7/12/2010
Letters - The Dream Job, Out of Reach
“A New Generation, an Elusive American Dream” (front page, July 7) shines a light on the significant changes in the lives of educated, well-off, hard-working people who by all standards should be succeeding and are instead finding themselves struggling in wholly unfamiliar territory.
Educated couples with good jobs provided loving homes to their children and promised them that they could be president one day, only to find that their efforts weren’t enough. They did everything right by their children, only to watch them flail.
And as children of this generation, we were always told to chase our dreams, that we could be anything we wanted to be, so why should we settle for less? Why should we major in something practical at a reasonably priced college instead of following our passions in theoretical studies with bills in the six digits? Why should we take any job when we’ve been groomed to believe that we can have the job of our dreams?
Who erred — our parents for telling us we could have everything, or us for believing them?
Heidi Kim
New York, July 8, 2010•
To the Editor:
I was always one of those top-of-the-class kids whom everyone loved to hate but who everyone also assumed was destined to succeed.
I finished graduate school in August 2007, briefly taught English abroad and landed back in Washington about two years ago, looking for work. In the last couple of years, I’ve worked hard to gain experience — in administrative positions, as a tutor, as a freelance writer and so forth. But I’ve never held a paying job in my field — international human rights and welfare — and I would willingly have taken such a job for $30,000 a year.
I know a lot of other incredible young people in situations like mine.
Many readers, in the comments on your Web site, criticized Scott Nicholson for expecting too much in his job search. But while there may be some millennials deserving of such criticism, there are many more of us who ask, for the time being, for little more than jobs that take our brains out for a jog at least a few times a day and offer us a modicum of personal fulfillment.
We’ll hold off on wanting the manicured lawns and white picket fences until later, if we’ll ever want them at all. For us, for now, the dream is simply to keep our feet moving, step by step, along the basic pathway to eventual success.
And yes, for many of us, that dream is proving elusive.
Arielle K. Eirienne
Washington, July 7, 2010•
To the Editor:
Unfortunately, it sounds as if the “American dream” to which the article refers is a new one based on privilege and entitlement.
I don’t think the dream is gone. I just think that well-meaning parents who continue to pay their son’s cellphone bill and rent leave their son with no incentive to realize and appreciate that a $40,000-a-year job offer after two years of unemployment is what many Americans would call a dream come true.
Vivian Todini
Brooklyn, July 7, 2010•
To the Editor:
Instead of taking an entry-level job at $40,000 a year, Scott Nicholson turned it down in search of something more corporate. As a 2007 honors graduate of Skidmore College (on the eve of the recession), I entered the work force as a foreclosure intervention counselor making barely more than $26,000 a year — work that was far from ideal.
Over the course of the last three years I have changed my “career” twice. In each case, the work at my “dead-end job” provided immense résumé value and I got job offers within a few days. I have even used the experience and connections I gained from my “dead-end job” to start two businesses, grant-writing and publishing poetry pamphlets.
The tragedy has been that we, as a generation, were led to believe that job security and high earnings would fall into our lap. I have had to prove my own worth and dedication in this economic climate, and I wish the absolute best for all my fellow recent graduates and my many friends who still struggle to find their way.
Daniel Schrager
Holyoke, Mass., July 7, 2010•
To the Editor:
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Sustainable Industries | Events | Cleantech Open National Conference: "Cleantech Entrepreneurship: Can it get the nation back to work?"
Cleantech Open National Conference: "Cleantech Entrepreneurship: Can it get the nation back to work?"
San Jose, Calif.
7/22/10 Cleantech Open’s first-ever National Conference brings together the brightest and most engaging minds to discuss how we can collectively ensure that cleantech entrepreneurship leads the economic recovery. Join us for a full day of speakers and networking featuring keynote addresses by Dr. Kristina M. Johnson, Under Secretary of Energy and Ron Gonen, CEO and Co-Founder of Recycle Bank. The Conference also includes six themed panels semifinalist technology exhibits.DoubleTree Hotel, 2050 Gateway Place, San Jose, CA 95110
Fee: Early Fees:$197, Regular Fees: $347 For More Information:
Guyf Ville
http://www.cleantechopenconference.com
guyf@cleantechopen.com
888.989.OPEN
Budding entrepreneur? Grab a camera - Nashville Business Journal
The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development is now accepting entries for its second-annual “What Makes You an Entrepreneur” video competition.
Entries will be accepted through Oct. 31 through the Tennessee Open for Business website, http://tnopenforbusiness.org. Finalists will be selected from five categories: Main Street/downtown; home-based; agri-business; arts and entertainment and innovation. The statewide winner will receive a $500 prize and a marketing package worth approximately $2,000.
The video competition is part of the state’s Global Entrepreneurship Week celebration, scheduled for Nov. 15 - 21. Winners from the video contest will be announced during that time.
“Last year, Tennessee made its mark as one of the top participating states for Global Entrepreneurship Week,” said Matt Kisber, commissioner of Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development. “With the second installment of the entrepreneurship video competition, we hope to continue our custom of recognizing entrepreneurs, who are the backbone of our state’s economy.”
Jessica’s Blog » Blog Archive » Blame it on Kindergarten
The first generation of “digital natives,” those born after 1980 who are “always connected” and share information openly and unabashedly online, are unlikely to change that behavior as they age, according to a new study.
“Older and wiser” will not necessarily equate to zipping it on the Web. If anything, Gen Y, or “Millennials,” as the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project dubs the group, “are leading society into a new world of personal disclosure and information-sharing.”
Pew and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center in North Carolina surveyed 895 technology experts, including those in academia, research, business and government, to get their take on whether Millennials’ online openness will diminish as they age, “form families, and move up the economic ladder.” More than two-thirds of respondents said they don’t believe that will happen.
“Sharing is not ‘the new black,’ it is the new normal,” said Matt Gallivan, a senior research analyst for NPR, and one of those surveyed.
“There are too many benefits to living with a certain degree of openness for digital natives to ‘grow out of it.’ Job opportunities, new personal connections, professional collaboration, learning from others’ experiences … are all very powerful benefits to engaging openly with others online, and this is something that Gen Y understands intuitively.”
Those who disagreed said that Millennials will “not have as much time in the future to devote to popular activities such as frequently posting to the world at large on YouTube, Twitter or Facebook about the nitty-gritty details of their lives,” Pew said.
And some Millennials are increasingly wary of what long-term damage could be caused by silly party photos or hastily spewed rants online.
Lee Rainie, Pew Internet director, said “Some experts also expressed hope that society will be more forgiving of those whose youthful mistakes are on display in social media such as Facebook picture albums or YouTube videos.”
Howard Rheingold, who wrote “The Virtual Community” in 1993 — before most really understood what the phrase meant — said college students in his Stanford University and UC Berkeley classes “are increasingly concerned about Facebook privacy, the amount of time they spend online and the way they share information.
“In general, I think Gen Y will continue to be more open about a great deal of information sharing, but I can see that at least some of them are growing concerned,” he told Pew.
The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship Names 2010-2011 Skoll Scholars
Oxford, UK. The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship has announced Xavier Helgesen, Sean Holt, Tamsin Jones, Anima Sarah LaVoy, and Nigel Tunnacliffe as 2010-2011 Skollars.
The five recipients of the 2010-2011 Skoll Scholarship were selected after a year-long search for the most promising social entrepreneurs to join the MBA programme at Said Business School, Oxford University.
The Skoll Scholarship is a competitive fellowship for students to pursue entrepreneurial solutions for urgent social and environmental challenges. It provides funding to undertake studies at Oxford, access to world-renowned entrepreneurs, thought-leaders and investors, and membership into a growing Skoll Scholar community of social entrepreneurs around the world.
Once selected, these students are known as Skollars.
“We’re thrilled to welcome the new class of Skollars to Oxford University next year,” said Pamela Hartigan, Director of the Skoll Centre. “These individuals are driving innovative solutions to social problems, and leading the growing movement of people committed to using markets for sustainable change."
Read more about the 2010-2011 Skollars below:
Xavier Helgesen Sean Holt Tamsin Jones Anima LaVoy Nigel Tunnacliffe
About the Skoll Centre
The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School is a leading academic institution for the advancement of social entrepreneurship worldwide. The Skoll Centre fosters innovative social transformation through world-class education, knowledge creation, and collaboration. It was founded in 2003 with a $7.5 million investment by the Skoll Foundation, the largest funding ever received by a business school for an international programme in social entrepreneurship.
Service-Learning Funding Opportunities: The Staples Youth Social Entrepreneurship Competition
The Staples Youth Social Entrepreneurship Competition
Deadline: Sept. 20, 2010
The fourth annual Youth Social Entrepreneurship Competition is sponsored by Ashoka’s Youth Venture® and Staples, in order to celebrate the stories of young changemakers around the world who are creating positive impact through their youth-led ventures.
The global competition is open to young people between the ages of 12 and 24 who have launched their own youth-led ventures. We’re looking for amazing youth to share how their work demonstrates exceptionally inspirational changemaking, particularly in areas of empathy, teamwork, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Nominations and entries will be accepted on a rolling basis through Sept. 20, 2010. Eight winners will be chosen throughout the summer, and in October, the grand-prize winner will be selected for their outstanding impact, innovation and potential. All eight winners will be recognized at a TEDx conference, a national gathering of thought leaders devoted to "Ideas Worth Spreading," on Nov. 13, 2010 in Washington, DC.
During the TEDxYSE conference, the grand-prize winning team will be announced and presented with the Staples/Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneurship Excellence Award and a prize worth $5,000. The seven remaining winners will receive Achievement Awards and prizes worth $500. The grand-prize winning team will have the unique opportunity to consult with, and draw from the expertise of high-level Staples executives. All eight winning teams will get the opportunity to meet with an Ashoka Fellow - one of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs. Ashoka Fellows are known for their unrivaled commitment to bold ideas and innovative solutions.
For additional information and to nominate youth, please visit the competition website at: http://www.genv.net/en-us/staples-yse
posted by Erin @ 11:14 AM
Fashioning Reality: A New Generation of Entrepreneurship | Engage Today
Jeff Lippincott says:
Review by Jeff Lippincott for Fashioning Reality: A New Generation of Entrepreneurship
Rating:This book was an interesting read. Part of it was a story about a Canadian school kid who tranformed a hobby he had beginning at age 14 into a successful modeling agency. Another part of it had to do with describing the nuts and bolts of starting a small business and expanding it later. And then there was the author’s message throughout the book that he thinks it’s a good idea to have a business that is consistent with one’s personal values.
Some might argue this book is nothing more than an advertising piece for the author’s business: Ben Barry Agency. I must say, if that’s why the author wrote this book, he did a pretty good job of accomplishing his goal. But the book has value for aspiring entrepreneurs, too. It tells the story of how the author made his business happen over time. And those stories don’t often find their way into print.
Small businesses normally are started by people who merely want to enter a market and compete within it to make a profit. They accept the industry norms, the competition and clients within the market as givens. They may try to differentiate a bit so they can steal market share, but they normally don’t try to buck the system too much. The story in this book is not about a normal small business. And I hope readers don’t read it as tough it is. The author indeed bucked the system. But I certainly recommend the story be read and analyzed and hopefully used in some fashion when developing a business plan of your own.
I loved every time I saw the author talk about business plans, business models, and strategic planning. This is what entrepreneurship is all about. Do the research, the planning, and then write it up in the form of a business plan with a good business model included.
The author was a natural at marketing from a young age. Early in the book he boasts that he did not do any reading about business, nor had he taken any classes or seminars. But the thought processes he describes he went through back when he was 14 had a lot to do with sound marketing logic. He was big on reading soon thereafter, and he wasn’t shy getting up in front of people and talking. And he wasn’t afraid to reach out for counsel, help, and making cold calls on the phone.
My favorite chapters in the book were 15 and 16 which considered the following ten (or 20) questions:
1. What issue matters to me? Does business matter to it?
2. Who am I? Who can I become?
3. What do I know? What must I find out?
4. For whom am I speaking? To whom am I speaking?
5. What little do I have? How can I make the most of it?
6. What do I have to offer? How is it better than what others offer?
7. How do I sell my product? Do I also sell myself?
8. How do I run my business? Am I the boss?
9. Is my life my businss? Does my life include my business?
10. How do I make it to the top? How do I stay there?
I would have liked the book better if there had not been so much emphasis placed on the need for acceptance of non-traditional models in the fashion industry. I understand what the author was talking about, but I think he went a little heavy on it. And I don’t think I needed to know that the author is gay. His sexual preference was irrelevant regarding the subject matter of the book. 5 stars!
Great story about a 14 year old kid who transformed his hobby into his dream job as an Entrepreneur.
How To Overcome Fear | How To Think
Your fears are the primary obstacles that are stopping you from taking action towards the realization of your own goals.
Do you feel a sense of anxiety right now? Have you ever felt nervous or unsure of yourself? Think of your greatest fear. What is that fear? Is it the fear of public speaking? Is it the fear of being judged by others? Is it the fear of failing to deliver the results that you desire? We have all experienced these feelings at some point in our lives.
What I’ll do in this article is I’m going to do a quick overview of the different types of fears, then we will discuss some of the effects of fear, and after that we are going to do a quick overview of the causes of fear. Finally towards the end of this article, I’ll finish of with a section on how to overcome fear and recondition your brain for taking more courageous action towards your goals.
Personal Story
When I was growing up I developed a fear of speaking to other people – particularly strangers. It was a completely irrational fear, but it made me feel very uneasy when I was speaking to somebody I haven’t known for a some time in advance. I felt as though I didn’t know what to say and how to say it when I was meeting people whom I didn’t know from before. You have probably experienced this before as well – you feel uneasy and anxious about the things you will be doing next. This fear limits your ability to establish new relationships with people because it prevents you from initiating the first contact yourself.
Finally I realized that this anxiety was completely irrational and I decided to take action in order to free myself from it. For a while I pondered upon the best action that I could take and pretty soon an opportunity has revealed itself to me. We had a party in the building where I lived for all the other students who lived there as well. We had put posters where people could see them and we had promoted the party to everyone we knew. That’s where I had an opportunity to overcome my fear and anxiety – I’d go and knock on every single person’s door and invite them to the party! I’d have to speak to about 60 people whom I’ve not known from before in a single evening. I was so scared that I figured I needed a partner – so I pitched a friend to come with me on this exciting little journey and just stand there and smile while I did the talking.
I remember how incredibly exciting it was to go out there and do what I had felt so much anxiety about. When you face your fears, you feel alive. When I got back to my room that night I felt as though I have really accomplished something amazing. I was so excited and so happy that I took this first step, that I couldn’t believe what had just happened. Although it was only the first step towards victory over this irrational fear, it still felt as though I have made huge progress on the way towards developing better skills at speaking to people. Although I laugh today at how silly it was to feel that way back then – I still remember how real that fear has been and how tremendously limiting it was for me on a day to day basis.
That day has started a journey of exploration for me into the types and causes of various fears and anxieties. We’ll first start with the most common types of fears, then move into the effects of fears on your life and finally we’ll discuss the ways that you can use to overcome your fear.
Types Of Fear
There are basically two types of fears. These are natural fears which are inborn and then there are learned fears which are conditioned responses to certain types of stimuli – such as large crowds or speaking to strangers.
Natural Fears
When you are born you have only a handful of inborn fears. When you are a baby, you are typically only afraid of falling and hurting yourself, and you are afraid of loud noises. You may also be afraid of spiders and other potentially dangerous animals. These basic fears are inborn and they serve you well because they protect you from getting into dangerous situations. All other fears are learned fears.
Learned Fears
When you are growing up, you become conditioned to fear many other things that pose no real danger to your survival. This includes fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of success, fear of the future, fear of ill health, and fear of intimacy. This short list might not be complete, but it includes the most common fears and anxieties that many of face on a day to day basis. We’ll start with the fear of failure.
- Fear Of Failure is learned when your parents punish you verbally for not carrying out a chore such as cleaning up your room. Instead of giving you a reason to clean up your room and rewarding you for a completed task with a candy bar, you may find yourself shouted upon or punished in some other way if you don’t carry out the chore. Consequently you see yourself as less worthy and fear failing at important tasks in the future. People with this kind of fear might feel very stressful at performance related work and might put a lot of energy into pleasing their boss because they are afraid of loosing their jobs if they fail to do their job well.
- Fear Of Success. This fear is rooted in your low self-esteem and your feelings of unworthiness. When your parents criticise your ideas and tell you that you are not doing things right, you develop a fear for successfully implementing your ideas which can then develop into a full blown inferiority complex. This happens when parents do not cooperate with their children in the development of their children’s creativity. So instead of supporting you in your projects and helping you succeed, they tell you that you are supposed to be doing something else. Consequently you start fearing your own initiative – which creates ‘success anxiety’, preventing you from taking the initiative at implementing your own goals.
- Fear Of Rejection. When you are feeling anxious in front of people, it is usually because you have a fear of being judged by them. Overly manipulative and controlling parents usually attempt to bend their children to their will and punish their children if the children don’t conform to the parent’s demands which causes the child to feel left out and rejected by the parent. This is the result of conditional love – as a child you subconsciously learn that you have to seek approval from your parents or else they wouldn’t love you enough. These children develop an aching need to please their parents, which transforms into neediness and a desire to please others later in life.
- Fear Of Intimacy. Sometimes we fall in love with somebody during our early adulthood and the person we love hurts us in some way. This creates a lot of negative emotions and might result in a fear of opening up and being intimate with people later in life. This fear is also connected to the fear of rejection – the difference is that this fear prevents us from fully trusting our relationship partner and committing to the relationship while fear of rejection only prevents us from expressing ourselves fully. Because we have a fear of being intimate, we hesitate to enter into relationships with other people in order to avoid being hurt so consequently we begin to subconsciously avoid relationships, which limits our chances at developing an more intimate connection with other people.
- Fear Of Ill Health. Another common fear is the fear of ill health. Thousands of people are putting themselves out of work because of this irrational fear being stressed out and sick. This is a conditioned response to watching other people suffer and then mentally imposing their suffering upon yourself. This fear results in imaginary pains and illnesses, which in turn may develop into a full blown anxiety where the person is afraid of contracting a fatal disease or having a heart attack. The truth is that you are going to die anyway, so there is no point in worrying so much about your health. Take preventive measures, eat well, exercise – but stop worrying about getting sick all the time.
The primary cause of fear and anxiety is that we don’t have enough knowledge about the situations that we fear. Anxiety in particular is primarily the result of negative anticipations. We are preoccupied with negative images of the future even though these anticipations are not likely to happen. This is why the acronym F.E.A.R is sometimes expressed as False Evidence Appearing Real. This anxiety causes us to loose track of our daily tasks and dwell into a state of depression. The way to prevent yourself from entering into this negative state is to change your thoughts from the things that you don’t want to the things that you want. More on this in the section on setting and clarifying you goals.
Realize that your knowledge about any given situation may not be accurate. You don’t know how people will judge you when you speak to them because you are simply projecting your own judgement upon yourself. You have no way of knowing what other people are thinking and the truth is that most people are thinking about themselves most of the time anyway. You don’t know what will happen when you take the chance and take the steps necessary towards the realization of your goals – you might as well succeed. Much of your anxiety is caused by your lack of experience and knowledge about the situation, which causes you to think in ways that are based on preconceptions instead of real world information.
Effects Of Fear
Fear is one of the strongest of emotions and it prevents millions of people from realizing their full potential. This is because fear prevents them from acting upon their desires. Fear is the greatest enemy of initiative. Being a conditioned response, learned fear can also be unlearned. More on this later, but first I’d like to tell you a story about little baby elefants in India.
The Elephant Story
Once I heard a story about the way people in India domesticate their baby elefants. What they do is they tie the baby elefant to a stick with a rope tied to one of its rear feet. The baby elefant tries to free itself from this rope, but it doesn’t have enough strength yet to break free. Eventually the baby elefant assumes that it’s impossible to break itself free and so consequently he quits trying.
This elefant then finds itself in a state of learned helplessness all the way into it’s adulthood. The result of this conditioning is that the full grown elefant can be safely tied to a small stick with a rope and he wouldn’t try to escape because he has learned from an early age that it’s seemingly impossible to break free from the rope – even though the full grown elefant is more than capable of breaking itself free.
Conditioned Fears
In much the same way as the elefant becomes conditioned to believe that he can not break free, we become conditioned from an early age to fear certain situations even though there is no logical reason to fear them. These fears then prevent us from realizing our full potential by limiting our concept of what we think that we are capable of doing.
Some of the effects of learned fears are listed below.
- Low self-concept. When you fear becoming successful or fear failing in your endeavours, you severely limit yourself in terms of the things that you think you can do. You have an absolutely unlimited potential. Virtually any goal that you set to yourself is achievable if you decide to pursue it. The only limit that you set on yourself is in terms of what you think you can and can not do. Fears limit your potential because they prevent you from taking action in the direction of your dreams.
- Lack of decision. When you are fearful of the consequences of your actions, you will naturally not be able to make a firm decision. In fact, lack of decision is what causes fear in the first place and then becomes reinforced by the fear itself. The longer you stay in this circle, the harder it becomes for you to break yourself free – just like illustrated the elefant story. However, the concept of you not being able to break free is merely a product of your own thinking. You need to make the decision that you are going to act upon your desires in spite of fear. Consider detaching yourself emotionally from the outcomes of your actions and acting solely for the sake of the experience – more on this in the section on overcoming fear.
- Paralyzed willpower. When you are fearful you are pushed into a reactive state of existence where you react to occurring events instead of being proactive and taking actions in relation to you won goals. This causes you to think about the things you should avoid doing instead of thinking of the things that you are supposed to be doing in order to realize your goals. If you find yourself thinking more about the things that you should be avoiding than about the things you should be doing, then you know you have slipped into this ineffective state – what you are fearing is failure and success. The solution is to focus on your goals and focus on the actions you should be taking in order to achieve them.
- Anxiety. When your willpower is paralyzed and lack of decision kicks in, you fall into a state of anxiety. Some people call this state ‘decision anxiety’ and it’s cause by fear of the consequences of a given decision. This fear is in turn causes by a lack of clear goals in your life. Anxiety increases your heart rate, it increases your stress levels and causes you to feel bad both mentally and physically. When you find yourself in this state – focus on what you want in your life and how to get it.
Your fears are the main obstacle that exists between you and your desire to be living a life that you want to be living. Irrational fears and anxieties are something so common that some people even think that it’s their natural state of being. I used to think that before myself so I can relate to the statement.
Overcoming Fear
There are several strategies that you can use to overcome your fears. What you want to do is to develop the courage you need in order to take firm action towards your own goals. The best way to build courage is to simply put your fears aside and concentrate on what you are aiming to achieve – that is your goals. Do you have goals in your life? That’s a classical question that a coach might ask you – and it makes equal amount of sense today as it did a hundred years ago.
Goals
Desire, Determination, Destination. When you set goals, you are focusing your mind on the things you want so that it does not have time to think about what you don’t want. One of the primary causes of anxiety is that you are anticipating fearful events that are unlikely to happen – so when you focus your mind on what you want, this habit leads you towards thinking less about the things that you don’t want. Which in turn lessens your feelings of anxiety and increases your levels of confidence and positive self-esteem.
Courage
The best way to build courage is to start taking the first steps towards your goals. When you begin taking the first step then the next step will appear in front of you. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to plan everything in detail before you start. Ask yourself: How can I materialize my goal today? You have to find a way to materialize your goals right now in your current reality. They have to be present in one form or another. I wrote an article earlier on the power of now – you should read that article.
When I first realized this principle of living in the present moment and finding ways to materialize my goals in the now, I realized that if I wanted to have a website I had to set one up right now. There was no reason to somehow wait until I had enough experience or enough knowledge about a subject – the key is to start realizing your goals right now. It’s so simple. I started by registering my domain and setting up wordpress on my hosting account. The first step was completed. All I had to do now was to start filling the website with quality content. Even if I might not know enough about a whole lot of subjects, there still always something interesting to write about.
Never underestimate the power of now. Live in your current moment and figure out a way to materialize your goals in your present reality right at this very moment. Courage is the natural product of desire – when your desire to realize your goals is strong enough then nothing else matters. The first step is for you is to start thinking about what you want and how to get it. This is how we get into the subject of attitude.
Attitude
Part of the process of freeing yourself from the bondage of fear is working on your internal attitude. Attitude is the way you think and how you interpret to yourself your own actions and the events that happen in your life.
Acceptance. The first step in building your attitude is for you to accept yourself the way you are. Nobody is perfect and you are no exception. Be willing to look foolish and inexperienced when you first begin your journey of realizing your goals. Look at the babies who are learning how to walk. They fall over all the time – yet they sit on the floor, cry a little, and then get up and try again as if nothing has happened. Imagine if babies gave up on learning how to walk? What would our world look like? Somehow babies have the courage to take action towards their goals – they are not afraid to fail. Why would you be afraid of failure then?
Mind Games. With fears such as the fear of public speaking, a good way to overcome such fears is to play mind games on yourself. When you are on the stage and about to give your presentation, pretend that everybody in the audience is naked. Wouldn’t you just laugh out loud if you walked up on the stage and realized that the audience was naked? You could also imagine that you are having a dream – that the everybody in the audience is not really real. In your dreams everything is possible and there is nothing to be afraid of. Your audience is just a dream so there is absolutely nothing to worry about when you are giving your speech. This concept is also something referred to as subjective reality.
Detachment. An effective way to overcome the fear of failure and fear of success is to mentally detach yourself from the outcomes of your actions. Realize that whatever happens to you is merely an experience. Look at all your actions as experiences that you can learn something new from. You really can not fail because every action you take can be seen as a successful learning experience. What you do is you imagine yourself being in the moment with no worries and no fears. You are here in this very moment and you are experiencing life in all it’s colours. Why would you want to attach yourself to specific outcomes? Penicillin was discovered as the result of an accident. Sometimes what you did not expect to happen is better than what you did expect to happen.
Stay Positive. The best way to keep yourself motivated to take steady steps towards the realization of your goals is to keep yourself positive. Stop taking in information that stimulates your fears of ill health, failure, and the future. Stop thinking about the things that are highly unlikely to happen. Stop watching the news and start reading positive books instead. Start listening to educational audio recordings and reading educational material that will help you to realize your goals. Think about the things you want and how to get them.
When you overcome your anxieties you will realize just how free you are to truly enjoy your life. Then you can focus on your creativity and start expressing yourself in the way that suits you the best.
Final Thoughts
The fears and anxieties that you have are for the most part learned during your early childhood. You have the power to break free from these anxieties just like a grown elefant has the power to break free from the little stick that holds him tied up.
The best way to break free from your fears is to determine what you want to do with your life and then focusing on the actions that you can take today in order to bring your goals into reality. Don’t worry about the outcomes of your actions and see every action you take as a learning experience.
When you take action, you will develop a better understanding of yourself and the possibilities that you have in front of you. When you take action you gain knowledge and when you have accurate knowledge about something you are less likely to fear it. When you take action you will gain experience that will help to reinforce your self-esteem and self-confidence.
Do what you fear most and one day you will have nothing to fear.
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“If You Don’t Stand For Something You Will Fall For Anything” - Successful Thinkers Meetup
Beautiful song!!! We the people!