturally.

But since it seems that just about everyone is addicted to their own personality, consistent change in behavior will still probably be kinda slow and gradual (with some epiphanies).

An addiction to positivity can lessen the fear in your mind of what might happen in a new, unfamiliar situation or how someone might respond to what you are saying. A negative view of the world can create fear and hold you back. But if you, for instance, become more positive – try the Positivity Challenge! – many of the people you meet will respond in a similar manner. In general, no matter how you think about the world, people are often like a somewhat of a mirror for you.

Change will be hard if you deep down still think: I am this shy or negative or scared person. “That’s just who I am”, you tell yourself. “Always have been, always will be”. And will be the truth for you as long as you think it’s the truth. If you are prepared and ready to change, you can however rewrite what you perceive as the truth about yourself and your personality, thoughts, actions and emotions.

Something I’ve recently started to think about and apply is what’s called Subjective Reality. Although I don’t fully understand it yet – I think – basically what it means is that there is no separation on the world. There is no you and I separated from each other (like in the more common worldview many of us are accustomed to).

Instead we are one.

You might not fully understand it or internalize it – I haven’t yet – but just going into a conversation with perspective that you and the other(s) are connected and really just one can be very useful.

When you apply this perspective on the world it’s a lot harder feeling fear. Or being mean or unkind. Just like it’s hard to do those things to yourself. Without the perspective of separation it seems like you – almost automatically – become calmer, kinder, less fearful and more open. It feels like you are naturally connected to the rest of the world.

Steve Pavlina has written a lot about Subjective Reality, so if you want to explore that further I recommend this link.

As for now and for me, I am focusing mainly on numbers 4 and 5. And I believe I’m just beyond getting started. I can probably deepen the understanding and application of those two points for months and years. A replacing such deeply – socially and habitually – ingrained beliefs and ways of thinking will probably take some time.

So, I’ll get back to my thoughts on and experiences with fear in the future.

Now, what are your tips for overcoming fear?

One of my favourite snippets of movie-dialogue is this one from the 1999 film Three Kings.

In this scene Major Archie Gates (George Clooney) wants the small team to save a fellow soldier and steal Saddam’s gold just after the war in Kuwait has ended.

The young soldier Conrad Vig (Spike Jonze) has his doubts about the plan:

Archie Gates: You’re scared, right?
Conrad Vig: Maybe.
Archie Gates: The way it works is, you do the thing you’re scared shitless of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it.
Conrad Vig: That’s a dumbass way to work. It should be the other way around.
Archie Gates: I know. That’s the way it works.

I think many things in life works just about like that. Of course, watching other movies, reading the paper and books or watching our favourite sit-com for a couple of decades conditions us to think it’s the other way around.

Someone does something because they are simply courageous.
Someone creates something awesome because they are just that inspired.

That certainly happens. But I think it’s often better not to wait for that perfect day or moment when you feel courageous or inspired as such times can come sporadically to say the least. It’s better and more effective to just get going. But it can seem as a lot harder.

Often, though, it only feels really hard and difficult before you start and during the first few minutes. Once you confront what you have to do then the tension releases, melts away and the inspiration or courage starts to seep in.

I have often had troubles getting going with writing a blogpost these last few months. I procrastinate by surfing aimlessly, checking the Pavlina forums, optimizing functions on the blog and checking my email. I like writing and sometimes I feel inspired and almost pounce on my chair to start tapping the keys. But many times I have a hard time getting started and being as productive as I could be.

It’s pretty much the same thing with times I when have had to be courageous. It’s like in Three Kings – but seldom as scary or dangerous though.

But you have force yourself and when you’re get going (or in some instances, when you are done) you get the courage you would wished for before you started. When it comes to these kinds of situations I find it easier to get going by simply not thinking to much about what you are about to do. Over analysis can, and will often, create a hell of a lot more fear in your mind than the situation warrants for.

So, I’ve started to give up waiting. When it comes to inspiration I just force myself to sit down and open one of the couple of dozen ideas for an article I have laying around. And lo and behold, after a few minutes words just starts pouring out of my fingers. And as a bonus a few ideas for other posts always start popping up in my head.

So, if you want to get some inspiration or courage, just force yourself to get started (something that I’d like to add gets easier every time you try it). It might not be sexy, cool, complicated or just like in – most of the – movies you’ve seen. But it works.

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
– Anais Nin

I think that one of the most effective ways to improve your life is simply to think in a more positive way.

This is of course nothing new and not that simple. If it was, well, then at least most of us would already be doing it.

So, why aren’t we more positive? I can think of a few reasonable reasons.

We think it is like it is. 

It’s easy to confuse what has happened to you, the story of your life, with now and the future. The past does not necessarily equal the future. If you believe it does then it does. But if you don’t if you believe it does then it doesn’t. If you change your way of thinking you can change your behavior, habits and your life.

Social programming.

A big reason many think that things are like they are and will always be that way is because no one ever told them that there was an alternative. The school, newspapers and other influential forces tells us we have a life and an identity that is us throughout our lives. And at least in much of the media, negativity is the normal filter to view the world through.

We hear this every day when we are young and very impressionable. Then we continue believing it and it becomes a part of our sense of self. And we continue our lives on that path.

Lack of energy. 

Changing the many negative and neutral thoughts in our day to day life to positive ones can take quite a bit of energy. If you are stressed out by work and your personal life, if you aren’t eating and sleeping well and don’t take time to exercise there will be a lack of energy. And with that lack it’s easy to just feel too damn tired to change your thoughts, to just give up and revert to the familiar way of thinking.

Too reactive and mindful of what others may think. 

You may think, if I change and become more positive, what will other people say? That I’m weird, hyper, over-compensating or unhappy on the inside? Will they laugh, mock me and question this change in outlook on life?

Or perhaps, they will actually like it and it will give me new opportunities down the line. Maybe it will bring success and my relatively comfortable life will be shaken up and change. Yeah, such worries can be some scary thoughts.

Lack of motivation. 

Not knowing exactly what’s in it for me on a personal and beneficial level.

Wanting to be right. 

Most of us have an ingrained sense that what we believe is right. Even though a belief we have might not be that useful. Or makes our lives out right miserable. It can be hard to give up a belief because then we have to give up being right.

We tried but failed (once or twice). 

Throughout our lives, in school and society we are taught that we should not fail, that it is bad. This can make us very reluctant to take chances and keep trying beyond the initial attempt.

A lack of knowledge/too much disempowering information. 

You will most likely fail several times at first. You will make mistakes. You may be met with negativity or disinterest. It may take more than a weekend to get the success you envision. It may take longer than you think, perhaps months. And that is ok, that is normal.

Not knowing how the world (most of the time) works can discourage you.

And the information about how the world works that you get from media, the people around you and society may not always be that accurate and effective. Instead, seek out relevant information for yourself to set your expectations to a reasonable level. Get information from a variety of different sources.

And get it from people that have experience and knowledge about what you are interested in. A good starting point can be your local library, bookstore or amazon.com.

10 reasons why you should become more positive

1. You will create a better world around you as your surroundings will become affected and change due to your positive thoughts and actions.

2. You will make better first impressions. Everyone stereotypes, whether they want or not. A positive first impression can mean a lot in many situations and have a lasting effect throughout your relationship with that person.

3. You will focus on the good things in people. Not their faults. This will make things much better overall and improve all kinds of relationships.

4. It’s easier to become more successful when you stop laying obstacles in the middle of the road in the form of negative thoughts.

5. Work becomes more fun. Everything becomes more fun.

6. You become more attractive. People like positive people. Positive people make other people feel good about themselves and they don’t drag the mood down. Also, a positive attitude is an indicator – and source – of high self-confidence, a quality that just about everyone is attracted to.

7. Being negative has very little concrete advantages and is not a very empowering way to look at life.

8. It opens up your mind to focus on other ways of looking at things. Sometimes wonderful new ways you might not ever have thought about or experienced before.

9. It puts the Law of Attraction to better use. The Law of Attraction basically says: whatever you think about you attract into your life. As you replace the negative thoughts with positive thoughts you will start to attract more positive opportunities and people into your life.

10. You’ll waste less time. Negativity can be like a self-feeding loop. First you think one negative thought. It leads you to three more. And then you start examining your life in deeper detail through a depressing lens. When you get into a vicious cycles like this it can eat up hours, weeks and years of your life. It can drain a lot of your energy whilst trapping you in paralysis by analysis. And you probably won’t become that much wiser in the process.

“Between stimulus and response is the freedom to choose.”
– Viktor Frankl

The Positivity Challenge is this:

For 7 days you will try to only think positive thoughts. Whatever happens to you will see the good side of it and what positive things you can learn and take away from it. By the end of the week you will have started to discover the very real benefits of a positive thinking, how much negative thoughts there are both in you and the world (you might be surprised) and begun establishing a new habit to replace your old, less constructive one. And then you can continue from there.

What I suggesting here is not a mindless kind of positive thinking where you pretend everything is OK whilst the house and your bed is actually on fire. Instead it’s you noticing a situation or stimuli and then choosing a positive and useful response to it instead of reacting in a knee-jerk way.

It’s you focusing on what could be a more positive and useful solution for you. Or even better, what could be a win-win situation if the situation involves other people (which many important situations in our lives do). A win-win solution is more often an even more satisfying and beneficial solution than the one where only you win.

Now, how to go about it? Here are three tips for the first week.

Cut the negative threads quickly.

Only allow yourself to go on a negative thread of thought for a set time-period, perhaps 30 seconds or a minute. Then just cut it off, drop it and think about what positive things you can get out of this situation. Don’t feed the negative thoughts with more energy or you might trap your mind in a downward spiral of overthinking and anxiety for quite a while. If you start going down a negative thread of thought it is important to cut it fast.

Realize that it is possible to choose what you think about and how you react.

You don’t have live your life in reaction. Being reactive to everything is not very empowering. You have a choice. But it might take some time to make this click in your mind. Even though I understood this intellectually pretty fast it took a longer time to understand and accept it emotionally and on a deeper level.

Focus on the gap between stimuli and reaction.  The more you think about this and try to use it by consciously choosing, over time (for me it was months but it can surely be achieved quicker) the gap will appear larger and larger and that will make the process easier.

Accept your feelings, don’t deny or refuse them.

Although it’s often possible to just quickly cut off negative thoughts sometimes it might not be enough. Negative emotions can build up within you over time or you might feel be overwhelmed by a certain situation. Then you can try the counter-intuitive way and not keep the feeling out by fighting it.

Instead, accept the feeling. Say yes to it. Surrender and let it in.

Observe the feeling in your mind and body without judging it. If you just let it in and observe it for maybe a minute or two something wonderful happens. The feeling just vanishes. It sounds weird but give it a try.

In addition, here’s a bunch of other suggestions – some of them you might not be able to use fully within a week but instead over a longer time-span – to make this challenge easier and improve your life.

Get the physical fundamentals down.

If you don’t have time to sleep a healthy amount of hours, eat properly and get exercise then you need to reprioritize. If you don’t do this it will be harder to become and stay positive. If you do reprioritize, your general sense of well-being will increase, you will feel stronger and have more energy.

Act as if.

Smile to feel happier. Move slower to relax. Use positive language. Act as if you are a positive person and you will start to feel and become more positive. It might feel weird at first, but it really works.

Start your day in a better way.

Check out these five tips for a better beginning to your day.

Limit your time with really negative people.

Some people feed on negative energy and whatever you try it never pleases them or changes their sour minds and moods. If nothing you do works then finally you might have to cut them out of your life or at least limit your time with them.

Model positive people.

Find positive people in your surroundings or anywhere in time and space (through documentaries, biographies etc.) and learn from them. Find out how they handle everyday life, problems, setbacks and compare it to your own thoughts and how you would handle similar situations.

Focus on the now and future, not the past.

A lot of people spend a lot of time thinking about on the mistakes they made in past. A better way is to think about the mistake you made and what you can learn from it. Then stop wasting your time and shift your focus to the present and the future where you can actually make a change.

Redefine “failure” and “proof”.

You don’t have to learn much about successful people to realize that one of their key-strengths is that their way of looking at failure is widely different from more common one in society. As Michael Jordan said:

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Also, in a similar vain, thinking one example represents the whole world might not be the most helpful belief to hold. Yes, someone may have cheated on you, treated you badly at work before you were fired and your first business venture may have gone down in flames. But applying one or two bad examples to the whole world and the rest of your life will cause suffering for you long after those hurtful events happened. And could set you up for even more pain and disappointment through self-fulfilling prophecies and the Law of Attraction.

I don’t think these all these words are the truth about how the world around you and me works. Just as a pessimistic (or realistic) view of the world is not the truth either. I don’t believe there is one truth, but rather that the world changes due to the beliefs you have about it and the actions you take based on your beliefs. I do believe that this is a more useful model of how to view and interact with the world than a pessimistic one and that it’s a more enjoyable way of thinking. It is a way of thinking that increases happiness and joy in life. Something I think just about everyone wants.

“Though I might travel afar, I will meet only what I carry with me,
for every man is a mirror.
We see only ourselves reflected in those around us.
Their attitudes and actions are only a reflection of our own.
The whole world and its condition has its counterparts within us all.
Turn the gaze inward. Correct yourself and your world will change.”
– Kirsten Zambucka

This is part 4 in the series How to double your productivity.

Here’s a couple of thoughts and questions I have found to be quite effective when trying to determine the potential value of an activity, task or action.

Using them can enable you to reach more clarity in your decision-making and to set the priorities in your life straight.

Check the future impact

This small tip takes the focus away from short-sightedness. Before you do something, simply to ask yourself:

What would be the future impact in my life if I did this?

Note both the negative and the positive consequences of your potential choices. This can save you many hours of doing pointless things that leads nowhere. The things you do find holding positive possibilities for you are the ones to pour energy and time into.

See it from the future. And then even further out.

Here you’re using the perspective of time once again to see the potential impact of your choices.

When you think about a larger decision (or perhaps not such a large one), close your eyes. Then visualize yourself and your life 5 years from now. First, imagine that you didn’t make that decision. Ask yourself this:

What have I missed out on by not making that decision or taking that action 5 years ago? What are the feelings, the people, the experiences, the results I have missed out on?

And really try to visualize and feel it.

Then, with your eyes still closed, imagine this:

You made that decision or started that activity 5 years ago. Ask yourself:

What did it bring me?

What were the feeling, experiences, results and people has it brought into my life these past 5 years?

How much has my life changed by me doing what I did?

Then, if you wish, try imagining yourself 10 years from now. Ask yourself the same questions again. Gauge the extent of the positive and negative consequences. By putting things in a longer time-perspective it can become easier to find what’s really important to you.

If I knew then what I know now.

I first heard about this one from Steve Pavlina and it concerns the now rather than the future. It checks the course you are already on and the choice you have already made to see if it’s something you still want to do. If it’s something that aligns with the person you are today.

Ask yourself:

Knowing what I know now, would I ever have gotten started with this project, career etc. if I had to do it all over again?

If the answer is no, perhaps you should stop whatever you are doing. You don’t have to stick with things until the bitter end and always finish what you’ve started. If what you’re doing no longer gives you the results you want, then maybe it’s time to try and find something better for yourself.

In the next few days, part 5: on finding and working from your values.

This is part 3 in the series How to double your productivity.

Here’s a thing I wish they taught us in school. Or maybe they did and I wasn’t listening.

In 1906 the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that 80% of the income in Italy was received by 20% of the people.

This was later developed into the Pareto Principle (also known as the 80-20 rule and the law of the vital few) by quality management guru Jospeh M. Juran. It goes something like this:

In many cases and for many phenomena 20% of the causes accounts for 80% of the consequences.

This means that 80% of the causes only accounts for 20% of the consequences.

So, focus your time and energy on those important 20% of tasks and activities that will give you 80% of the results.

Identifying those 20% is often not that hard. If you write a list of ten things you have to do today or right now and order them, from top to bottom, in order of importance then the first one or two things at the top of the list will most likely account for 80% of the value in your life. It’s worth the time to take a few minutes and try to figure out which of all the things you feel you have to do that are the really crucial ones.

Today, for me, such a thing is to study for tests in school next week. Some other things I also have to do are to go food-shopping, do the dishes and get some new light-bulbs. Getting the first thing done will obviously have much higher value and consequences to me than the other three.

I’ve also used the principle in another way in school. Since, in some courses, lectures don’t provide much value to me I have skipped a lot of them. I found that I could both learn and get the grade I wanted more effectively by focusing on reading the books for the course. It was more effective for me. For others it might be more effective to keep the main-focus on the lectures and less on the books.

When writing an article for a paper or a blog, the first 20% of the text will often account for 80% of the number of readers. Meaning: focus a lot of time and effort on the headline and possibly the first 2-3 sentences. For headline-tips, I suggest reading the excellent copyblogger.com.

To have a successful blog (repeated over and over again in numerous “How to build a better blog”-lists everywhere), the important 20% seems to be to fill your blog with useful and valuable content. In the end, that’s what your readers want and what will make them come back over and over again to your website.

I find that keeping the Pareto Principle in mind during the day keeps my mind on what is most important thing I could do right now. It keeps the mind on track and your own priorities from getting screwed up by all kind of things, thoughts and people.

It brings a kind of clarity into your life, since it keeps you focused on the important things and alleviates the stress of feeling that “you have to do” many of the less important things. It frees you from rules such as “I have to attend every lecture” and lets you make your own rules. It makes life easier and often gets you where you want to go faster and smoother.

Before you do something, ask yourself: does this belong to the 20% group?

A problem when trying to use this principle is that the crucial 20% is often things we procrastinate about. It might because sometimes it’s hard work. And these few activities can have a big effect on our lives and change can be uncomfortable. You could have a look at 7 ways to move beyond procrastination to get started.

The most effective thing though might just be to see the results of focusing on those few important tasks and activities. When you start to see some real, positive feedback it can really make a difference in the way you feel and think.

Finally: think of the Pareto Principle as a rule of thumb. It’s not an exact measurement. In some case it might be a 90-10 ratio instead of 80-20. In some cases it might be less.

Now, in what ways can you use the Pareto Principle? And what 20% of your life brings you 80% of the value?

In the next few days, in part 4: Some additional ways to tell if what you’re doing is really the best thing to do.