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How to Jump Into the Cold Water

Have you ever gone into cold water, so cold that from the first step you start rethinking your desire to be there?  How do you handle that situation?  Are you one of those people that will simply jump in?  Or do you torture yourself by taking one painful step at a time? 

I went to personal development seminar once, and one of the concepts that they taught us was: “How you do anything, is how you do everything”.  Basically what they were trying to say was that if you are a person that will simply jump into the cold water, you will also carry that trait into other areas of your life.  If we take starting a business as an example, you would simply go at it 100%, as opposed to doing endless preparation before you actually do anything productive.

The “Simply jump in” attitude has both advantages and drawbacks.  One of the great things about this outlook on life is the fact that it initiates action.  Inaction is the greatest peril in the way of accomplishing absolutely anything.  Unfortunately we are all susceptible to it to some degree.  The flipside of this concept is that sometimes we can act too fast, and that bears a whole new set of consequences.

So what is the best solution to this problem of making our selves take action, but acting at the “right time”? 

I often bring this up in my articles, but balance is very important in anything that we do.   To apply this concept to what we are discussing – we should “simply jump in”, but at the same time we should also be able to stop out selves long enough to do some necessary due diligence. 

The other solution to inaction is a simple piece of advice – “Get over your-self”.  It might be a bit harsh, as a statement, but I believe that it is a vital thing to do in our life in general.  People tend to over analyze a lot of what they do.  Often we simply need to push ourselves to jump into the cold water, so that we can feel less cold after we do.

Last but not least, we should talk about having motivation to be able to “jump”.  It is easy to say that we should “just jump”.  The simple fact is that if we are not motivated to do so, if the reward at the end of the “jump” isn’t big enough to get us to do it, we simply are not going to jump.  This is a very crucial point.  Imagine that you are standing on the shore of a very cold ocean.  Would you be able to force yourself to jump into it if you didn’t really want to swim?  Probably not!  

People, who are exceedingly successful in life, all have one thing in common.  They all live their passion.  What would be a better motivator then being passionate about what you do?  So the very first thing you have to do before taking any action is to ask yourself a question – is what I am about to do what I really want?  And if it is, or it will give you something that you really want, or bring you to that place where your passion lives – don’t think, even if it is unpleasant at first, simply jump!

Technorati Tags: Personal Development, Success, Fear, Self Discipline

Overcoming Fears

We all have fears. For some it is a fear or heights, for some it is a fear of spiders. All of those fears are valid and how they affect our life is also important. If the fear stops you from living your life fully, you might want to consider trying to overcome that fear.

Let’s look first at what a fear really is. Most things we are afraid of are irrational. For example, a fear of spiders or mice. Those things can not really harm us, but our mind makes it out to be more then it really is, so we perceive it as if they could. This kind of division between rational and irrational fear is important to note. It would be probably not very wise to fight a fear of getting lung cancer when someone mentions that you should quit smoking. So the only fears that we should address are the fears that we know are irrational.

What do we do next? There are several ways to go here, but all of them boil down to few things we must do if we want to overcome fear.

We must examine where the irrationality of our fear comes from. Can we think of a reason why we are afraid of spiders? If yes simply acknowledge the fact don’t do anything else.

Next, we must admit to our selves that we are being irrational. Sometimes it is harder said then done, but it is unavoidable. In order for us to be able to take control over the fear, we have diminish it in our mind first.

After that, we must confront the fear. Here, smaller steps are better then big heroic leaps. So in the case of spiders, you can start by learning about spiders from a book. This will not be as effective, but with small steps we will eventually get us to the point where we can face what we are afraid off.

I need to clarify something here. Once we have confronted the fear, it will not magically disappear. As the matter a fact, you probably will not stop feeling uneasy about the thing you feared. The big difference is that you will now be able to control that fear, instead of it controlling you. Eventually if you face your fear enough times, it might diminish to the point where you will not be afraid at all. This however isn’t our goal here. What we want is to regain control over your emotions, so when you are put in the situation where you are afraid, you will be able to take control and handle whatever comes your way.

Technorati Tags: Fear, Personal Development, Success