The Dummies 2020 guide to...How we can easily remove the barriers to our success.

One of the biggest and most important ways we can easily eliminate barriers to success is just so simple,

so obvious that we rarely see it...

..it is based on one simple word, one word that itself conjures up images of all sorts of horrors and pictures in the mind....the word is...

FEAR.

Yes fear...fear stops us in our tracks, fear stops us from getting into danger, yet it also stops us from moving forward, it stops us progressing with our life, our hopes, our dreams.

There are 2 types of fear I want to think about here.

The first one is the external fear (the ones that are done to us, they come from outside, they are affected by outside situations and people) and the other is the internal fear (the fears inside of us).

The external fears:

Well, we all have these....the external fears.

The ones that stop us from going outside when we are 16 years old because we have a massive spot on our face, and we don't want others to see it and pass judgement, ridicule us.

The fear of others rejecting us, laughing at us, the fear of not getting the job we went for and spent 2 days preparing for.

Or being rejected by the person we asked out when we were 18.

All those fearful moments we re-live over and over and over again, which often spills out into our life now.

Stunting our growth, curbing our development.

Fear of saying the wrong things in the interview, or in the company of others or in front of our boss and making yourself out to be a right chump.

Only last week I went out for a drink and meal with some colleagues who were more senior to me at work.  Because of nerves and some elements of fear I suppose, I started telling stories of past funny things that have happened at work.   

To raise the vibration of the evening and to be funny and witty, “ahem!”.

The next day I thought to myself “oh no... did I really say that?”.

I even had to check with one of them to make sure I didn't say anything inappropriate.

They said it was great and I was funny.   However, the fear of not being good company pushed me into being good company, which then meant I was fearful I'd spoken out of turn.

You see the spiral of such conversations in our brains?

Total madness, totally paralysing....and for what purpose? What master was it serving? What reason did I need this fear? It didn't help me. I needn't have worried.

Then there are the macro, external factors from the media, the scare factors which sell newspapers and stories, and we end up thinking the whole world is a bad place.

Which of course it isn't.

The fears of being mugged by any scooter or man in a helmet that drives past.

Being murdered at least once a week.

Being raped, being robbed left right and centre.

Our identity stolen, our card phished and our money taken.

Reading what's wrong with us or not right for us...my neurotic mate has 'had'.... the menopause, leprosy and a brain tumour all in the past month.

He wasn't sure why.... but he felt he had the symptoms.

He spends too much time watching 24hrs in A and E!

All of this fear is put upon us to some extent by the world around us. Most of it happens to only a fraction of the population and it is rare. Although the media tell us otherwise.

What can we do?

Well, I, no longer watch the news, I haven't for years.

No... I'm not ignorant, I skim the headlines, I know what's going on but I could no longer face the rolling, high fear credits of the news and the eye-catching headlines, and the adrenaline rush of the issues affecting the world day after day.

Some of which were so ludicrous and many of which I could do nothing about, i.e. how corrupt governments or extremists treat their innocent people.

Don't get me wrong... I care, I care very much about people. But I send out love and good thoughts and energies to the world instead. I think it is much more productive (that's what I tell myself) and I think it's better than setting up a worry energy.

This is just adding to the problem.

Fears are all around us.

The world is built on fear.

But that fear and those energies they create... only add to the negative energies in the world. If we have fear inside of us, we generate fear, that vibrates within us.

That vibration is sent out there to the universe. It attracts fear back, towards us... and so the cycle continues.

We are stuck in a fear pit and we don't move forward.

I think, as do others, that the Governments of the world use fear to control the masses. Maybe that's unfair, they do their best and do send out messages to educate and shape society.

But I do think there is an underlying element that fear is there to dampen down people's minds, their creativity, their ability to think for themselves.

The media also have an important part to play and I don't know what motivation is behind that. But where do you see anywhere on the news and newspapers... leading headlines that are all positive and great and really celebrating the fantastic stuff we do on this planet?

Nope, we don't do we.

Surely if the news was all great, we'd start to see it and feel it and raise up our vibrational energies of the planet? What's the point in all the doom and gloom?

Yes, it's there... but give us some balance here people.

The internal fears:

Then we have the internal fears, often internalised from many of the external factors influencing how we think and feel. But these are often less obvious and more complex fears factors.

These can be learnt behaviours from caregivers or past life events and experiences that set us down a pathway of fear.

We have a fear of dying, even though maybe we've 'died' thousands of times before. Some religions have some say over that; sins and punishments.

Why?

Because they want to control the masses from being free?

I remember one person I heard about was so scared of dying they were literally crying and rocking near the end of their life, because of the thought of past sins and the idea of Hell.

That fear in itself can ruin people's experiences on this planet.

And overshadow the lessons we are here to learn. It controls us and stops us thinking for ourselves.

We have the fear of fear itself….I can't do that I’m too scared. Others might think bad of me, I might look silly, an idiot, and I am too darn scared to go there or talk to that person. They limit us. They enslave us. The put us in a cage of limitation.

When we should be in an unlimited life of excitement, abundance, learning, love and joy.

We have fear of spiders, snakes, RATS (my personal demon), heights, stage fright, crowded spaces, small spaces, water, germs, the opposite sex, and even the fear of dancing !( called Chorophobia).

When in a fear state we shut down our creative energy, we go within and withdraw as a way to self-protect.

Our natural energies shut down and we close down who we are. In effect, we become less of who we are and we then don't fulfil our potential.

We sweat, we shake, we have anxiety and nervousness.

Can you imagine having fear for the majority of your life? How exhausting that is!

We are not really born with fear.

Babies have a fear of being dropped and not being fed. That's all. Everything else comes from our own mind, experiences and those of others.

Think about for a moment.... what fears have you picked up from caregivers or parents? We take them on. They become part of us.

Fears about being too fat, too skinny, too tall, too big, too ugly, too slow, not clever enough, being too smart, having bad breath, bad skin, the list goes on and on.

 

All of this is part of life....yes it is, we know that...show me a person who doesn’t have fear and at times crippling self-doubt... and I’ll show you a robot.

Yes, it is part of life, but we cannot let those fears cripple us.

However, we must not let these fears stop us moving forward with our life and accomplishing what we need to achieve. 

 

How can we overcome fear for success?

One way of doing this is...

When we focus on the worst possible outcome, automatically switch to focussing on the best thing that can happen within that outcome. Make it a habit every time. It is that simple.

For example, a spider is in your bedroom. Tell yourself it is just a very small creature, that means us no harm. That it is more scared than we are.

 

Tell yourself...I am safe, I am well, I am safe, I am happy with the spider/rat/speaking in public. I like the Rat (yes I'm still working on the rat thing)/person/presentation.

Put in the positives into your mind. By doing this we can reprogramme our mind. I've been doing this with all sorts of fears, like rats, for example, it really does work.

You start to re-train your mind to see the 'fear' as something different. Something that won't hurt you any-more.

We have choices....we really do, we are in control:

We have 2 pathways;

we feel fearful

or

we take control and acknowledge it.

The latter means the fear will go away.

Fear holds us back, but they are all in our mind. 

 

Sometimes old fears come back, especially as we develop and progress, spiritually for example.

These fears signal that we are moving forward.

The fear of the unknown, of venturing out to a new chapter of your life, for example; living abroad, taking a journey somewhere, travelling, meeting someone new and asking someone out. 

Taking a plunge into something new can take us out of our comfort zone, it can paralyse us with fear, and this type of fear is fantastic as it indicates to us we are moving out of our comfort zone.

We need to look at the opportunity, the idea, the thing we want to do, really look at it. 

Write it down if we need to,  rationalise it in our head.

Ask yourselves these questions:

How do we feel about it?

If we have anxiety and fear, Why? 

What is really stopping us moving forward (the stuff above)?

Is it an irrational fear? 

For example, “I can’t do that because people will laugh at me. I am too fat etc.”

We must refocus on what we can get from doing this, refocus not on the fear itself, but what we want to achieve, and what we want to accomplish from this idea.

If we want a new friend, a new job, a new exciting opportunity. Think of yourself achieving this. It can take a few months to change our thinking but stick at it and it does work.

Conclusion:  We can do it.

I’ve had these fears myself. For example, building my own business online. I had to overcome a whole mountain of fear, built up over many years. I had a great team of mentors to help me. But I took each step at a time. 

I saw myself doing it well, I saw myself having achieved what I want to achieve.

If you want to know more have a look at my story and what I did here. check out my blog....on Axe Your 9 to 5.

Yes, the fear is still there, but you are so busy focussing on what you can achieve that the fears sort of melts away.

The fears become quieter.

You can achieve what you set out to achieve if you focus on the positive parts of that achievement,  and don’t focus on the fear.  

 

The only thing to fear really….is fear itself!!

Leave your comments below and let me know what you think holds you back. 

Good Luck much love and light.

Jeff James.