Feel the fear and do it anyway

What I found interesting and worth taking away from this book is a lot. This is by no means a plagiarism or an attempt to summarize the entire book. This is simply my notes during my reading of this book.
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CHAPTER 1 WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF… AND WHY?

Level 1 fears include those that “happen” like: aging, retirement, being alone, change, natural disasters, accidents, rape,… and those requiring action: changing career, making friends, intimacy, public speaking, ending a relationship,…

Level 2 fears include rejection, success, failure, being vulnerable, disapproval, helplessness, loss of image,…

Level 3 fears – “I can’t handle it!“

If you knew you could handle anything that came your way, what would you possibly have to fear? The answer is:

NOTHING!

I WILL HANDLE IT!

CHAPTER 2 CAN’T YOU MAKE IT GO AWAY?

5 Truths about Fear

The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow.
The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out… and do it.
The only way to feel better about myself is to go out… and do it.
Not only am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.
Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness.

CHAPTER 3 FROM PAIN TO POWER

The kind of power I’m talking about leaves you free. It’s not the ability to get someone else to do what you want them to do. It’s the ability to get yourself to do what you want to do. If you do not own this kind of power, you lose your sense of peace. You are in a very vulnerable place.

Remember: Your subconscious believes only what it hears, not what is true.

People who display an inner strength are treated differently from those who come across as weak. The more powerfully you speak, the more you will be a force in the world around you.

The more you expand your comfort zone, the more powerful you become.

Take those risks each day that build your sense of self-worth.

You are innately designed to use your personal power. When you don’t, you experience helplessness, paralysis and depression.

CHAPTER 4 WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT… IT’S YOURS

Victims are powerless. Until you fully understand that you, and no one else, create what goes on in your head, you will never be in control of your life.

When you blame any outside force for any of your experience of life, you are literally giving away all your power and thus creating pain, paralysis and depression.

Don’t make yourself a victim of yourself! You have always done the best you possibly can, given the person you were at any particular time. Nothing is your “fault”.

Anger is your clue that you are not taking responsibility.

Once you get rid of the negativity your chatterbox brings, you will really begin to enjoy being alone.

There is no need to wait for anyone to give you anything in your life. You have the power to create what you need. Given commitment, clear goals and actions, it’s just a matter of time.

As you go through each day, it is important to realize that every moment you are choosing the way you feel.

Each time you are upset, be conscious of the alternatives available to you.

The key is not to blame others for your being upset.

Seven (7) Ways to reclaim your Power

AVOID casting blame on an external force for your bad feelings about life. Nothing outside yourself can control your thinking or your actions.
AVOID blaming yourself for not being in control You are doing the best you can and you are on your way to reclaiming your power.
BE AWARE of when and where you are playing the victim role. Learn the clues that tell you that you are not being responsible for what you are being, having, doing or feeling.
FAMILIARIZE yourself with your biggest enemy – your chatterbox. Use the exercises throughout this book (buy the book) to replace it with a loving internal friend.
FIGURE OUT the payoffs that keep you “stuck”. Paradoxically, once you find them, you will probably be able to quickly become “unstuck”.
DETERMINE what you want in life and act on it. Stop waiting for someone to give it to you. You’ll be waiting a long time.
BE AWARE of the many choices you have – in both actions and feelings – in any situation that comes your way. Choose the path that contributes to your growth and makes you feel at peace with yourself and others.

CHAPTER 5 POLLYANNA RIDES AGAIN

Are you being realistic when you worry all the time? No!

We create our own reality. There is absolutely no question that learning to think more positively will put you closer and closer toward finding your own power.

STOP FEEDING YOURSELF NEGATIVE THOUGHTS. Negative thoughts take away your power… and thus make you more paralyzed from your fear.

OUTTALK YOUR NEGATIVITY. That internal chatterbox has an incredible staying power. It will resist in every way it can in order to maintain its power over you. Once you have that little voice under control, you’ve got it made.

Positive thinking changes everything in your life. Without your negative chatterbox, you will wonder what you were always so afraid of before. You will have energy you never thought possible. You will laugh a lot and love a lot more too. You will draw more and more positive people in your life. You will be healthier physically. You will be happy to be alive.

Approach your involvement with the positive sense that something can be done, even if the answer is not readily seen. Denial creates inactivity… and so does hopelessness.

You can lead a productive and meaningful life no matter what the external circumstances are. What positive thinking does is offer a power boost to help you handle whatever life gives you. Your “bad” breaks do not dominate your life; your indomitable strength does. And when you feel that indomitable strength, you really can handle any of your fears from a position of power.

CHAPTER 6 WHEN “THEY” DON’T WANT YOU TO GROW

Life becomes more fun and less of a struggle when you don’t have to pioneer on your own.

When we are concerned with something bigger than ourselves, our fears are greatly diminished.

You have to go out and create the kind of support system you want. Even if it seems frightening, do it anyway!

We do tend to greatly underestimate ourselves.

Very often parents don’t realize they are undermining their children’s confidence in themselves, and when this is pointed out to them, they stop the criticism.

Although most of us don’t like ourselves when we lash out, doing it somehow feels better than reverting to the passive “wimp” we used to be. It is often an understandable part of the process of change. We are not yet sure of ourselves and our reaction is to defend with all our might.

As you start to take risks and grow, you are going to get resistance from people in your life.

One of the reasons we react so hostilely when others don’t support us is out need for approval.

Guilt and hostility often mask our anger at ourselves and others for not being able to break unhealthy ties with loved ones.

As you become clearer and clearer and more adult about what you need to do in order to grow, loved ones will be able to say anything they please and you won’t be affected.

Cutting childlike relationships with others and substituting more responsible ones will allow you to act much more lovingly toward other people in your life.

If you cannot reason with loved ones about their destructive behavior towards you, it is best to create some distance until you learn to operate on a more adult level. Saying goodbye to the old relationship with a parent usually requires that we go through grief until the old door is closed and the new one is opened. We are, in effect, grieving for the end of an era.

Your strength will allow you to break unhealthy ties and establish new, healthier ones.

CHAPTER 7 HOW TO MAKE A NO-LOSE DECISION

All you have to do to change your world is change the way you think about it. Every time you encounter something that forces you to “handle it”, your self-esteem is raised considerably.

The knowledge that you can handle anything that comes your way is the key to allowing yourself to take healthy, life-affirming risks.

Security is not having things; it’s handling things.

Before Making a Decision:

Focus immediately on the No-Lose model. Push out thoughts of what you can lose and allow only thoughts of what can be gained.
Do your homework. It is most helpful to talk to as many people as will listen. It is important that you talk to the “right” people. You don’t have to continue having conversations about your decision with those who make you feel bad about yourself. You’re not a failure if you don’t make it; you’re a success because you try. Intention is a powerful took in creating something you want in your life.
Establish your priorities. It is important to remember that goals constantly change as you go through life, and you have to keep reassessing them. Allow yourself confusion in the searching process. It is through confusion that you finally come to clarity.
Trust your impulses.
Lighten Up. The trick is simply to make whatever place you’re in your educational forum and learn everything you can about yourself and the world around you.

After Making a Decision:

Throw away your picture. Once the decision is made, let the picture go.
Accept total responsibility for your decisions. When you do, you become a lot less angry at the world, and most important, a lot less angry at yourself.
Don’t protect, correct. It is most important to commit yourself to any decision you make and give it all you’ve got. But if it doesn’t work out, change it! The trick in life is not to worry about making a wrong decision; it’s learning when to correct! There are many inner clues that help you know when it is time to correct. The two most obvious are confusion and dissatisfaction. “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.“

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

Reminder: “IT REALLY DOESN’T MATTER“

Also: “SO WHAT? I’LL HANDLE IT!“

CHAPTER 8 HOW WHOLE IS YOUR WHOLE LIFE?

When parents depend on children for their emotional survival, it is clearly detrimental. A parent’s survival is a heavy burden for a child to bear!

The area of contribution: allows you to make your own special difference in the world.

Contribution means beginning exactly where you are, looking around, seeing what needs to be done, and doing it.

Just changing your attitude can affect the world around you.

Simply recognize that you might be caught in a vicious cycle.
100% commitment and acting as if you count.
ACTION is the key to your success.

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

Set up the basic structure of your life, so you can go on living in a way that supports your growth and satisfaction.

Most people never take the time to focus on what they want – then they wonder why they always feel empty.

CHAPTER 9 JUST “NOD” YOU HEAD… AND SAY “YES!”

In saying “yes” lies the antidote to your fear.

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.

Saying “no” creates tension, exhaustion, wasted expenditure of energy, emotional upheaval – or worse, it creates apathy.

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

There is something enriching about leaving one beautiful experience in your life and looking forward to other beautiful experiences.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT of pain is very important; DENIAL is deadly

Pain can be incredibly destructive if kept submerged. When we don’t acknowledge our pain, it will be transformed into a bodily symptom, anger or something equally destructive.

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

SAYING YES means getting up and acting on your behalf that you can create meaning and purpose in whatever life hands you.

CREATE awareness that you’re saying “no”. Saying “yes” to your universe.
NOD YOUR HEAD up and down and say “yes”. Create Acceptance.
PHYSICALLY relax your body.
LOOK for ways to create value from experience. Let go of the “picture” —> open the way for possibilities your mind is incapable of envisioning.
BE PATIENT with yourself. It takes time to adopt a “yes” approach to life.

As you start to see the possibilities in the impossible, you will begin to see that the world works “perfectly”. You can find reason and purpose in everything – if you open your mind to it.

STOP FIGHTING your Life

CHAPTER 10 CHOOSING LOVE AND TRUST

One of the most important lessons one has to learn in life is how to give.

Genuine giving is not only altruistic; it also makes us feel better.

People who fear can’t genuinely give.

When we give from a place of love, rather than from a place of expectation, more usually comes back to us than we could have ever imagined.

We need to get rid of pain and anger before we can bring in love. When we hold negative feelings about people in our past, we carry those feelings to those in our present.

Start thanking others instead of waiting for thanks to come to you. Begin giving others as much help as you can possibly give them.

Giving has to be done with no expectations of return.

When we praise people in our lives, we release the negativity and open the door for their being loving towards us.

You must become what you want to attract. Be the kind of person you would want to surround yourself with.

Giving does not imply being a doormat. We are entitled to have our needs met. However, it doesn’t serve us to be angry if a certain someone does not fulfill them.

Knowing that you count, or “acting as if” you do, give away you time. What an incredible gift!

Fear about money often persists regardless of how wealthy we are. Within reason, begin to “give it away” with the belief that you will always find a way to have whatever you need.

TO LOVE is to be able TO GIVE

AND NOW is the time to BEGIN

Look for blessings, and you will notice them all over the place.

YOUR LIFE IS ABUNDANT, AND YOU COUNT!

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

CHAPTER 11 FILLING THE INNER VOID

Too many of us seem to be searching for something “out there” to make our lives complete. We feel alienated, lonely and empty. No matter what we do or have, we never feel full-fulled. This feeling of emptiness or intense loneliness is our clue that we are off course.

Unless you consciously or unconsciously tap into that spiritual part within, you will experience perpetual discontent.

The Conscious Mind sends orders to the Subconscious Mind based on the information it gets from either the Higher-Self or the Chatterbox.

If you listen to the chatterbox, your experience of life is fear-producing, and you stop yourself from expanding.

If you listen to the Higher-Self, you experience of life is joyful, abundant and devoid of fear.

When you stay centered there is nothing to fear.

CHAPTER 12 THERE IS PLENTY OF TIME

No matter what is happening at any particular time in your life, keep in mind that is it all perfect.

So much of the joy in life in the challenge of figuring it all out.

The challenge is to stay on the Path of the Higher Self.

If the path you’re on isn’t providing you joy, satisfaction, creativity, love and caring, that’s not it. Sometimes you will experience the ecstasy of being the flow. Sometimes you will experience the agony of being way off course.

Remember you are not alone.

TAKE ACTION. Nothing is going to work for you unless you do the work.

SAY YES to life. Participate. Move. Act. Write. Read. Sign Up. Take a Stand. Joy, not happiness, is the goal of life. And what is Joy? It is something that expresses the ebullience of the spiritual part of ourselves. Joy is characterized by lightness, humor, laughter and gaiety. Lighten Up.

Commit Yourself to pushing through the fear and becoming more than you are at the present moment.

The Divine Homesickness disappears as you find the place where all are connected as loving human beings. Whatever it takes to get you there, FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY!

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