Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway: How to Turn Your Fear and Indecision into Confidence and Action

by Susan Jeffers

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

NO-LOSE DECISION-MAKING PROCESS BEFORE MAKING A DECISION 1. Focus on the No-Lose Model. 2. Do your homework. 3. Establish your priorities. 4. Trust your impulses. 5. Lighten up.

AFTER MAKING A DECISION 1. Throw away your picture. 2. Accept total responsibility. 3. Don’t protect, correct.

AFTER MAKING A DECISION 1. Create anxiety by trying to control the outcome. 2. Blame someone else if it doesn’t work out as you pictured. 3. If it does work out, keep wondering if it would have been better the other way. 4. Don’t correct if the decision is “wrong”—you have too much invested.

If I am not making any mistakes, I can be sure I am not learning and growing.

Exercises 1. Using the No-Lose Model, consider some decisions you are now facing. Write down all the positive things that can happen by using either pathway—even if the outcome might not be what you picture. 2. Learn the concept IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER by starting with little decisions you face each day. As you ponder which suit to wear to the office, notice that it doesn’t really matter; which restaurant to eat at tonight, it doesn’t really matter; which movie to see, it doesn’t really matter. Each choice simply produces a different experience. Slowly you will be able to apply this concept to larger and larger decisions. Put signs in your home and office that say IT REALLY DOESN’T MATTER to remind yourself when you are being needlessly obsessive. 3. Also, put signs in your home and office that say SO WHAT! I’LL HANDLE IT! If things don’t work out the way you want, so what! What’s the big deal, anyway? This reminder will help you lighten up about life as you learn you can handle whatever happens after you’ve made your decision. 4. Look at clues in your life that suggest you are off course and begin making your game plan to correct the situation. fn1 The Floating Hospital is an amazing health center aboard a ship. It offers diagnosis, prevention, treatment and educational services to the poor in New York City. During the summer months, it takes 800 people a day on a health cruise around Manhattan, and during the winter it provides dockside services to people of all ages.

Contribution in the way that I am using it means beginning exactly where you are, looking around, seeing what needs to be done, and doing it.

1. Simply recognize that you might be caught in a vicious circle. If you look carefully at your past, you will probably notice that every time negative feelings associated with loss came up, you took the very same pathway to try to relieve the discomfort: You tried to re-create that which you had lost. For example, what’s the first thing many of us do when we are devastated by the loss of a loved one? We simply substitute heads. And when the next love of our life leaves, we experience the same feeling of devastation (which is amazing, since we’ve only know this lover for three weeks). Then what do we do? It’s not hard to guess—we go out and find another “one and only” without whom we would simply die! If this or a similar pattern sounds familiar, it is important not to make a big thing out of it. Just recognize that up until now you simply did not have an appropriate framework within which to create a healthier way to act. The mere fact that you acknowledge the possibility of another way is enough to get you to the next step.

2. Create your own Whole Life Grid. Begin by making a nine-boxed square like the one on here. Take some time to think about what components you would like to include in your life and begin filling in the boxes. I am a great believer in setting the stage whenever I begin any kind of introspection, so I recommend that you buy some meditative music (suggested tapes are listed at the back of this book) and put it on as background while you are filling in the boxes. Make sure you are alone and that the phone is turned off.

The problem with needy people is that they can’t take in anything around them. Then they wonder why they are starving emotionally.

6. Do steps 3, 4 and 5 for every area of your grid. You will be amazed at what a beautiful life begins to emerge—so rich, full, loving and giving. It is important to keep in mind that whatever you create in your grid can become a reality—if you are commited to taking the necessary action.

“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

If you find it difficult to motivate yourself, don’t put yourself down. Find a self-help group to act as a catalyst. If you can’t find a support group, find what I call a “growth buddy.” You and your buddy can help each other by meeting weekly and working on the grid, your goals, your action plan, or whatever.

“How whole is my life?”

SAY YES TO YOUR UNIVERSE.

Whatever happens to you in life, just nod your head, up and down, instead of shaking it, side to side. Just say yes instead of no.”

IN SAYING “YES” LIES THE ANTIDOTE TO OUR FEAR.

The phrase “say yes” means “to agree to” those things that life hands us. Saying yes means letting go of resistance and letting in the possibilities that our universe offers in new ways of seeing the world. It means to relax bodily and calmly survey the situation, thereby reducing upset and anxiety. Aside from the emotional benefits, the physical benefits are enormous. Conversely, saying no means to be a victim. “How could this happen to me!” Saying no means to block, to fight, to resist opportunities for growth and challenge. Saying no creates tension, exhaustion, wasted expenditure of energy, emotional upheaval—or, worse, it creates apathy. “I can’t cope. I can’t go on. There is no hope.” The truth of the matter is that saying yes is our only hope.

with a positive attitude, value can be created from anything that happens to you in life.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF PAIN IS VERY IMPORTANT; DENIAL IS DEADLY.

When we don’t acknowledge our pain, it will be transferred into a bodily symptom, anger or something equally destructive. Saying yes means letting in the pain full force, knowing you will not only get to the other side of it, but also gain something in the end—if you look for it.

The experiences of camp life show that a man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress. We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s way. The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even in the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life.

We can’t control the world, but we can control our reactions to it.

Remember: THE WORLD IS FILLED WITH PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN HANDED THE “WORST” LIFE HAS TO OFFER … AND THEY HAVE COME OUT WINNERS!

1. Create awareness that you are saying no.

IF LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, MAKE LEMONADE.

2. Once consciousness is there, actually nod your head, say yes.

3. Using the same principle, physically relax your body, starting from the top of your head and going to the tip of your toes.

4. Look for ways to create value from any experience. Ask yourself these questions:

As discussed in Chapter 7, let go of the picture of what the outcome “should” be, to open the way for possibilities your mind is incapable of predicting.

5. Be patient with yourself, DON’T SAY NO TO YOUR DIFFICULTY IN SAYING YES.

Saying yes helps you find your way much faster, thus vastly improving the quality of your life.

Every time you find yourself resisting what’s happening at the present moment, recall the phrase SAY YES TO YOUR UNIVERSE.

The only time you will fear anything is when you say no and resist the universe. You may have heard the expression “Get into the flow.” This means consciously accepting what is happening in your life. I once heard it said that the key to life is not to figure out what you can get from the flow, but, rather, to figure out how to get into the flow. Or, as Barry Stevens titled her book, Don’t Push the River (it flows by itself). Stop fighting your life. Let go and let the river carry you to new adventure by the way you experience your life. In this way—and only in this way—it is impossible to lose.

STEPS TO SAYING YES 1. Create awareness that you can choose to say yes or no. 2. Nod your head—say yes. 3. Relax your body. 4. Adopt an attitude of “Let’s see what good will come from this situation.” 5. Be patient with yourself. It takes times to adopt a “yes” approach to life. Say yes to you!

IF ALL YOUR “GIVING” IS ABOUT “GETTING,” THINK HOW FEARFUL YOU WILL BECOME.

GENUINE GIVING IS NOT ONLY ALTRUISTIC; IT ALSO MAKES US FEEL BETTER.

One of the most important lessons one has to learn in life is how to give, and therein lies an answer to fear. As babies we represent the ultimate of neediness. We come into this world as total takers. We have to take, or we will die. Our survival is tied up with the world nurturing us. We give little back. We don’t care what time we wake our parents when we are hungry, or how loudly we scream and bother the neighbors when we want to be picked up. Yes, parents often get a feeling of joy from the smile or the touch of their child and, in that sense, the child is a giver—but I doubt if the child spent the night pondering: “My life is abundant. I have so much to give away that I think I’ll reward my parents with a great big smile tomorrow morning.” No, their “gift” is on a rather primitive or reflexive level. In fact, a hungry belly in the morning will produce only loud shrieks of impatience. As the years pass, we function as more and more independent beings, able to take care of ourselves—or so it appears. We dress ourselves, we feed ourselves, we earn a living. Yet there seems to be a part of us that never progresses much beyond the crib. Metaphorically, we remain frightened that no one will come to relieve our hunger—for food, money, love, praise and so on. Any relief in the way of “food” is only temporary; we know the hunger will come again.

People who fear can’t genuinely give. They are imbued with a deep-seated sense of scarcity in the world, as if there wasn’t enough to go around. Not enough love, not enough money, not enough praise, not enough attention—simply not enough.

Usually fear in one area of our lives generalizes, and we become closed down and protective in many areas of our lives. Fearful people can be visualized as crouched and hugging themselves.

Whereas this image represents the inner state of all frightened people, the outer manifestat...

Successful businessmen needing the boss’s approval Housewives who blame their husbands or children for the fact that they never lived their own lives Independent career women who demand so much from their men that they are often alone Men who can’t tolerate their wives’ i...

They are all in some way operating out of a sense of fear for their own survival. They all are, in effect, c...

Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life.

One of my students asked what would have happened if one of them really had turned against me and used my information in a competitive way. My answer was, and is, that if I have enough belief in myself that I will “make it” no matter what anyone does, what is there to fear? It’s a matter of developing trust in yourself and in your universe.

YOU MUST BECOME WHAT YOU WANT TO ATTRACT BE THE KIND OF PERSON YOU WOULD WANT TO SURROUND YOURSELF WITH.

YOUR LIFE IS ABUNDANT, AND YOU COUNT!

I RELEASE MY FEAR OF LACK AND ACCEPT THE ABUNDANCE AND PROSPERITY OF THE UNIVERSE

The trick in life is not figuring out what you can get, but what you can give.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making me happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and, as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.