6 Rules for Addressing Your Fears More Successfully

6 Rules for Addressing Your Fears More Successfully

by | May 16, 2022 | Fears, Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is often the fear of being judged, criticized, rejected and sometimes even humiliated by others. It can range from mild to severe and when it gets bad, agoraphobia can develop. People who suffer from social anxiety are afraid of doing or saying things in public that might embarrass or humiliate them because they are afraid of humiliation and being “looked down upon”.

This article is going to go through 6 rules for addressing your fears more successfully when you have social anxiety.

1. Simply NOTICE your worries, rather than believing they are accurate or needing to respond to them.

When you notice a thought, do you think ‘I’m not good enough for this person’, or ‘I’m not attractive enough for them’? Do you try to talk yourself out of it? When you think of one of these things, notice it and then ask yourself where it came from. Usually this thought is a result of something else that you are experiencing. 

2. Simply KNOW that the thoughts you have are not necessarily accurate.

They are just thoughts, they may have a memory attached to them with a feeling or they could have come from somewhere else. You are in control of your thinking, you can choose how to interpret things.

When you hear yourself thinking ‘I’m not good enough for this person’, it is a thought, don’t say ‘I am not good enough for this person’, instead say ‘I think I am not good enough’. It sounds silly but anything that you replace your thought with can make it untrue. So if you replace the thought with “I am good enough” it will make the original thought untrue because you believe the first one, then when that happens it stops being true and becomes unfounded knowledge.

3. When you start to experience fear in social situations, ask yourself “what am I really afraid of here”.

How are you feeling right now? What are your sensations like? Why are these sensations happening right now? What thoughts or emotions are going on in this moment? If your brain is trying to tell you something, it will usually tell you two things. One is the thought itself and the other is an emotion that will come along with it. In the example above, we have an image of someone telling us how un-intelligent and stupid we are. We also jump to an emotional response of shame (which might be fear) and a sensation of sadness. The sensation (the emotions or feelings) and the thoughts that you experience at this moment are all important because they give you information about what’s going on with your mind at this moment in time. 

4. Start to notice how your physical sensations change when you become anxious in social situations.

When you become anxious, your body may tense up. Your breathing and heart rate increase. Your eyes may start to get wet and your muscles start to shake. This is normal because your autonomic nervous system is becoming activated with the fight-or-flight response. Remember: simply noticing thoughts, emotions, sensations all have important information attached to them. You don’t have to believe everything that you notice, but you also don’t have to dismiss it either, because sometimes it contains very valuable information. 

5. Before you go into a social situation, ask yourself what kind of reactions will you most likely experience from now on in the future?

This is called ‘anticipation’. We all have our own way of dealing with social anxiety, which we call ‘preparation’. We might know that if I go into a situation where I am afraid and anxious, my response will be “I’ll just avoid them and don’t interact”. Or “if they aren’t looking at me, they won’t notice me”. Or “I’ll wait until they leave before I talk”. We might know this because we’ve already experienced it before. So, in preparation, we’ll avoid social situations where we know our anxiety will be triggered. But if you are going to do that, you need to consider what that’s going to cost you. It might be missing out on good friendships or opportunities for a new job. I’d like you to imagine that you’ll be prepared for all kinds of social situations. Imagine the best possible outcome where you don’t feel uncomfortable.

6. When the time comes to go into social situations, remember two things.

One: start with the thoughts you are experiencing (not the thoughts themselves).
Two: start with a sense of curiosity as to what is happening in this moment. 
Are there some sensations you can notice? What are they like?

Try to be curious about what is happening and try to notice that it is completely normal. Try to imagine yourself getting a bit better at this over time. You might have an image or thought of someone saying something very embarrassing or saying the wrong thing and then leaving in shame. This is normal for people who’ve been through social anxiety disorder, but you can change these images over time by simply noticing them and not believing them.

If you need more help facing your fears, check out my program, Face Your Fears, which will help you understand fear, understand how it controls you, and learn to fight back! Learn how to use grit, resilience, and perseverance to transform failure to your advantage. Stand up Tall, Face and Convert Fears Into Success!

Overcoming Your Fears of Rejection

Overcoming Your Fears of Rejection

by | Dec 6, 2020 | anxiety, Fears, Social Anxiety

How To Quiet Fearful Thoughts

How To Quiet Fearful Thoughts

by | Oct 25, 2020 | anxiety, Fears, Meditation, Mindfulness, Social Anxiety

Picture this. You sit down to relax after a long day at work. Suddenly when the activity of the day has slowed it seems as if your mind has received a signal to start the race. Racing thoughts of a fearful nature plague many people. Our current society moves at a fast pace. Multi-tasking is the default setting for most adults. Work, family, and personal obligations combined with a constant connectedness as a result of our technological conveniences.

Fearful thoughts can be distracting and decrease productivity, peace of mind, and increase anxiety. Fear can be paralyzing and can stop you from achieving all that you want to and should in life. Many people who are not diagnosed with an anxiety disorder suffer from fearful thoughts. It’s a common experience. There are many techniques to quiet these thoughts and get your peace back.

Reality Check

Any time a person is dealing with fearful thoughts a great first step is to name the fear. Ask yourself if what you are afraid of is real. Be honest with yourself. Consider why you might have this particular fear and what it may mean in your life.

Being able to determine if you are coming from a place of emotion vs. a place of logic in your thought process can take you far in the journey to quiet troubling fearful thoughts. Learning to identify, and silence irrational thoughts is a large part of this process. As you practice you will become more effective at being able to detect if you are coming from a place of logic or a place of emotion.

Wise Mind

A common phrase in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy is to use your “wise mind” when processing emotions. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy was originally created to treat patients with Borderline Personality Disorder and was later used to treat other mental health conditions.

According to a study on Dialectical Behavioral Therapy: “Distress tolerance focuses on teaching crisis survival skills. It fosters acceptance in situations that cannot be otherwise changed or avoided without making things worse.

There is an emphasis on self-soothing, improving the moment, and adaptive distraction.” (Emotion Regulation in Schema Therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Eva Fassbinder, et al., 2016). Using “Wise Wind” is a concept from this style of therapy essentially using a calm, centered place to process emotion in a crisis or fearful situation.

Your Support Team

Remember to utilize supportive friends, family members, and even professionals if fearful thoughts plague you. Never feel ashamed or embarrassed by what you experience. Emotions are a normal part of the human experience. Sharing with others can bring you new insight, friendship, support, and a sense that you are not alone. Gaining objectivity from outside of yourself is often a great source of clarity and comfort.

Meditation

Meditation is a great tool to help you calm down and get back to thinking clearly when you’re feeling particularly anxious. It can instantly calm down the overexcited nervous system and have you feeling more centered and ready to face whatever life throws at you. As helpful as it is in reducing anxiety on demand, it’s even more powerful when it comes to prevention.

There are many different ways to start meditating. The easiest one to get started with is a short guided meditation.

Sit or lay comfortably, listen to the recording, and follow the instructions. Don’t worry if your thoughts start to drift. Gently bring yourself back to the meditation. It’s surprisingly hard to focus on nothing but the meditation. Start with short sessions of 10 minutes or less. Once you get comfortable, you can extend your meditations as needed. The key to getting better at meditating and reaping the benefits of calming down those random thoughts and worries, as well as rewiring your brain to be less anxious in general, is daily practice. Get started, and then make it part of your daily routine.

Calm Cool & Collected

Learning to identify and fact check your fears is the beginning of the process of learning to quiet fearful thoughts. The more you use these practices the easier the whole process gets. It won’t be long before sitting down to relax at night is actually relaxing. You too can be calm, cool & collected when it comes to quieting fears and anxieties. Working through fears with objectivity and rational thinking is a skill that takes practice.

By learning about your fears you are beginning the process of making positive change. Put your plan into action today. Don’t shy away from this challenge. You have the chance to increase your mental strength, toughness, and self-reliance by facing your fears head-on. Gain peace, self-understanding, and a sense of empowerment by quieting fearful thoughts.

If you want more help to face your fears, check out my program Face Your Fears, to help you understand fear, how it controls you, and learn to fight back! You will learn how to use grit, resilience, and perseverance to transform failure to your advantage.

If you need help with social anxiety, join my community where I will be sharing more tips and techniques to overcome social anxiety by showing you how to communicate better in your interpersonal and professional relationships, to have the social life and the career you want.

How To Be Yourself When You Have Social Anxiety

How To Be Yourself When You Have Social Anxiety

by | Sep 27, 2020 | anxiety, Fears

A lucky few of us are charismatic and comfortable in all social situations. However, most people suffer from some degree of self-consciousness at times and alter their behavior in an effort to appeal to others. This begins in childhood and becomes a habit we carry throughout our lives. The pressure to conform resides in most of us.

How much are you pretending? How much of yourself are you giving up in order to gain approval from others? Interestingly, the people we admire the most are those that make no effort to conform. We admire individuality.

These tips will help you learn to be yourself:

1. Pay attention to others. It’s much harder to feel self-conscious if your attention isn’t on yourself. The key to being self-conscious is to focus on your appearance, clothes, posture, and words. Eliminate this self-scanning behavior and you’ll feel much more comfortable.

· Notice your environment. If someone is speaking to you, focus on their face and words. Your ability to focus outside yourself will grow with practice.

2. Enhance your self-esteem. Pretending to be something you’re not suggests that you believe you’re not good enough in some way. However, you’ve done some amazing things in your life. Focus on your positive qualities. Remind yourself of your successes. Most importantly, leave your failures and regrets in the past.

3. Be accepting of yourself. Remind yourself that no one is perfect. Even your best friend has numerous flaws that you could quickly list. You still love them anyway.

4. Monitor your level of anxiety. There are many tools to lower anxiety, but it’s most effective to use them when your feelings of anxiousness begin to rise. When you’re highly stressed, it’s much more challenging to get your emotions back under control.

· When you first notice yourself becoming uncomfortable, focus on taking slow, deep breaths. Redirect your focus to your breath and your environment. Your previous thoughts resulted in your anxiety, so change them.

5. Determine your purpose in life and live it. It could be argued that you’re not bold enough to be yourself because the stakes aren’t high enough, yet. When you have enough motivation, anxiety rarely shows up. You might be too bashful to raise money for your new business, but it’s no problem if you’re raising money to save your child from cancer.

· Do you know your purpose in life? When you can answer that question definitively, much of the social pressure in your life will disappear.

6. Imagine your parents are gone. Even people in their 50’s and 60’s are still worried about disappointing their parents. What would you do differently right now if your parents were gone? A parent’s influence is never gone completely, but most of us give them more power than is reasonable. As adults, parents only have the power we give to them.

7. Do one thing you’ve been avoiding. It can be something small, but jump in the deep end and do something new. It might be getting a tattoo or singing Karaoke. Maybe you’ve always wanted to take ballet lessons.

8. Realize that your time is limited. It will all be over someday, so there’s little reason to worry. Anything you’re worried about now will be meaningless in the distant future. Have fun and enjoy your life.

The people that you admire the most have many detractors. Break free of the social pressure to conform. Share your thoughts and ideas. Enjoy your life. Discover how you can be your own person and still be loved!

To help you gain more confidence, download my free guide: Charm: How To Attract and Connect with Others.

If you need help with social anxiety, join my community where I will be sharing more tips and techniques to overcome social anxiety by showing you how to communicate better in your interpersonal and professional relationships, to have the social life and the career you want.

How To Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs

How To Overcome Your Limiting Beliefs

by | Sep 21, 2020 | anxiety, Fears, Social Anxiety

Limiting beliefs are firmly held convictions that constrain us in some way. Everyone holds limiting beliefs, and whether you know it or not, the limiting beliefs that you hold can actually limit your success and ability to live a full and happy life. By believing them, we end up diminishing ourselves and impoverishing our lives. They tend to destroy your self-esteem, damaging your belief in your own ability to make the necessary changes in your life that will lead you to happiness and a more fulfilled life.

Limiting beliefs can affect your life in so many ways, and none of the ways they can affect your life are good. When you can let go of your limiting beliefs, you can change your life and start living the life that you’ve always wanted.

Here are three ways that your limiting beliefs are holding you back from realizing your dreams and living the life you want.

They Taint Your Experience of Living

When you are constricted by your limiting beliefs, you will do far fewer things over the course of your life. For example, if you believe that roller coasters are dangerous, you will probably never ride one, and you’d miss out on the thrill that so many others have experienced. No matter how great your life is at this current moment, you are holding onto beliefs that are stopping you from experiencing life to the fullest.

They Make You inefficient

The limiting beliefs that we are holding onto cause us to find an alternate path. If we believe that the best route won’t work for us, we can spend a ton of time following a less direct way to work around our limiting belief. You may have always dreamed of being a teacher but believe that you can’t make a living as a teacher, so you do everything but teach. Save yourself time and deal with the beliefs that are holding you back rather than giving up on what you really want.

They Can Cause You to Unintentionally Harm Others

Your beliefs are more like a virus and less like math because they are more likely to be caught then they are to be taught. Even if you have the best of intentions, you can infect others with your limiting beliefs. The limiting beliefs that you pass onto others then affect them for the rest of their lives. You need to take some time and consider who you are infecting with your limiting beliefs and how those beliefs are affecting them and their own potential to live their best life.

Limiting beliefs can be incredibly destructive and will always keep you from achieving the life that you’ve always wanted. If you want to change your life you need to identify your limiting beliefs and start taking the necessary steps to overcome them.

When it comes to the limiting beliefs that destroy your self-esteem, here are the five most common beliefs that you may be holding onto.

1. I Don’t Deserve Anything Good

When you believe that you aren’t worthy of anything good in your life, you will subconsciously turn down any reasonable opportunities that come your way or sabotage those opportunities that you’ve already received. This limiting belief disrupts that balance of giving and receiving.

2. I’m Not Good Looking Enough

When you continue to fail at finding a date, you begin to question your appearance. While appearance does play an essential role in delivering an excellent first impression, it is your charm and attractiveness that matters in the long run. It can be hard to appear confident if you always doubt your physical looks.

3. I Will Only Fail in My Dream

When you trap yourself in a failure mindset, you will never have a chance to achieve success, regardless of what you are doing. The more you fear failure, the harder it will be for you to move on. Instead, you need to learn as much as you can from each mistake and failure you’ve encountered and move on quickly.

4. I Can’t Find Happiness

If you don’t know where to look for it, the quest for happiness in your life can be an eternal journey. While you will always encounter negative emotions, even when you are bursting with confidence, happiness is a skill that you can learn. You just have to start being grateful for all the little things you have in life.

5. I Can Never Turn This Around

When you experience setbacks and challenges in life, you may end up feeling anxious or depressed. When you hit rock bottom, you can’t see anything good happening to you in the future. If you continue to strengthen this belief, it will eventually turn into your reality. If you find yourself in this situation, it is vital to feel hopeful and start taking action to dig yourself out of this hole.

Don’t continue to allow these five limiting beliefs hold you back from being a confident person and living the life you want.

Many of these limiting beliefs are formed in childhood and are based on what we’ve been told about ourselves and the world in general. If you find that there are specific areas in your life in which you aren’t getting what you want, it may be because of your limiting beliefs.

Here are three strategies to help you overcome your limiting beliefs and replace them with empowering beliefs.

Journaling

The only way you can begin to overcome your limiting beliefs is to identify them. One way you can determine those beliefs that are holding you back is by journaling. You need to find time every day to sit down and write about your current situation. Then you need to think about how you got to this point in your life. Journaling will help you discover your limiting beliefs, which is the first step to overcoming them.

Observe Others

A great way to overcome your negative beliefs is to observe the behavior of others. This can serve two purposes. First, it can help you uncover the ideas you have about yourself that you may not be aware you have. Noticing specific reactions and behaviors within ourselves can be hard. Secondly, when you watch others who are currently succeeding in an area of life that you’re doing poorly in, you can start to uncover the beliefs that they hold that lead them to achieve success in that area of life. You can then begin to adopt these beliefs in your own life.

Be Your Own Mentor

Another technique you can use to overcome your limiting beliefs is to become your own mentor. Pretend that you are sitting across from your future self. Not only are the kind and wise, but they’ve achieved everything that you wanted in your life. Have a conversation with your future self and tell them about the areas in your life where you’re currently having trouble. Ask them to help you uncover your limiting beliefs, discover how you formed your limiting beliefs, how to interpret the situation differently, and help you come up with a new set of beliefs.

The next time that you find yourself being held back because of your limiting beliefs, continue to tell yourself that it’s only in your head. Use the above strategies to overcome your limiting beliefs and live your best life.

To help you gain more confidence, download my free guide: 5 Ways To Boost Your Self-Confidence Instantly

If you need help with social anxiety, join my community where I will be sharing more tips and techniques to overcome social anxiety by showing you how to communicate better in your interpersonal and professional relationships, to have the social life and the career you want.

The 5 Fears that are Keeping You From Reaching Your Goals

The 5 Fears that are Keeping You From Reaching Your Goals

by | Aug 16, 2020 | anxiety, Fears, Social Anxiety, Uncategorized

Do you dream of doing something different with your life? Do you sit at your desk or in meetings and doodle, wishing you were anywhere else? Do you feel stuck? If you want to change your life or your career, you need to work out what is preventing you from making the jump.

Here are the five most common fears that might be holding you back.

1. Fear of fear

It might sound a little kooky, but fear of fear will keep you right in your comfort zone, not wanting to take a risk. Needing security is a legitimate reason to stay in a job that might be unfulfilling, especially if you have family or other obligations. And fear doesn’t feel good because it’s uncomfortable. But it might be worth allowing yourself to feel afraid, analyzing what message it’s giving you, and seeing if that message holds up.

2. Fear of failure

Failure happens to everyone. Mistakes and missteps are how humans learn and adapt. Failure is an important step towards success. Don’t let the fear of failure stop you from trying.

3. I’m not ready

Do you find yourself saying it’s not the right time, I don’t know enough, I need to save more or any other delaying tactic? There will never be the right or the perfect time to do it. Work out what skills, funds or support you need and start to get those things lined up right now.

4. I don’t know where to start

If your dream stays as a nebulous desire, you’ll never achieve it. You need to take a businesslike approach to your big dream and turn it into an achievable goal. And you can do this by treating it as a project. Break your big goal into a set of smaller SMART goals that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-Bound.

5. Fear of going it alone

You don’t have to do it all by yourself. No one can! Whatever your dream, it’s likely you will need support along the way, and the best way to ensure you get it is to plan for it. When you’re creating your business plan, make sure to include all the external skills and support you’re likely to need, from book-keeping to website building or just general business advice. You’ll probably find it useful to have a mentor or coach to go to for advice or to test ideas.

And don’t forget your cheer squad of family and friends. They‘ll keep you going through the tough times, and help you celebrate your success.

Fear has a way of making you feel both scared and paralyzed. Your self-talk can get caught up in a fear-driven spiral that makes success and happiness seem impossible goals. But there are steps you can take to get unstuck from your fears.

Here are six ways to overcome fear:

1. Use visualization

You can reprogram your brain by practicing seeing yourself as unafraid and successful. Whether you fear public-speaking, failing an exam or blowing a job interview, you can rewrite the script by imagining yourself doing those things calmly, competently and confidently.

Build a positive picture in your mind, and the fear will melt away.

2. Practice being successful

Author Neil Gaiman talks about using this technique to get over Imposter Syndrome. This syndrome is the feeling that you’re not the person you say you are or want to be. Imagine how you would talk, move or carry yourself in a particular situation as if you were unafraid. Act as though you were already that brave, confident person.

3. The Law of Reversibility

The Law of Reversibility uses psychology to set up a positive feedback loop. It says that if you feel a certain way, then you will act in a way that is consistent with that feeling. And it works backward too, so if you behave in a certain way, being brave for example when in fact you feel scared, the action creates the feeling. So, by acting bravely, this encourages feelings of courage and confidence.

Practice this over and over, and the fear eventually disappears.

4. Face your fears

If you avoid or bury your fears, they will get worse. Denial feeds them even more. You’ll end up lying awake at night, needlessly gnawed by anxiety.

Conversely, if you face up to your fears and see them for what they are, you are taking control, which immediately diminishes their power.

5. Write it down

Fears also grow if you lie awake at night, as they circle round your mind. Getting up and writing down your worries not only gets them out of your head, but you can also start to tackle them. Chances are they won’t look nearly as bad on the page as they felt in your head. And you can now start to plan to deal with them.

6. Act on it now!

Fears create a paralyzing effect. Now is the time to choose how to deal with them. Make them simpler to tackle by identifying what’s worrying you and taking one small step at a time. Each success, big or small, makes it easier to achieve the next one. Before you know it, you’ll be unstuck from your fears and on your way to success.

If you want more help to overcome your fears, check out my program Face Your Fears, you’ll be able to understand fear, understand how it controls you, and learn to fight back! As well as learn how to use grit, resilience, and perseverance to transform failure to your advantage.

If you want more help, join my community where I will be sharing more tips and techniques to overcome social anxiety by showing you how to communicate better in your interpersonal and professional relationships, to have the social life and the career you want.

 

en_USEnglish
fr_CAFrançais du Canada en_USEnglish