Who’s Influencing Who?

Previously on UpThinker, I talked about a slew of strategies/things/ideas/tricks which led to more controlled thinking – basically how we could influence our thinking. Right now I’d like to throw out a long-ish reminder on why we should monitor the things that influence us. Yah know, like tv.

Influencing What We Think About

So, what things can be done to further influence what we think about? That is the question. The reason behind finding out what an further influence what we think about is because what we primarily think about can determine how we feel and else effect the things that we do throughout the day and the decisions we make. I think we can all accept that as true without throwing around any counter-culture or mysticism or religion.

Whose Goals Are You Chasing

Lets say that you know what your goals are. Lets say that you have a passion for those goals. Lets even say that you have action items identified for those goals. Lets say all of those things and take another, closer, look at “what goes in”, your intake.

What do you watch on tv? Does what you watch on the television have anything at all to do with your goals? I remember a time where I would sit in front of the television all day long watching one show, then the next, then the next, and the next. That was in the summer between grades during high school. Nothing I was watching had anything whatsoever to do with any of my goals. Are you in that boat as well? I remember thinking to myself All this television watching is doing nothing for my goals, but I bet I’m helping out the television networks’ goal to reach a large amount of viewership.

Because I wasn’t chasing my own dream, I was unintentionally being used as a pawn to help someone else reach their dream. The words sound nice enough, but once you realize that you’re wasting YOUR time and energy, your life, it’s not so nice. You’re the gray matter who doesn’t pursue their own goals.

Everyone has the option of playing on their own chessboard. If you choose to play on your own chessboard, you get to manipulate the pieces back and forth. If you do NOT choose to play on your chessboard, you will become the pawn on someone else’s and they will manipulate you back and forth. How do you like that.

Television is just another medium with which to be influenced. There are plenty of others such as books, music, movies, jobs, friends, places, and the list goes on.

Take a look at what your intake looks like through all your mediums of being influenced, and see if your intake aligns with your goals. If it does not, change it. If it does align, go you!

What you have to realize here is that all of these forms of intake, all of the mediums through which you are influenced, all of these things can direct your thoughts in all kinds of directions. If you can narrow down your intake to suit your goals, your thoughts will also benefit. This idea also spills over into topic of positive and negative thinking.

What Goes In, Might Come Out

If you’re constantly taking in negative things on purpose, you’ll probably end up thinking negative things or maybe even doing negative things as a result of that. You might not even consciously try to think the negative stuff, but when you made a decision to intake the negative thing, you just planted a seed in your head.

With the negative thing hanging around up there, you can zap it in its tracks with some of the methods mentioned in this previous post, but why even place the negative seed in the first place? Instead, why not place positive seeds in your head.

Some examples of influence mediums can be movies, music, books, blogs, television, and friends. You can take control over some of the stuff you take in. Turn off the negative and turn on the positive. Tune out the things that don’t relate to your goals and tune into the things that do. Read the synopsis of a movie before you watch it to see whether or not you can get something positive or goal related out of it. Don’t constantly read blogs that having a strangely obvious negative spin to them or have nothing to do with your purpose. Listen to uplifting music rather than music that talks about thinking negatively.

You don’t think what you watch, read, and hear have any influence on you? Try raising children. Children will prove to you that the things you do will influence the things that the children do. If you stick your hand up your nose, little Susie is going to stick her hand up her nose.

Look at teenagers! A teenager see’s a pop star wearing a ring through their nose, now the teenager wants to put a ring through their own nose. Fifteen year old Johnny can’t wait to get those new air Jordan’s that he saw on the commercial. Young Betsy wants that new short skirt that the girl on Nickelodeon was wearing.

Look at adults! Mr. Johnson, typically a tame person, is encouraged by his peers to pull a prank on the boss. In another scenario, Dr. Rosette is swayed by a certain scientific text to change the way she conducts her science experiments.

It’s rampant I tell you! What goes in, might come out; we live in a world of influence! If you have a choice in the first place, do what you can to bring in the good stuff that matches up with your goals. This is why you have never heard of anyone buying a cd with negative affirmations on it – I don’t know anyone who has a goal to live an unproductive life. Who wants to hear things like “you suck at life, you’re a horrible person”? Over time, though initially put off by the idea, “you suck at life” starts to sneak into your everyday thinking and eventually those thoughts will be coming from your own brain.

Remember, pick and monitor your influences wisely

Keep Moving Forward

So Many Problems! – Computers

“Why did the computer turn off,” I asked myself. I’d only stepped into the bathroom for a second. After a good four hours of work at my day job, I was ready to get to reading and blogging. After pressing the start button on my tall black custom computer case, my screens started to flicker slightly, as they usually do when they figure out that I’m turning the computer on again, but this time nothing came up after the monitors turned on.

For a second I thought maybe something is unplugged, but when I finally decided to get down on the floor and tune my eyes to the components which I’d suspected, a horrible –HORRIBLE, I TELL YOU- stench took hold of my nostrils.

I had no idea what it was but I guessed it might be my mother board. A broken mother board would mean a lot of screws would have to be messed with to get this computer back in working order, not to mention a visit to the local computer store, and a nice gash into my bank account.

As it turns out, the problem was … well, the problem was my power supply. The power supply was smoking and filling my small apartment with an atrocious smell. After checking the rest of the components on the motherboard, I was confident that nothing else had been fried because of the bad psu (that’s short for power supply unit).

After a nice long visit to Fry’s electronics, I ended up with a new keyboard/mouse combo, and a new expensive power supply. In about no time, after disassembling the old and assembling the new, I was ready to press the power button again.

Unfortunately nothing happened on my screen after pressing the power supply, but all the computers components were on and running. The fans were spinning, everything seemed to be working, but nothing was coming up on the screen! What in the world could be the problem here?

Well, turns out that my big fat video card no longer wanted to be in it’s assigned space anymore –or, rather, wanted to move around a bit. After moving the video card around a few different slots and then finally back to it’s original assigned slot (it was a pci-e slot), I’d press the power button and my boot screen would show up! Hurray! But there’s more.

The boot screen would show up for about 5 seconds and then I’d get the infamous blue screen of death. What could be the problem now!?

So I googled around a bit, and found a few answers as to what the problem could be: apparently, windows vista is known to occasionally have an issue with nvidia video cards. But, the issue is so subtle, you wouldn’t know how to fix it unless someone had told you. In fact, it’s so … it’s not even worth mentioning. All that matters is that I did the fix, arrived at my boot screen again, and encountered a NEW “blue screen of death”.

This time, the blue screen said I have a memory problem. O really?

I was ready to give up a long time ago. But I persisted.

Having values of “forever” for some goals isn’t a matter of motivation.  Motivation is the urge to seek positive feedback.  Persistence is the ability to continue forward in the complete absence of any.

http://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2008/07/09/how-to-measure-your-degree-of-persistence/

Memory problems. Ok, I’ve got four dimms (sticks) of ram in this thing, totaling eight gigabytes, so I’ll just take them all out and stick them all back in one by one until I find the problem. Well, I did that. One by one they all proved to be working.

After reinstalling the last stick of ram, guess what happened. The computer booted up into Windows 7 like nothing was ever wrong with it. This whole scene took five hours.

Cue today’s topic:

Keep Moving Forward

That’s my favorite quote at the moment. If you’re into animated films, “Keep Moving Forward” is part of a quote from Walt Disney, made popular by the animated movie called Meet The Robinsons. This movie tells a very entertaining story about persistence.

Here’s a clip from the film:

That’s not all. Just yesterday, I read a great post called Keep Showing Up. I watched the videos posted there (one of TED, one from Letterman) and enjoyed my stay at Joyful Days (cool blog). The topic there is on the same target as the topic of this post. But I can’t help but think what would’ve happened if the whole idea of persistence wasn’t fresh in my subconscious mind from what I’d read. Would I have given up on my computer? Who knows, but I do know that I’m glad I didn’t and I’m glad I read that post.

I’ve said this on a previous blog, and it still holds true today so I’ll say it again. “We have all had a problem at one time or another that kept us from getting from point A (current situation) to point B (goal). Of course we took some time to address that and figure out a solution. But why, even with our awesome plan, did we never reach that goal? I’ll tell you why. It’s because you gave up.”

You will fail many times but if you allow that to stop you from trying, you will miss out on the amazing feeling of success once you reach new heights with your accomplishments. Failure is a stepping stone to success.

http://zenhabits.net/2008/05/a-letter-to-my-son-on-starting-out-in-life/

Imagine what would happen if the people in this world who have accomplished great things would have just given up! No more light bulb. No cars. No space travel. No pretty white apple laptops. No civil rights. No freedom. You get the picture?

The difference between a person who reaches their amazing goals, and a person who doesn’t, is persistence. You do want to reach your amazing goals right? Me too.

When life throws you a blue screen of death, keep moving forward.

More videos please! Ok, coming right up:

Ready For Death – Unstoppable Passion

Today, I saw a monarch butterfly. There were two lifeless leaves next to the butterfly – the butterfly, which seemed to be slightly wedged beneath the foot of a small plastic chair meant for a child, was dead. The two leaves were a pale brown. The butterfly was a vibrant and alluring color. Various shades of strong orange and deep blacks were spread across it. As I stood there for a moment, looking at the thing, I thought how sad it must be. How awful, for something so full of beauty and life to meet its end so bluntly, like an emotionless cause and effect, and in a way that doesn’t seem beautiful at all. How stifling. But butterflies aren’t the only thing that can die.

Have you ever seen a person die? Do you remember the moment where life seemed to be stolen, or taken back, from the person? Can you imagine witnessing such a moment, feeling that sharp stab to your chest, breaking your entire concept of life as you normally see it, bringing an abrupt awareness to what death is? Let me share my experience with you.

I watched a person die. It made me realize how short this seemingly lengthy series of events, which we call life, really is. Watching that person die, gasping and reaching out and even fighting for life, bore new unexpected feelings into my being. I watched … as those around stood there, just watching … with a sympathetic gaze; we could not help this person though we all wanted to. Death that day was not graceful, was not gentle, was not sudden or sympathetic. After the person had died, I reacted with the feeling that life was being stolen, robbed, taken from this person. I felt more angry than sad that this was happening. This was unfair. That feeling stood next to me for quite awhile, holding my hand, justifying my held back tears and muffled emotion. How awful, for a human being full of life and consciousness to meet their end so bluntly, like an emotionless cause and effect, and in a way that is not beautiful but is painful and teeming with agony.

We are similar to the butterfly that I saw today. The control over when and how we’re born and die is pretty much out of our hands.

I’ve learned some things from the event in the hospital. I have learned is that we should not expect to live for any self-predetermined amount of time. Every good and bad person, every one loved and hated, every religious and non-religious, every man woman and child should expect to die an agonizing and painful death at any moment.

The pain of dying will hurt for a time. You may scream, cry, kick, squirm, and shake. Accept that it will hurt a lot; know that it will not last forever and will pass. Get comfortable with the understanding of the pain involved in death; embrace it, accept it, expect it so that you will not fear it. The pain will not last forever, but our natural course is to live and then die.

I’ve also learned about is the sadness of losing a friend or a family member. The one thought, more than anything else, which shakes the center of my being is Were they ready to die? If the answer to that question were a consistent YES, then I would miss the person but be happy for them, knowing that they were ready. If the answer were to be NO, the feelings that could arise from that, hurt deeper than anything I know. There is a great pain in knowing or even assuming that your loved one or your friend had life taken violently from them when they were not ready.

But this side of the life spectrum, you will never know for certain whether or not another person was ready for death. We know that death can hurt, but the pain you might see on someone’s face when they are dying is no indication of whether or not they were ready for death. I can be mentally ready to take a bullet in the arm, but if I hadn’t told you that before hand, the pain on my face wont tell you one way or the other; such is death. The person who I saw die was gasping for breath, choking and reaching their hands out for life, but even from that I can’t say whether or not that person was ready for death. You see, death is usually a painful endeavor which no one naturally wants to go through. It hurts, and our body reacts, but the bodies reaction to pain is all science and can’t tell us for a fact if one person or another was ready for death in the moment that they died.

Looking at someone’s life history also will not tell you if a person was ready for death when they died. Physical actions do not prepare you for death, nor will a history of physical actions determine whether or not someone was prepared for death. Preparing for death is something that happens in your mind initially and has the potential to give birth to actions from there. For any definite answer to the question of whether or not someone was ready for death, you’d have to dig around into that persons mind to find the answers.

Knowing that I can not know brings me comfort, as well as understanding. From that, I understand that we are independent beings and should, for our own well being, recognize that we are independent beings. If we fall for the idea that we were dependent on each other, having a loved one pass away would then mean that a part of you has died. Don’t fall for that idea. Although you may feel like a part of you has died when a loved one passed away, your level of understanding and your acknowledgement that we are separate beings will bring you comfort.

That is why you and I have to let go of each other. Though we’re all friends and family, we need to understand that we do not control each other and we are really separate beings –that is, your consciousness does not belong to someone else, and no one else’s consciousness belongs to you.

Once you have let go of the fear of death and the fear of others dying, you have done something great for yourself. You have prepared yourself for the inevitable. Now, you no longer run from death and no longer hide from it.

After all of the fear is gone for your own death and the death of others, what’s left? The answer is a beautiful series of precious moments which we call life where we influence one another. Accepting death brings a completely new flavor to life and the actions you take. Your goals, ambitions, life’s purpose, and future happenings should all take a moment to consider the idea that death is where they’re headed.

Take a look at your goals for a second, if you’ve got them handy. What are your goals? For any one of your goals, ask the question “Why?” and then ask yourself “Would I die for this goal?”. Would I die for this goal. That’s a big question and it’s also probably one of the most important ones you should ask yourself.

It’s important to factor death into your goals because whatever it is that you desire, do, think, or [you name it] is going to be the same thing you’re doing, thinking, or [you name it] when you die. Would you be ok with being caught dead doing what you’re doing, thinking what you’re thinking, or [you name it]?

Lets say your top-level goal is to become a millionaire. If that’s your goal, ask yourself why and then ask yourself if you would die for that goal. Are you really willing to die in pursuit of that goal specifically? This is an entirely personal question that you would have to answer for yourself.

Lets look at your goals from another perspective: If a doctor told you that you have one week to live, would would your goals be the same? If not, why then wouldn’t your goals look the same? The only difference between having one week to live, and expecting to live for ninety years, is time. So would your goals change because you don’t have enough time? Let me tell you right now that, on this side of life, you will never have “enough time”, ever; just think about it, you could die before you get to the end of this post.

The point is this: When aiming for a long distance goal, it’s in your best interest to consider whether or not the pursuit of said goal is something which you would die for. After all, you may never reach your goal, but you will have this moment, right now and nothing else.

Understanding that brings about a richer experience to life and your interactions with those around you. The words you say to others no longer leave your lips without pleasure but instead tingle your tongue. The moments you spend with others become colorful and vibrant like the butterfly. Listening to another persons experience is now an enjoyable intimacy to be savored. No longer tedious, are the things which you do; they are now soul enriching and bring a rewarding sense of purpose to your every movement.

Imagine what kind of amazing things you could do if you did things that you were willing to be caught dead doing – what would happen if you did things that you were willing to die for? You’d be a fearless warrior! In addition to that, if you will start to do what you will die for, you will start to see a frenzied increase of excessive passion for what you do in this life.

This sort of passion is the strongest I know.

You Have To Change

An interesting thing happened today. I was reading my feeds as I normally do in google reader, and stumbled across a post which talked about the "missing links" – that is, a reply to the idea I’m successful, but I’m not where I want to be yet, what’s stopping me? The post hit home so I decided to star it and save it for later.

Today, some time after I read the previously mentioned article, I thought, yeah, you have to be the change to see the change. And then I remembered that last night, I stayed up way too late watching a movie about Gandhi. Later on during the day I thought, yah know what, the best example of that phrase that I can imagine is Gandhi. Then, I decided to google up the phrase "you have to be the change", and the first result that popped up was about Gandhi – "You have to be the change that you want to see in the world," sayeth Gandhi. I don’t remember hearing that quote during the movie, although I was on an old ibm tablet that has really bad sound.

At any rate, that little coincidence was helpful for me because it brought a perfect picture to the idea of being the change. Here’s a clip from the movie just incase you haven’t yet seen it (note – music was added to this clip):

Gandhi, who was a lawyer before he became the "Father of The Nation [of India]", completely changed his life to see that same change in the world. He went from a suit to a loincloth, on purpose. He did this in pursuit of his end goal which was to liberate India. In doing that, Gandhi achieved something even greater. He influenced nations! I bet he didn’t know that he was one of Martin Luther King’s heroes. "Christ gave us the goals and Mahatma Gandhi the tactics." Martin Luther King said that in 1953, and we all know the difference that Mr. King made in America.

Be The Change For Yourself

Knowing that we have to be the change to see the change, we also need to realize that we have to be the change for ourselves and not just for others. Although we may see the desired change in our mind, we have to bring that foresight to the playing field of life and be the change. Only then will we see the change materialized as opposed to just seeing it in our minds.

My favorite quote for the aforementioned article is “To live a different life requires that you become a different person.” That speaks volumes. The emphasis there is that you have to change.

You have to change the way you think, the way you act, the food you eat, the clothes you buy, the words that come out of your mouth, the books you read, the way you look at the world, the music you listen to – it call comes down to your end goal, which determines what, if anything, will need to change in order for you to reach it.

Think of the you in the present and then think of the you in the future. What’s different then, in the future, compared to now? If you can answer that, you know what needs to change.

Change Things Around You

A quick way to get the ball rolling is to change your environment, to assist you towards the future rather than hold you back. If you keep doing the same things you’re doing now, reading the same books you read now, watching the same movies you watch now, dressing the same way you do now, thinking the same way you do now, acting the same way you do now, carrying yourself the same way you do now, guess what. You’re going to be the same person you are now.

I remember reading The Teenagers Guide to The Real World awhile back –what a great book. There’s a chapter in there which talks about wearing a suit as a college student. This chapter is a great example of how changing your environment around you, even just changing the types of clothes that you wear, can have a huge effect on how you see yourself, how you feel, and how others see you. Here’s an excerpt from the book:

Buy a good, conservative suit. That means a darker color like charcoal or dark blue. Get a nice shirt, a nice tie and nice, shineable shoes. Now wear this outfit all the time, every day, everywhere you go, for a month. I am not kidding. It will take you a week at least to feel comfortable in it. It will take another week for you to forget you have it on. Your friends will harass you mercilessly for a period of time as well. Ignore them. Tell them you are trying an experiment. During the third and fourth week, after you and everyone around you have settled down, watch the difference a suit makes in how people treat you and how you feel. It will be subtle, but you will notice it. You will find that people you know, especially adults, treat you differently. You will find that strangers treat you differently as well. They treat you with a different level of respect. You will find that a suit also changes what you say and how you act. It is very surprising.

If you were to wear a suit everyday for a month, how would YOU feel? You might feel richer. Is that how you’d like to feel? How would YOUR friends react? Maybe your friends would start to look at you differently. But, that’s ok, you’re changing. Don’t let your friends of the previous you hold the future you back.

What can you do now to change and get that much closer to your goals? Go ahead, pull out the pen and paper and list out your ideas. Maybe you need to change your habits or make new ones? Maybe you just need to change your hairstyle? It’s definitely worth your time to identify things in your life that can be changed in order to bring you closer to your goals.

What’s Holding You/Me Back?

What’s stopping you from even so much as trying to reach your goal?

We’ve All Been There

Have you ever talked to a person who was adamant in saying that there was no chance that they would be able to accomplish a particular goal or do a particular thing? I have. In fact, I was once that person myself. I remember telling myself, back when I was in high school, that “It would be nearly impossible to become awesome at soccer” – I had only known that the sport existed for about a year. Back when I wanted to start my own webpage, something which seemed like an awesome thing to do, I would think to myself, how in the world am I going to learn html -I was a teenager at the time. Or, back when I started college, I would think to myself how in the world am I ever going to be able to afford to live without my parents right after I graduate. Even now, with my latest ambition, at the ripe old age of 24, I’ve thought to myself starting an online business is an unreachable dream for me, I just don’t know how.

The lesson that I’ve learned from my past is that if I want it enough and can convince myself to repeatedly dedicate effort, I’ll get there – I’ve reached all those previous goals except the one about starting an online business. The problem was deciding to try and debating whether or not it was even a good idea to attempt reaching the goal given the looming uncertainty. That was then. Now that I’ve grown up and learned a little bit more, I know that if I’m to set out for a goal, uncertainty is not really something that gets to me; all I think about is the win, and the next task. But there’s one thing, applicable to this, that I remember my dad telling me as a kid and an almost-adult: He said “You’re afraid of success.”

Afraid of success? That. Makes. No. Sense. At the time, what my dad had told me made completely no sense at all to my being. I wanted success, I wanted to win; surely I was not afraid of success – how dare he say that to me.

For awhile, I brushed the idea aside as I didn’t understand it and blamed my misunderstanding of the idea on my dads, then offensive, matter-of-fact delivery of advice. No big deal, I know that when I finally do choose a goal, I’m all in. Yeah – yeah right, boy was I wrong.

It’s rare that a goal is all roses. Success requires change, and change has both positive and negative consequences.

Fear of Success: What will happen if you succeed?

Take A Long Hard Look

One day I decided to take a long hard look at my past accomplishments and try and figure out why they weren’t as amazing as I would’ve liked to have remembered. I tried to pick apart why I got medals in soccer for state games but never went on to play in college. I tried to figure out why I had the highest GPA only one for one year during high school. I tried to figure out why I stopped at html and didn’t continue on to css and other languages. All I did was ask the question why. From there, I gave myself some time to think about the answers.

It’s not trendy to acknowledge the negatives that might eventuate from success. We’re supposed to assume that all change will be positive. But unless we can prepare ourselves for a realistic picture of success we will push it away from ourselves.

Overcoming Fear of Success to Achieve Your Goals

I wasn’t scared to succeed at all! I was, though, very afraid of the change that I’d have to go through in order to succeed as well as the change I’d have to live with after I succeeded; the time I would have to put in, the dedication I would need, the change in how other people saw me, the potential that I might not be able to hang out with friends when I wanted, the uncertainty of not going by-the-book, the potential for other goals to fall by the wayside, the idea that I wouldn’t be using my college degree for anything related to the field I studied in, the fear that I’d have no time to pursue the opposite sex, the thought that I’d begin to break old promises I’d made, the -well, there were a lot of rocks uncovered when I finally took the time to investigate my shortcomings.

So I learned that it’s not really a fear of succeeding, it’s a fear of what might happen when you do succeed: that is what “fear of success” is.

Success is also frightening because success carries chaos with it. We call success Light Chaos.  But in your world, you’re geared and conditioned to have no chaos at all.  It’s an outgrowth of adolescence where life is so absolutely, unbelievably chaotic that you try to stabilize it with the absolutes — the always’s [sic] and never’s, the black’s and white’s — of adolescence.

Working with Fear of Success

It’s an attachment to repeating patterns in your life – a fear of change. In other words, you could call it an addiction.

Missing Passion

Now we both understand what the fear of success is. But lets not short change ourselves, this is a bigger issue than I’d previously thought, and if you’re still reading this maybe you can relate. Have you ever been so ALMOST passionate about something? I have. I have ALMOST been the most passionate person I can imagine on a board with four wheels (skateboard). I have ALMOST been so passionate about – you get the idea.

This “fear of success” business can not only circumvent a possible end goal, but it can also dampen your desire for a goal you currently have; It doesn’t just stop you from starting, it can even prevent you from reaching a goal that you’ve managed to start and progress towards. Even though you have a goal clearly set in your mind, so much that you can see it now –you might even be working towards it now- there’s a likelihood that there are several road blocking fears preventing you from reaching a deep burning passion that you might otherwise be oblivious of. Do you really want to miss out on something so powerful that can drive you to your goals?

Without the knowledge of the potential for fears to hang out and camp your ambitions, you might brush your lack of drive off as something insignificant that’ll pass by the time you wake up in the morning, like a minor setback. No, unless you resolve these issues now, they will remain in you and will be on the lookout for opportunities to trip you up. If you understand that, you know that doing away with the fear of success is very important. So important, in fact, that it’s in your best interest to take a time out and resolve your fears after you finish reading this (or as soon as possible).

Don’t Let The Fear Hang Around

Fortunately, identifying the fear is to win half the battle. That process basically involves indentifying all the hidden ways that success (achieving that goal) could negatively impact you. That means taking out a pen and a pad, text editor, flow diagram or whatever, and listing out all the potential negatives that you hadn’t previously took the time to pull out of your subconscious.

Once you’ve unmasked the fears, don’t feel satisfied and let them sit there – no, the longer you wait to come to terms with your fears, the longer those fears will stick around. You have to make it a priority to not only identify the fear, but also come to terms with whatever the fear is.

Maybe for you, once the fear is identified, the solution is obvious. Maybe it’s only a matter of doing a “negative thought brainstorm” as I’d mentioned in this post. Maybe the negative effects resulting from reaching the goal outweigh the positive; in which case it might be in your best interest to do away with the goal altogether – but isn’t it better to know that now, rather than investing so much of your time and energy to something you’ll end up tossing anyway?

Maybe your fears are completely unjustified and you actually have nothing to fear. Here’s an example: If I show up for this award ceremony, I wont be able to watch that documentary tonight. So your fear is not being able to watch the documentary? Maybe you can reframe and redesign your view of how you see your end goal: If I show up for this award ceremony, I’ll only miss 5 minutes of the documentary. There’s a lot of things you can do to redesign how you see your goal. Putting the fear out there in the first place helps you gain a whole new perspective on the fear itself. Now it’s in your conscious thoughts and you can appropriately deal with it: I’ll make it to the ceremony, and skip the opening credits, and I’ll watch the entire documentary when I get home, I might even be early.

At the end of all this, the strategy here is to know to identify the fears –all of them- and then decide what, if anything, to do with the fears that stand between you and your goal. If you decide to dump the goal, so what. If you decide to pursue the goal, come to terms with all of the fears even if you have to do it more than once. Coming to terms with your fears can do wonders for your goals.