Shit your inner resistance tells you:
You have no clue what you’re talking about, do you?
Remember that urgent thing you should do instead.
You could do it later.
You feel tired.
Lets play some games to cheer you up.
You are bad at public speaking.
Your voice is not convincing enough.
Yawn, you are boring them to death.
You will only end up embarrassing yourself.
Noone will care, noone ever cares.
Why are you doing this?
...
There are many things I’m scared about, now that I think about it. Writing, making videos, putting myself out there for some reason is really scary to me. I’ve put it off quite a while now. I’m not that confident in my ad-hoc speaking. What now? I just write. This script is a calming guide to me in this oh so difficult undertaking of mine. Never done that before either but at least, I thought, by writing I could overcome the resistance and start.
TIP NUMBER ONE: Respect the resistance. Outside of the comfort zone is a scary scary place for your subconsciousness, or monkey brain or whatever you want to call it. In bad times to me this feels like an infinite impenetrable glass wall. I can see what’s behind it. But I cannot overcome the barrier. This can be pretty insidious. Because you are so close to it that you feel you could do it whenever you really feel like it. Then suddenly months have passed and it never happened. Like for me making this video. In good time the glass wall is still there for me. But it turns out it is not as impenetrable once I have the energy to walk around a bit. I might find a whole I can slip through. So I guess this metaphor leads to my
TIP NUMBER 2: The tiny step now beats the big one later: When you start to respect the resistance it suddenly makes a whole lot more sense to act whenever you realize the comfort zone’s border is stopping you. Think about what you can do within your comfortzone and find the point where you can take that first juicy tiny step outside. Because later you will have lost that spark. And if you now say “why? I could also have even more energy later!” Could be, yes. Yet I think we all have been there, done that. If something scares you deep inside you will not magically do it once you have more energy. If that was the case you would have already done it. No, something is stopping you. And you have to trick yourself a bit into doing it. Be curious about finding that hole and doing it now. What is the one single step you could actually walk right now towards that point out there. Focus enough on the next step and you might not even notice you left that wall behind.
There is a caveat here though and that is
TIP NUMBER 3: BE NICE TO YOURSELF:
With respecting resistance comes another realisation. It is actually hard to do that thing. If we rationalise to ourself that we could do it whenever because it’s easy enough… yet we don’t do it, what does that lead to? Well, cognitive dissonance first and foremost. In this frame you set yourself up for pain. You say you can do it easily, you want to do it but you don’t. That makes no sense. What’s the immediate conclusion? You must be weak or lazy or some other negative quality for not being able to do this easy thing.
However, once you become aware of that lingering fear and accept that this might be a bigger hurdle to overcome than you initially thought… well, on one hand it could be discouraging at first. After all it’s more work than previously thought. On the other hand, though, you got rid of that cognitive dissonance. If you fail to do it today it’s not because you are weak but because it’s hard. No shame in not figuring it out immediately. It is one of my core beliefs that there will always come good from seeing things more how they really are… from seeing the world and us in a more truthful way. I’m not even talking about absolute truths here. Just that we chip away all that is not in harmony with us and get closer to our core or essence, whatever that may be. It’s hard enough without you being your own enemy. We are humans, we are not perfect. Be kind and patient, don’t talk down on yourself and drain your energy even more with all that negativity. Soon enough you can try again and a bit wiser than last time. Be nice to yourself.
Quick note here that you are not me. There are different personalities and I wouldn’t be surprised if some benefit from being harsh to themselves in a militaristic way. I do advocate to just trying things out and finding what works best for you. I had a lot of negative self talk in the past, often I didn’t even notice it, and in hindsight that did not work for me. Longterm it always backfired. You do you, though.
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The title of this text can be interpreted in two ways. Up until now I talked about the power fear can have over you. The negative side of the coin. In the end though it is not more than an emotion. It can manifest bad things but in itself it is just the emotion residing in you. That means with increasing awareness we can make it our tool. A tool to show you the way.
What do I mean by that? Think about your own situation in life. Is there something you always wanted to do/build/achieve? Life will get in the way somehow, that’s a given. There could be more to it though. Fear could be a bigger cause for inaction than you might realize. But wait. What can the presence of fear tell us? It is sign of an inner fight. Fear is the turmoil between the best and worst version of a vision you have for your life. So all unpleasantness aside what is left? Is it not at least proof to you that this is really something you want? Often that can be obvious to you… but sometimes not and then it is a powerful realization. Suddenly you know for certain that a part of you wants to go down that route. And you need that certainty as a counter balance ...
because now slowly in creeps the fear. The uncertainty of the future that stops you in your tracks. We are motivated by negative emotion more than by positive emotion. Because we can only be so happy but we can REALLY be suffering. We are creative like that and easily capable to perceive immense suffering.
However, I feel like there is a choice here. Fear can be paralyzing. But do we know what will happen in the future? From what I’ve observed humans are really not that great in predicting the future. Me included. And if these things in our minds that we are so scared of are not more than imaginations that might or might not come true then fear, again, is nothing more than an emotion. Some form of energy flowing through our system. So the choice is to redirect that energy. Being anxious makes you want to do SOMETHING. Now reframe it. Why, for example, are you not scared by the fatal losses that could come from NOT doing the thing. Inaction is also an action. It is deciding to follow other priorities, whether consciously or not. Of course your action to follow your best vision could lead to a nightmare. Nobody knows the future! That is not the point. The point is to realize uncertainty and insecurity are embodied emotions resulting from your imagination and nothing more. Where is fear there is opportunity to conquer yourself. That sounds difficult but actually it’s just given fear a little less credit. And now look, you are out of gridlocked inaction. Thank you, Fear!
The same can be said for anger. Use these emotions to do something constructive instead of destructive. Turn anger into passion, fear into excitement. Place them behind you where they push you forward. Not in front where they are a wall to overcome.
You can not control the future. You can control how you feel about the present in the present. Not always easy... but you CAN change your now and use the power of fear.