This is a guest post by Ryan Rivera. Thanks to modern and creative techniques of treating anxiety and panic disorders, Ryan Rivera is finally anxiety-free. Learn more about his anxiety struggles and survival techniques at www.calmclinic.com.

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This is a guest post by Maria Rainier. Maria is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education and performs research surrounding online degrees. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.
When certain individuals of certain dispositions are dealt enough bad hands, they cease to bounce back, and they plummet into clinical depression.

As one example, disordered eaters face trials every four hours or so when they must eat.

Regardless of their actual food intake, anorexics, bulimics, binge-eaters, and the like perceive the act of eating itself

as a failure and eventually cease to see much of anything as a success. Even the act of weight loss disappoints them, as the desire to lose more is ever-present, and there is guilt in the act of purging. Positive thought escapes them and their inner relationships with themselves—their spirituality—is marred with despair.

Seligman, Maier, and Learned Helplessness

Many disordered eaters and sufferers of clinical depression have learned to be depressed, to be helpless. American psychologist Dr. Martin Seligman and Steve Maier conducted experiments in the 1960s to develop their theory of learned helplessness.

Three groups of dogs were involved, all of them in harnesses, Group One being in the harnesses for a short period and later released. For dogs in Group Two, pressing on a lever could stop the electric shock administered to them, but dogs in Group Three had no control over the duration of the shock. While dogs in Groups One and Two recovered from the experiments quickly, dogs from Group Three displayed many signs shown by clinically depressed humans.

In another of Seligman’s and Maier’s experiments, the same groups of dogs were tested in a shuttle-box apparatus. Dogs could escape the shocks by leaping over a fence to the other side. Most dogs in Group Three, who had already learned that the electric shocks were inescapable, made no attempt to remove themselves from the apparatus and merely submitted to the shocks, whining.

The Perceived Absence of Control

In later experiments, Seligman and Maier learned that dogs could learn helplessness merely by observing the helplessness of other dogs; this can hardly be untrue in the human experience. Witnessing uncontrollable events on the evening news can easily give one the blues.

Obsessing over negative thoughts, however, trains the mind to react pessimistically to events. Things outside of an individual’s control thus become, to that individual, potential disasters rather than opportunities.

Breaking the Cycle With Positive Thinking

Of the 150 dogs in Seligman’s and Maier’s experiments, about one in three escaped their learned helplessness and became opportunists—they found ways to escape unpleasant situations despite their histories. Similar behaviors exist in humans, relating to optimism.

Optimism can be summed up by the philosophy that occurring events are impermanent, not damning, and impersonal. A car accident is not an act of God, the universe did not stop to make one’s day miserable, and the sun will rise tomorrow. What separates the optimist from the pessimist continues to undergo study.

One need not wait, however, to break the cycle of depression and pessimism. As one can train oneself (consciously or not) to be helpless, one can also learn happiness. Replacing each negative thought with a positive image, keeping a gratitude journal, and enlisting in the help of close friends and family can greatly increase the joy in one’s life.

In the event of a fender-bender, replace the rage and disappointment with gratitude that no one was injured. Have friends remind you to voice negative emotions less often and express thankfulness more openly, without abandon. Keep key phrases and mantras on hand to recite, either aloud or to yourself.

Clinical depression takes years to develop, and so learned happiness comes only with time and effort. It is a journey, however, to a better place.

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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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvtOMLocVeg

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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.

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