Personal growth: Fear, doing, and confidence November 13, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Fear and Anxiety.Tags: achieving goals, life, negative thinking, philosophy, Ray Bradbury, self-actualization, self-improvement, writing
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Trying something new often stimulates a fear component which can immobilize us, whether it is in our self-actualization and self-improvement program, or something simply related to daily living.
The fear of doing something can be minor, or it can be overwhelming, depending on both our confidence level, and the magnitude of what we are attempting.
In our minds we can up with an assortment of reasons why we should (a) postpone doing what we are contemplating, or (b) completely retreat, deciding to not do anything.
The key reason that we often hesitate or pull back is that we might we might fail.
The writer Ray Bradbury has advised us to jump off the cliff (of doing) and to build our wings on the way down.
We will usually be pleasantly surprised to realize that we can fly.
— Dennis Mellersh
Personal growth: Defeating primal brain obstacles to success September 12, 2017
Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Fear and Anxiety.Tags: fear, inspiration, life, negative thinking, philosophy, self-actualization, Seth Godin, writing
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Fear is one of the biggest success-path interrupters and yet, ironically, some people try use fear to “motivate” others within their sphere of influence.
Using fear as a “motivator” is probably an effective tactic to gain compliance, but it will generally not lead to success with whatever project is involved.
The onset of fear, that feeling that our stomach just filled with ice water, is familiar to us all and is caused in part by the amygdala, aka primal brain, primitive brain, lizard brain.
People using fear to “motivate” by triggering the amygdala response are actually shutting down creativity and innovation in the people they are trying to lead.
Seth Godin has an interesting take on what we can do to avoid being captives of fear.
Some of his ideas can be found in an interview on YouTube:
It’s part 5 of a series.
—Dennis Mellersh
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