If you want to take your mission in life to the next level, if you’re stuck and you don’t know how to rise, don’t look outside yourself. Look inside. Don’t let your fears keep you mired in the crowd. Abolish your fears and raise your commitment level to the point of no return, and I guarantee you that the Champion Within will burst forth to propel you toward victory.
— Bruce Jenner
This week we’ve munched and crunched a few of our FEARs with four flexible solutions that will work for anyone who’s willing to tolerate a little silliness along the way. From research touting an unexpected Botox benefit – it’s easier to be happy when you can’t frown – to reliving a trip to the dentist in living color, we’ve jittered among our funky fears and found funny fixes for getting unstuck and for getting to fear-less.
In Monday’s post I linked to research that confirms that a smile can actually make you feel better. And because I don’t think pasting on a forced smile will suffice, I suggested creating your very own “Grins List”…
Did you do it? If not, what are you waiting for? Go for the giggles now so you can produce a genuine smile when you need to fake it ’til you make it. And if you need more reasons to crack a smile besides it’ll make you feel better, check out Top 10 Reasons to Smile And smile, smile, smile!
Then on Tuesday PattiAnn admitted that she has a “picture problem”. Please don’t ask her to visualize desirable futures – she just can’t see them. Or at least, she couldn’t until she learned about a technique called “virtualization” and gave it a try. But did she “try” it on a desirable future??? Oh no. She intrepidly virtualized a couple of her fears. So, in addition to threatening to vividly virtualize her fear of flying for us, she regaled us with a 5-Senses visit to the dentist in Getting to Fear-Less.
Read it and then rescue your runaway hormones by “imagineering” a happy time in your life – pretend you’re in a Star Trek-like Holodeck and, using the 5-Senses virtualization technique, create some good happy-times “memories”. In other words, add more to your Grins-List but this time, see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, and feel it. It’ll make you happy-more and fear-less. And if you’re having a hard time with this virtualizing technique, take a look at one woman’s Wednesday afternoon… or savor a clever bunch of kids’ cool apple poems.
Continue reading » Scared Silly and Back
After having written my last post on replacing fear with good memories, another side-effect of fear occurred to me. When we focus on our fear and we physically spiral into extreme fight or flight, we are fighting two problems in our attempt to move forward. We feel horrible psychologically AND we feel physically horrible. I know I’ve said they feed on one another… and they do. But we need to acknowledge that it’s harder to go out in the world when on top of being scared, you have a sick stomach or worse.
When I finished my first year of training and had customer accounts that were mine, every day was an “adventure.” My territory was spread all over. Because of the traffic, getting to a customer could take 45 minutes to an hour. Prior to getting this job, the farthest I’d driven was to college, which was 45 minutes from home. I had one way to get there and reversed that to get home. (I get lost going around the block. GPS’s were invented to keep me out of places I shouldn’t be in.)
Continue reading » Mickey Mouse to the Rescue
How do you deal with your own version of writer’s block?
I am officially STUCK.
I’ve started and stopped seven or more posts… I’ve sat, I’ve been still… and I’ve rocked my ideas, rocked and rolled them, to and fro. To and fro I’ve kneaded them like strings of play dough… And STILL my post page is blankity blankity BLANK! Tossed some… Kept some… And, per Clarissa Pinkola, American poet, psychoanalyst and post-trauma specialist, I “need do no more.” Obviously SHE didn’t work to a deadline!
I’m solution-searching, looking for a bounce to get me back on schedule. And here’s what I’ve decided to do: I’m going to string together some words of wisdom from OPs (numerous “other people”) and see if I can crochet together the ideas, theirs and mine, into a comforter that will warm my chilled resourcefulness and cover this next post.
So you see, imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. — Brenda Ueland
Well now, there’s a dandy and creative word to play with: “moodling”. I’ve been doing my share of it; I’ve endured long, inefficient stretches of dawdling, but the “happy idling” aspect escapes me and my imagination stays stuck. So, let me ask you, how could moodling bolster your resilience?? I suspect the thoughtful answer will probably be, “I suppose it could… let me moodle on it a bit.”
Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. — Martin Luther King, Jr.
Continue reading » blankity blankity BLANK STUCK!
Years and years ago (synonymous with I don’t really know when but it was a looong time ago), I heard Jack Canfield speak. He is co-author of the Chicken Soup books. He said that his ideal job would be to get paid to learn about stuff and then teach it to others. When he said that, I thought “THAT’S what I want to do.” One of the best things about writing a blog is that I get to do that. I read and learn new stuff and Presto Change-o, I get the opportunity to share the new things that I learn.
Recently, I was reading about visualization. I’m an auditory person and if by visualization you mean building pictures in my mind, good luck. My unique talent is being able to rewind what someone has said – that I didn’t catch – in my head, and figure out what it was. I don’t know how I do this, I just know that before they can respond to my “excuse me,” I’ve figured out what they said. (This is probably not unique; it’s possible that lots of auditory people can also do this.)
How about it, do you have some everyday pleasures that make you grin & help you “fake it until you make it”?
I wonder if any of you saw the TV episode of The Dog Whisperer in which Cesar Milan puts a leash on a dog’s tail! Huh?? Yes, a leash on a dog’s tail. Here’s the back story: The shy dog was raised in rural Riverside, CA and then adopted by a man who lived in a downtown Long Beach. The confused dog was freaked-out by the city traffic, the noises, the helter-skelter of congested sidewalks. He was in an ever vigilant state and cowered at every noise, every movement, everything! Poor thing. Hoping to rehabilitate the retiring pup, the new owner called in Cesar who tried something he’d never tried before – take a look:
Smile Though Your Heart Is Breaking
That particular (weird but interesting) show got me to thinking about an article I recently saw at Scientific American online:
This February psychologists at the University of Cardiff in Wales found that people whose ability to frown is compromised by cosmetic Botox injections are happier, on average, than people who can frown.
Researchers concluded:
It would appear that the way we feel emotions isn’t just restricted to our brain—there are parts of our bodies that help and reinforce the feelings we’re having. It’s like a feedback loop.
Continue reading » Acting As If You Are Happy Works!
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