WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE AND HAPPINESS

     FEAR; IT’S NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF
     WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR LIFE

                   AND HAPPINESS?
                 © Chessie Roberts 2010, all rights reserved


Who do you see as responsible for your life and happiness? Your partner? Your children? Perhaps it is your job or boss. Maybe you feel it’s where you live or what you drive. If you said yes to any of these things you should rethink who is in charge. It should be YOU.

Here is the kicker, if you aren’t happy, are you unhappy by your choice? WHAT?? You say my choice?? But I can’t help being _____ fill in the blank. But you can; you can choose to look for another way. Your choice of how you react to the ‘stuff’ going on around you puts you in either the victim role or the power role.

The victim role keeps you paralyzed and feeling that there is no way out. This in turn makes your pain, despair and fear worse. They feed off each other to make you afraid to move. You are suffering over your own suffering.

First ask yourself, “What am I getting out of staying in this situation?” Most of the time you stay because that situation is ‘the demon that you know’ and you are more comfortable not facing your unknown. But I tell you that the anticipation of the unknown is worse than the thing itself.

When you take responsibility for your choices, I don’t mean to beat yourself up with the blame stick, I mean doing the best you can and owning your choices. I mean becoming aware of what you are not taking responsibility for so you can change your behavior toward a more positive direction. I mean looking for and taking advantage of the opportunities that you can find will make your situation better. Moving yourself toward more of what you really want and not tolerating what you aren’t happy with. That is where you take your power back and make the fear diminish.

Try stepping out into your unknown, trusting that you will find firm footing or you will be taught to fly. Find out how amazing your life becomes when you stop expecting someone else to handle your ‘stuff’.

Until next week, Bright Blessings
Chessie

FEAR; IT IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF Part 3, Where is Your Comfort Zone?

   3 FEAR IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF Part 3

                        © Chessie Roberts 2010, all rights reserved

Where is Your Comfort Zone?

Our comfort zone is the little box we live in where everything is j-u-s-t the way we like it, we are comfortable. Sounds great right? Well, I guess it can be, but we need to watch out because it can keep us from growing, moving, sharing, or creating. To do that, we must (shaky, scary letters here) STEP OUT OF THE ZONE. That is sometimes a very fear-inducing thing to do.

Where are the boundaries of your comfort zone? Do you feel comfortable talking to strangers? Is it easy for you to eat alone in a restaurant? How do you feel about public speaking? How about going into a social situation unescorted? Would you rather hug someone (not family), shake hands or hide in a hole? Does interstate traffic make you wish you were driving a tank instead of your poor defenseless car? Do places of authority scare the starch right out of you?

I understand, there are things outside everyone’s comfort zone. Things that you would rather chew broken glass than face. things that you fear and that is ok. Here is where we talk about changing that. Don’t panic, you don’t have to make a speech on top of a speeding truck on the interstate, baby steps, baby steps.

What I am advocating is just expanding the zone of what is comfortable for you. As you overcome things that make you fearful, your courage to try something new grows. As that happens, you become more and more powerful and fear less.

Let’s break it down. To be able to begin talking to someone you don’t know very well try just asking the time or complementing something about that person. When this is comfortable you can ask questions that require conversation on the part of the other person. Soon you will be able to speak to anyone.

Eating alone in a restaurant is intimidating to a lot of people so know you are not alone. Start small with a fast-food place. Everyone is in a hurry, and you won’t be noticed. Then move up to some place that caters to your neighborhood. Next, try the larger chains, by then you will be able to go anywhere.

Public speaking is the most feared thing out there and I strongly suggest a public speaking club such as Toastmasters. They will walk you right through it with all the support, encouragement and guidance you can ever want.

Get the picture here? Just take one small step until you feel comfortable and then the next. Every time you reach and stretch, you grow closer to handling your fears in a powerful, productive and positive way.

Until next week, Bright Blessings. Chessie

PART TWO, FEAR, IT IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF

                          

                        PART TWO, FEAR

             IT IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF
                     © Chessie Roberts 2010 all rights reserved


“Your mind is the most marvelous bio-computer ever created. It does not deal with vague ideas; it is activated by specifics.”  Denis Waitley

I asked you last time where your power is, who/what is controlling it. Listen to the words you use when you think or talk about what you are holding fear about. Do you say things like “I can’t…”, “I hope…”, “What if…”, “That is horrible…”, “It’s not my fault…” or “That is a problem…”? I tell you now that you are using vocabulary that feeds your fear and destroys your power/strength to attempt to grow.

Yes, for those of you who have taken levels 1 and 2, this goes back to proper self-talk. By changing your verbiage, you begin to change your attitude, your focus and your emotions about what you feel you want to do.

Try these words instead; forget “I won’t…”  Because won’t implies that you have chosen to use your power not to do something, rather than meekly give in to circumstances beyond your control. Your subconscious hears it as “I’m weak” so you will be. As an alternative, try using, “I choose to…” and see/feel the difference.

Try changing ‘hope’ to; know. Hope tells your subconscious that there is a good chance that whatever you want will not manifest, i.e., “I hope I can go home for the holidays”. Now changing the one word, “I know I can go home…” puts your power back into your hands.

“What if’ gives the Universe your permission to walk all over you. It tells your subconscious that you are completely out of control. Because it is a vague and wishy-washy statement, it is also a waste of your energy. Don’t use it at all.

“That is horrible” can be replaced with the thought that whatever it is can be a challenge, and opportunity to help someone or to grow.

The “it’s not my fault” is a cop-out. If it is yours, own it. This is extremely empowering. It makes you the powerful person you want to be, not the victim. If you take responsibility for your life and what goes on in it you have the power to change things for the better.

The change of the word ‘problem’ to the word ‘opportunity’ opens your mindset to one that stretches to embrace the growth that will enable you to become the person you want to become.

You can also get great results by changing the words fear, scared, anxious or nervous to words like excitement, anticipation, and the phrase ‘looking forward to’. These changes take a while to penetrate but are well worth the work.

As you change to a more powerful vocabulary, your thought processes will follow. This will change how you see yourself, thus changing how others see you, making your self-confidence grow and fear diminish. This will create the ability for you to handle more things that are outside your normal comfort zone and that leads to awesome opportunities for you to enjoy.

Until next week; Bright Blessings. Chessie

FEAR; IT IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF PART ONE

    

       FEAR; IT IS NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF

                      © Chessie Roberts 2010 All rights reserved

Fear is a learned emotion. We are taught to fear falling, eating poison, walking out into traffic, getting into cars with strangers… things like that. And those fears are OK to have. They serve a purpose and have their place in our lives. For most of us these ‘fears’ become common sense as we mature and learn who to cope with the world around us. Still, there are those stubborn, irrational fears that make no sense to us or anyone else and we don’t understand why we have them or where they came from, and they are OK too. That is as long as they don’t cripple you or stop your forward growth.

Here is a flash for you; as long as you grow, you will face fears. Yep, you heard me, but most of the time it isn’t the even, action or circumstance that has you nibbling at your nails, it is the anticipation of doing something that is out of your comfort zone and guess what? Everyone has to face this at one time or another, not just you.

In her book, “Feel The Fear and Do it Anyway” Susan Jefferies, PH.D. tells us that there are 5 truths about fear:
1) The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow (where have you read that before? This is me asking you)
2) The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go do it.
3) The only way to feel better about myself is to go out and do it. (Are you starting to see a pattern here? That is me asking again.)
4) Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, (pay attention here this is life changing) SO IS EVERYONE ELSE. (Didn’t see that one coming did you?)
5) Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.

So to follow that thinking, if it happens to everyone anytime they encounter something new and they do whatever it is anyway then we need to admit to ourselves that fear is not the real problem.

 Just for now I ask you to consider, where does your power lie? Is it held by the fear of what you don’t know, or by what you think you know? Maybe it is held by what you feel might happen if you do this or that, or maybe if you don’t do whatever it is. Think about it, leave your thoughts if you would like and we will talk more about this fascinating subject next week.

Bright Blessings, Chessie