Spirituality and Self Help » Treating Anxiety

How to Overcome The Fear of Failure

shimon — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 01:00:47 +0000

This is a guest post by Courtney Phillips. Courtney is the owner of Rated Colleges
It’s basic human nature to judge and be judged by our successes or lack of them; it’s a trait that we’re born with and one that’s passed on to us by the adults around us from the time we’re old enough to develop reasoning skills.

Usually the children who are good at something and talented are lauded and feted by society; there’s no room for the also-rans and the jack-of-all-trades in a world where you have to excel academically, have a flair for the arts, sing like a bird, dance like a peacock, play like a jock, and so on and so forth, to be able to say that you’re a success.

This is exactly why we grow up fearing failure. What exactly is failure? In the eyes of society, it’s the act of not being outstanding at anything you attempt. Your parents expect you to top your class when you’re in school; and when you grow up, they expect you to get into the best colleges and land a high-profile job, one that will allow them to be proud of you.

Most people end up failing for this very reason – they’re not able to live up to the expectations of their loved ones. And that my friends, is the root cause of failure – EXPECTATIONS. When we don’t expect anything, it’s easy to be content with what we have. And when we are content with what we have, we’re in that elusive state we refer to as happiness.

Overcoming failure

Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street. — Zig Ziglar

So if you’re looking to overcome your fear of failure, here’s what you need to do :

1Adopt a never-say-die attitude. If there’s something you want badly, (the operative word here is YOU), there’s no shame in trying to achieve it even if you fail repeatedly. After all, if your happiness depends on it, why should you worry about what other people think or say?

History is replete with stories where success comes after multiple failures – we only have to look at the legend of Robert Bruce and the spider and Thomas Edison’s failed inventions for inspiration.

2 Think of the worst that could happen: Very often, the worst that could happen is that you suffer varying levels of embarrassment. Sometimes you also end up losing precious time, money and other resources. But if what you stand to gain is much more valuable than what you could lose in the process of trying, it’s worth making the effort.

3Think of the best that could happen: What if you end up achieving your goals in a spectacular manner? You’d never know how it felt unless you tried. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest geniuses of all time, said that genius was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. So if you try hard enough and put your heart and soul into attaining your goal, you’re definitely well on the road to success.

It’s always the first step that’s the hardest to take; once you get past this, you’re definitely going to gain courage with each and every further step that you take. So if you’re able to muster up the strength to take the initial initiative, you have nothing to fear but fear itself.

In this video Phil Van Hooser explains more about the fear of failure.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvtOMLocVeg

Treating Anxiety – Even More Techniques

shimon — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:23:39 +0000

This post is concentrated with lots of Techniques try to use each of them in different scary situations.

One of the most effective techniques is to ask what is the worse that can happen? Say you have a job interview that you dread. You can ask yourself what’s the worse thing that can happen if I don’t get the job? Your answer can be something like: than I won’t work and I won’t have an income. Keep asking the question what’s the worse…? Answer: I won’t be able to afford the payments on my house, I’ll lose it and become homeless.

keep asking until your answer will be final something like I’ll die. Decide that you’re going to accept whatever final answer your going to get if needed. When we accept the worse that can happen it’s not as scary as before. Finally decide that you’re going to do whatever you can to prevent the worst case scenario and do it.

Another interesting technique is to imagine that the fear is coming out of your body with every exhale and that love and courage comes in with every inhale. Now simply breath deeply.

The next technique is highly effective and simple. Keep yourself busy. Work extra hours at work or at home, start something you always wanted. When you’re busy you don’t have time to worry and if you will persist than soon enough you will be accustomed to think in a certain non frightened way.

Sometimes we fear things that the chances they will occur are slim at best. For example you may fear that a truck with goods you transfer will get into an accident. But by checking the probability of it actually occurring out of all the drives, it usually comes down to only a few.

Most of this techniques and many more with detailed examples of the real people that used them can be found in the bestseller How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. I think it’s a worthwhile read for anyone interested in a peace of mind and healthy attitude.

Treating Anxiety – The Techniques

shimon — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 23:37:25 +0000

In my previous post I wrote about anxiety. In this post I want to elaborate and specify specific techniques to overcome anxiety.

First of all there are basically two ways to treat anxiety:
1) with medicine.
2) other techniques.

If you choose medication even if it helps in the short run, in the long run it harms your body. Every drug has side effects and usually it’s the liver that is damaged. Moreover it makes you psychologically dependent upon the drug and sometimes even physically dependent.

There are easier ways to deal with anxiety.

Treating Anxiety with NLP

The first technique I want to share is called SWISH and it’s origin can be found in NLP. NLP stands for Neuro Linguistic Programming. NLP is basically a collection of methods to treat and help people.The SWISH technique helps change your behavior, for example you can change your behavior when meeting strangers from fearing them to feeling happy. This technique is powerful and with it it’s possible to change almost any undesired behavior.

To do the exercise start by sitting in a comfortable place and close your eyes. Relax as much a possible by breathing deeply. Now create, in your mind’s eye, an image of you just at the moment of the situation you want to change. Make the image as vivid and sharp as you can. Make the colors bright. Include everything that is relevant: the scenery, people around you and their expressions,smell, sounds, touch, etc.

Now create the opposite image make an image where you succeed,where you feel great and you overcome your problem. Make it as vivid as possible, feel your success. Now shrink the success image until it’s very small and change the color of the image to black and white.

Now see the two images together. The fear image fills your entire vision and the success image is behind it. Imagine they are connected with a rubber band. Now as you say SWISH you pull the rubber band back and the small success image throw out the fear image and fills your entire vision. As it replaces the image it becomes colorful and vivid. Make the SWISH as fast as you can. Return the SWISH pattern at least five times with each time faster than before.

You have now trained your mind to focus on the success rather than the fear.

There are times when you remember something you said or others said to you and that makes you feel uncomfortable. Perhaps your are stuck with the memory of your boss yelling at you and you keep rewind it in your mind. In NLP there is an easy solution.

In your mind’s eye watch the entire event as a movie exactly as it happened. Now rewind the movie back see all the characters doing everything backwards. Now watch the movie again but double the speed and add a circus music. Now rewind back even faster and make everyone with really long noses. Rewind back and forth at high speeds and add funny stuff like Mickey mouse ears and voices. Do it at least ten more times with each time faster and funnier.

Now think of the memory again and check your feeling if it’s neutral congratulations you have just changed the emotions attached to the memory. If it’s not neutral repeat the process again as many times as you need.

In my next post I’ll add even more non NLP techniques to deal with anxiety.

Treat Your Anxiety, Free Yourself

shimon — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:24:15 +0000

There is only one emotion. All other emotions are variations and distortions of this emotion. Just like all the colors blend to create the white color, love consists of all other emotions.

Even fear which is the opposite of love in it’s highest expression is a form of love. For instance when a mother is concerned about her son crossing the road alone she is expressing her love for him.

Though love is all there is usually it doesn’t feel like it. Currently anxiety is more prevalent than before and the majority of population has experienced it at least once in their life.

Anxiety Symptoms

Although anxiety is considered negative in many cases fear is useful and can even save your life. If it wasn’t for fear you wouldn’t know to stay away from a hot stove.

In the past it was essential that when we encounter a predator we could flee. So When we felt frightened our body entered a state called fight-or-flight. In this state our body works differently it allocates resources differently.

Among the symptoms of this response are:
Dilation of blood vessels for muscles.
Dilation of pupil.
Inhibition of erection.
Auditory Exclusion (loss of hearing).
Tunnel Vision (loss of peripheral vision).
Constriction of blood vessels in many parts of the body.
Inhibition of stomach and intestinal action.
Acceleration of heart and lung action.

Nowadays even though we don’t have predators every time we feel fear our body enters the same state. It happens because our nervous system can’t differentiate between real and imagined threats.

The negative aspects of this response may be:constipation,Diarrhea, difficulty maintaining sexual arousal. In more series cases it can result in chronic suppression of the immune system, leaving the sufferer vulnerable to infection by viruses and bacteria.

Treating Anxiety

It’s commonly know that we are born with only two fears, the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. All other anxieties are learned. But if we learn to fear we can also unlearn.

The first step is to acknowledge your fear. It’s important to distinguish between the feeling you feel and your personalty. If you say I’m a cowered it’s different than saying I feel afraid. In the first sentence you declare that the fear is a part of you. In the second version you state that you feel anxious now.

The second step is understanding what frightens you. Often we feel fear without knowing the source. Ask yourself what frightens me?

The third step is asking yourself what can you do about it? write down your answers. If you realize that there is nothing you can do then there isn’t a good reason to feel anxious. The whole purpose of the feeling is so that you can do something about it.

The final step is deciding what you are going to do and execute it.

Another great technique is simply to say the word love like a mantra. By repeating the word love you tune your energy and intention towards love.

here is a great EFT video about Stress Relief.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gmz-b2sV0Q

In my next post I’ll write more about dealing with anxiety.