Fear triggers all kinds of emotional issues. It stops you from trying new things and it stops you from enjoying life. Fear cripples self-confidence and adds to an existing system of false beliefs, slowly swallowing your self-esteem as you run for cover and away from your full potential.

Running for cover is a response to a threatening stimulus. It activates a region of the brain that sends signals throughout the body to respond to imminent danger. Your heart beats faster sweat glands open and defense shields are up and ready to defend. But nothing in sight appears to be that detrimental.

Fear has the power to create illusions of worst possible outcomes. It plays on your deepest insecurities, unresolved childhood traumas, poor experiences, and misinformation.

The brain does not know if what it sees is fact or fiction. If you imagine the worst case scenario you will experience similar emotions as someone who is actually living through a worst case scenario. Since the brain cannot discern if what it sees already happened, is happening or is just being imagined, it responds to the stimulus as if it were real and happening now.

To overcome fear you must face it head-on. Working through your emotional triggers such as childhood traumas and other unresolved issues could help you take back control over your life. When you take back control you build self-confidence and raise self-esteem.

Start challenging the false beliefs that bind your fear.

1. Ask yourself, what am I afraid of?
2. Is the fear irrational? If yes:
3. Try to identify the root cause.

Example:

• A. I am afraid of social gatherings because I don’t know what to say to people and feel as if everyone is judging me. I start panicking; I breakout into sweat, feel extremely anxious and will want to go home.I think I react this way in social settings because I didn’t interact well with other children during my childhood. My family moved a lot. Every school I went to was different and making friends got harder and harder after each move. Plus, being the new kid in school I was teased a lot.
• B. I am afraid of failing because I don’t want to prove myself right. That nagging voice keeps reminding me that I’ll never amount to nothing. So I do nothing to make sure I don’t fail.I think I react this way because when I was growing up I was always told that I don’t know how to do things. No matter how hard I tried to get it right it was never good enough. Someone always showed me the ‘right’ way. After a while you get tired of being wrong so you stop trying.
4. Find the false beliefs.

Example

• A: I’m being judged, I don’t fit in
• B: Not good enough
5. Challenge false beliefs. Produce facts to support your beliefs, if you cannot produce facts write down in a journal the reality of the experience:

Example

• A: (False Belief: I am being judged) Reality: I’m insecure and socially awkward. I realize I need to build self-confidence and learn social skills so I could socialize and engage with other people.
• B: (False beliefs: I’m not good enough) Reality: I don’t always fail at everything. I may not be good at everything but I am good at those things that mean something and hold value.

It has been a while since you last heard from me. What’s going on with me? A few things.

I am the new and proud owner of an Italian Greyhound puppy. Meet Iggy. Iggy is adding the much needed balance to my life. We were meant to be together.

Also, summer is just around the corner. I signed up for Hope Volleyball Tournament and Pickup Sunday’s beach volleyball. It will be an excellent way for me to spend the last day of the week before the start of a new week throughout the summer. My brain will certainly appreciate it. Why you may ask?

The power of nature is incredible. Nature has a natural ability to stimulate our involuntary attention without any extra effort. Nature is beautiful and stimulating and we appreciate it as is. Imagine playing beach volleyball at sunset with the sound of chirping birds and waves washing up ashore… How soothing is that? Since nature doesn’t require additional attention, our involuntary attention circuits are able to refresh themselves with ease which strengthens our memory. Unlike taking a walk down a city street, our involuntary attention is focused on potential dangers therefore unable to refresh itself. The continuous exposure to such stimuli drains our cognition. So make sure you also take advantage of natures healing effects over the next couple of months.

I often say success is in the doing not in the talking. Although I’ve been talking a lot about my upcoming book in the past six years this time it’s actually here. Yes, you read correctly. Stop Sabotaging Your Life – 3 Steps To Your Full Potential is being released this summer. It has been a long ride, but one well worth taking. I now have more knowledge about writing and publishing books than I did throughout the six years. There is no way I could have written and published a book then without the knowledge that I have now. Stayed tuned for more information regarding the book launch party. I’ll be updating my fan page, twitter, and website.

I’ve been working hard on a few other projects too. One of the projects includes my new website design. Most of the content is new and is more informative. As part of the update I share activities for self esteem, confidence, and overcoming fear. Take a moment to browse the website. I’m always open to feedback and suggestions.

If you need a quick confidence booster or a refresher on raising self esteem, I’ve got the perfect gift for you. I just created 2 e-courses to help you face the everyday challenges with a healthy shot of confidence and self-esteem. Sign up for one or both courses. I recommend, however, working through one program at a time. To get the most out of each course, spend time every day to complete the suggested exercises. There are 7 parts to each course and you will receive it over a period of seven days.

Check it out. If you like it, please share it with your friends.

Make a commitment to spend the necessary time on personal development every day.

There is so much happening in my world right now and its all happening at the same time. Honestly, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. You’re probably asking yourself, isn’t he a life coach, someone who helps other people overcome stress and anxiety? Yes, I do help people overcome similar feelings but that doesn’t mean that I never feel that way myself. I am human too. I have the same level of emotions as you. I’d be concerned if I heard a life coach or someone else say that they never experience stress.

Next month on April 22^nd, we’re launching Step 1 of my workshop series: Stop Sabotaging Your Life and Embrace Your Full Potential. I am very happy and excited to get it off the ground. The workshop has been in the makings for two years, being this close to the launch something that has taken much time, commitment and planning to complete is euphoric. Plus++ the book, Stop Sabotaging Your Life – 3 Steps to Your Full Potential will be available at all major online retailers and in some bookstores shortly thereafter.

With it comes a bit of eustress.  Eustress is good stress, it’s when adrenalin flows through the body with mixed emotions but mostly positive ones. Think of eustress like when you’re watching a movie that has you sitting at the edge of your seat, a hockey game in sudden death overtime, almost winning the lottery, adrenalin surges through your body as it reacts to the level of excitement. That’s what is happening to me, only that I have a few things happening at the same time causing a lot of excitement but also scrambling my focus.

Sometimes you can’t distinguish between bad or good stress. For some of us stress is stress. When a surge of adrenalin strikes the body it could be enough to put you in a bad place if you are not aware of what is going on in your world.

Ask yourself the following questions to help you identify the source of your stress.

1. What am I excited for?
2. Why am I excited for it?
3. How much does it mean to me?
4. Is the stress within my control?
5. What could I do to reduce the level of stress? (Task list, meditate, exercise, etc.)

If the stress is not caused by excitement, identify the source of the stress. After you identify the source you will need to determine how important it is to you. If it’s not important consider removing it, if it is important consider using coping strategies to reduce the stress level.

Not all stress is bad. Learning to distinguish between stress and eustress will make a big difference with how you handle stressful situation and will allow you to deal with it effectively.

Talking about effectiveness, I just answered my own question on how to regain focus and not let the excitement get out of control.

Last week I took a client to one of my favorite places to build self-confidence, the bookstore. The bookstore always has people roaming around browsing self-help and other personal development books, so it’s the perfect place to do a confidence building exercise.

Sometimes clients panic when they learn about the challenge. They immediately go to a place of fear – fear of rejection and other issues which trigger their anxiety. After I explain to them the details of the challenge most clients freeze and some resist the challenge.

The challenge entails speaking with eight different strangers from different age groups. To most people, the idea of talking with strangers about a personal topic such as self-confidence is enough to create all sorts of negative thoughts. Imagine how someone with social anxiety would feel? The good news is by the time clients reach this point in the life coaching program they already know they experience social anxiety, the root cause, and what they must do to build self-confidence.

There are times when clients measure a level 20 anxieties on scale that ends at 10.  When that happens I let them sit and observe the anxiety as I coach them through the process of not resisting it. Within a few minutes the anxiety comes back down to level five or lower, that’s when they begin to build self-confidence by asking strangers four specific questions on self-confidence.

I watch from a distance as they approach the first stranger. Usually they approach the first stranger with apprehension, expecting to be rejected the moment they outer the first word:

“Excuse me sir, my name is Bruno and I’m doing a survey for a school project. I have four questions I’d like to ask you that will take no more than three minutes of your time. Would you mind if I asked you the questions?”

Their eyes widen, surprised that the stranger is actually willing to answer their question. Usually they are so surprised that they frantically scribble down the answers in a journal making it difficult to read sometimes. What they find amazing is the questions provoke discussion something that people crave – a connection with other people. After they finish asking the first stranger the set of questions they immediately target the next person and begin the process again without hesitation.

At he end of the confidence building exercise I check in with my client and asked her,

“On a scale from 1 to 10 where’s your anxiety?” She said, “0.” Then I asked her, “your confidence on a scale of 1 to 10” where is it, she responds with, “10.”

So I’ll leave you with this thought:

Confidence comes from within. It’s being self assured and comfortable with who you are including your weaknesses. You begin to develop self-confidence from about age two with the support and encouragement from your immediate influencers. As you mature and gain life experience your self-confidence continues to grow with every event. The best part of self-confidence is that you can turn it on simply by believing in yourself and creating new experiences.

The other day I watched a program on television that was extremely motivating. I can’t remember the name of it but it was about a lady who came from nothing but created everything. A true rags to riches story. What made it inspirational was that she decided to take life by the horns to create the lifestyle she dreamed. She said, “I’m not going to sit waiting for something to land on my lap while life passes me by.”

She didn’t sit idle, that’s for sure. What she created for herself was inspiring and she did it all with courage and will.

It comes down to how bad do you really want it?

The lady featured on the program didn’t let anything get in her way of reaching the success she dreamed of. That doesn’t mean she did not encounter challenges and failures along the way. To achieve that level of success you have to roll with the punches. Of course it helps if you are committed to the goal. The greater the desire to achieve the goal the more tolerant you are of making mistakes and learning from it.

Resilience is another character strength that will help you along the path to success. You can build an ego and ignore mistakes or you can accept you are human and give yourself permission to be one. Without mistakes we could not learn what we need to know to get us to where we want to go.

What stood out the most about the lady on the television show was that she had a full understanding of herself. She was completely in tune with her identity, her strengths, and how to use it to create the incredible life she leads today. She spoke about her values and how important it is to be authentic – staying true to oneself.

Having a full unvarnished understanding of yourself could help you overcome those challenges that you must face and the mistakes you must make. You’re better equipped to handle the 39 things you did right and that one thing you did wrong that you just can’t let go of.

So I’ll leave you with this. It takes courage to make mistakes and to express your core. If you are not expressing your core and too afraid of making mistakes you may be chasing an ideal you, which is a moving target that you might never reach. It is true that when you express who you are from the core and can learn from mistakes you create the life you were meant to live.

Recently I’ve been life coaching a wave of clients who are no longer needed in the workforce, their training and experience is obsolete and their job were eliminated.

Losing your job at midlife can trigger all sorts of emotions especially if you dedicated your life to your job and your identity is wrapped in it. What I am hearing from clients is that they no longer know who they are or what they want to do next – they feel completely lost and afraid.

The good news is that a job doesn’t make you – you make the job. It was you who brought strengths, skills, and experience to the role and molded it to what it was before you left. That means you could easily do it again if you know a bit about yourself and how to apply it to a new career.

A life map can help you discover a wealth of information about you and what your capable of doing. By plotting all the successes that you achieved going back ten-years will uncover strengths, weaknesses and all sorts of patterns about you, and it can also boost your self-confidence.

After plotting all the success into a life map analyze it by asking yourself the following questions:

1. What strength did I use to achieve the success?
2. Which part of the success excited me the most?
3. When sharing the success with others what did I speak about the most?

After analyzing the life map write down everything you discover about you and make a list of your top ten strengths. Next to the strengths write down any opportunity that could use those strength in their environment. Combine all your strengths to identify a new career path all together. And remember, it’s never too late to enhance strengths and skills with continuing education.

Losing your job is not the end of the world or end of the road for you. What it really means is that it is a time for growth and an opportunity for you to learn about you and to utilize your skills and strengths to create a self-serving and fulfilling life.

Nindy

Everyday I meet someone who struggles with self-trust. They come to me with hopes of learning self-trust so that they can make and commit to decisions to move forward in their life.

Here’s what I know about trust. Trust between two people can be broken at any time, and that includes you and the trust you have for yourself. Think about it for a moment. If you listen to what other people say about what you can or cannot achieve and believe it you are breaking trust with yourself. It’s the ultimate deception to your Inner Child.

Your Inner Child is who you are your true self – your inner being. It is all the things you hold near and dear to your heart. It’s what makes you sing, dance and create, and do all the things you wish to do. It’s your wisdom and guiding light, the little intuition that keeps you up at night.

It really should be your best friend. Your Inner Child is tapped into a higher frequency allowing it to cut through the noise to pick out exactly what you need from the clutter. At exactly the right moment and not a minute sooner it will show you what you need if you are listening.

Building Self-Trust

1. The first thing you need to do to build self trust is communicate. Whoever said talking with yourself is crazy doesn’t know what they’re missing. Grab a mirror. Look into your eyes without judgment. I know your probably freaking out already… “I don’t want to look at my wrinkles” “I don’t like my nose” “God I’m pale” After those thoughts pass observe your brain pattern if you still feel awkward. When you are ready ask yourself a question. Keep a pad and pencil near by you may want to write down the answer.
2. Journaling is another excellent tool. Write down a question you have. Give it some thought and then answer it. Some people are so surprised at how effective it is. Try it.
3. Become an active listener. Look at your thoughts before reacting to them. Try to create space between your thoughts and behavior. They are two distinct components of you, self awareness gives you the power to control it and not be impulsive.
4. Never Give Up! Who cares if you flunk and make mistakes? Do it again! If you love what your doing and could learn from those mistakes isn’t that what your supposed to do? I won’t tell you how badly I failed at my first motivational talk. It was r-e-a-l bad. Did I want to quit? Yes, but did I? NO! I learned from it and so will you.
5. I don’t know about you but I loved getting treats when I was kid. Back then someone had to give me a treat because I was too young to do a whole lot for myself but now I’m an adult and treat myself because that little kid is still part of me and needs his treats… So do YOU!

Studies published in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science show that people tend to regret more of the things they did than the things they didn’t do. However, with the passage of time, people come to regret the things they didn’t do.

“If I knew then what I know now my life would be different”

Most of us fail to do the things that we should because we are afraid of failing and getting judged by others. The notion that someone may have a false perception of you is overwhelming to many of us. What will they think of me if I fail?  Rather than learning from failure, which is what we are supposed to do, we opt for the status quo; “it is what it is and nobody can judge me for that.”

There is also the fear of living up to the person we claim to be – “what if I’m not as talented/smart/good enough?” We answer the question without having the real answer, which can only come from experiences consisting of successes and failures. The answer that we do create scares us from pursuing a meaningful life, but is it truthful and objective – probably not.

We fail to realize that one experience leads to another and to the next and so on. Every experience provides a wealth of knowledge that may not be clear at that very moment. The lessons sometimes don’t show up for months and sometimes years later. Not until the sums of all experiences connect the dots will you be able to see the lessons. Even when something horrible happens and you can’t imagine how anyone could find a lesson in something so hurtful, there is a lesson. We need time and experience to truly understand what it is.

Let’s use Adele for example. Her voice is angelic and without a doubt she would be famous, however the experiences that made her an international star were the ones of her breakup. The lyrics are so powerful and meaningful that millions around the world resonated with it. Breakup’s suck and hurt deeply but from it you can find inspiration and that’s what Adele did to catapult her to the top of the charts in 26 countries.

In 2009 Susan Boyle took the world by surprise after appearing on Britain’s Got Talent. That’s one experience she will never forget nor will any of us.

It’s never too late to start creating experiences. Its only too late when you’re lying on your death bed wishing you had taken the opportunity when you had the chance instead of ruminating that its too late to create a wish list.

Forget about all the things you missed out on, just accept it for what it is. When you know better you do better. Back then you acted according to the knowledge you had but now you know better and will do better. Write it down on a piece of paper so you don’t forget, remind yourself daily. And start taking small steps towards crossing things off the wish list.