Tag Archive 'fear of failure'

May 16 2009

Has Your Hula Hoop Gone Kerplunk?

Published by Karen under Creating Success

Remember the hula hoop? In order to succeed with the hula hoop, you had to keep moving. The minute you stopped, it fell to the ground. Kerplunk! The good news was that you could easily pick it up and start again.

Well the same is true with your life goals.

Of course, the first thing you need is to know what your goals are. One of the single biggest stumbling blocks to success, in any form, is having clearly defined goals. If you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? Start by making clearly defined, quantitative goals. If your goal is to succeed. What does success mean to you? It must be specific. Does it mean that you’ve got 1000 people in your organization or are making $1000 or $10,000/month or that you’ve lost 25 or 50 lbs or have written that book you’ve been thinking about? There are a million different definitions of success. You need to find out what yours is. 

So now you have your goals. You should have goals set in each area of your life –  spiritual, physical, family, community and finances. Remember to write them down daily which gives you an opportunity to visualize what it will feel and look like once you’ve attained a goal. Visualization is an important aspect of staying in focus. If you want to be a millionaire, for example, what does it feel like or look like to you. How will you walk or dress or talk? Start doing those things now (and that doesn’t mean going out and spending money you don’t have). Create the person you want to become. There is a saying – “fake it, till you make it.” 

You may not know how you’re going to achieve the goals and that’s OK as long as you know where you’re going and are open to the possibilities that present themselves. Just like the hula hoop achieving your goals takes action. If you’re not moving – kerplunk. That doesn’t mean you need to go full out 24/7. What it does mean is that you need to keep moving – moving toward your goals.

Just like when you played with the hula hoop and it fell to the ground, there will be times when you stop moving toward your goals. Kerplunk! And just like the hula hoop you have a choice to pick it up and start again. . . or walk away. Which will you do?

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Apr 20 2009

Are You Thriving?

Published by Karen under Creating Success

When we consider our physical health, many people feel they are either sick or not sick. But in reality we can be sick, not sick or healthy.

So too with our life adventure. Many people are “not sick”. They may not take much pleasure in things. They don’t like their jobs and they’re just coasting along waiting to see if “life” is going to drop something in their lap. They may even see an opportunity but think “it’s too risky” or “it takes too much work”. So they just survive.

But isn’t life our big adventure? Isn’t it about growing up spiritually and emotionally; taking risks; expanding our experiences? It’s easy to see how people arrive at survival mode. It’s safe. As we’re growing up, we’ve all encountered situations when we tried something new or were just enjoying ourselves and someone laughed at us or ridiculed us. How did we handle it? For many people, these instances pile up over the years and they find themselves “just getting by”, just surviving, playing it safe.  If we begin choosing only “safe” situations so that we look good in other people’s eyes, we will miss out on many opportunities that are right in front of us; opportunities that could change our lives.

How many times have you been faced with a “crisis” – I don’t mean a life and death type of crisis, but rather those that happen frequently. You’ve got a meeting with a new business partner and it’s vital that you be on time and make a good impression. You’re a little nervous because this could grow your business exponentially. You jump in the car and take off, trying to do a little mental preparing. You arrive right on time and as you start to get out of the car, you look down – you still have on your sweat pants and slippers!!.  What are you going to do? You can just imagine what this new person is going to think of you – my goodness you can’t even dress appropriately. They’ll probably laugh at you and then start backing away from the business. Your busy little mind can create all kinds of scenarios – all disastrous. Now you’re really in a frenzy.

You could get back in the car and call them and tell them your car broke down or. . .

Go in and after saying ‘hello’ etc., say you know the greatest thing about my business is that I get to work at home and I often dress accordingly. Well, I’m a little chagrined because I guess I was so involved in thinking about our plans to work together, I neglected to check my attire and here I am slippers and all!

What do you think would happen? Probably you would both have a little laugh and very possibly your new business partner would tell you a story about an embarrassing moment of his own. We make up reality when we’re faced with a ‘crisis’.  We need to quit worrying about what others think of us and rather start worrying about what we think of ourselves.

Thriving takes risk. There are several things we need to overcome in order to thrive:

  • Fear of failure
  • Fear of being wrong
  • Fear of rejection
  • Fear of embarrassment

If we’re going to live this adventure to the fullest, we must do our best. That means stepping outside our comfort zone to face irrational fears. It means taking responsibility for our choices. It means there are no failures, only learning experiences. It means getting over ourselves so that we can SOAR (Spirituality, Optimism, Abundance, Responsibility).

Are you thriving or just surviving? When will you take that first step?

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