No matter what type of success you strive for, you will at some stage have to take action and step out of your comfort zone. You will have to face your fears and just go for it. If you don’t, your dreams will always remain dreams and your success will never materialise.

So how bad is it stepping out of your comfort zone?

Is there really anything to be afraid of?

In today’s post I want to look at the word “Fear” and how it is perceived. Does fear stop you from moving forward in life or reaching for your goals? If so then keep reading so that I can show you a little trick that seems to be really working for me.

FEAR – False Evidence Appearing Real

Fear is one of the biggest obstacles that we face in life and I had so much fun today looking up different acronyms for this word. The most common one and one that I use myself on a regular basis is the one I have used in the heading, False Evidence Appearing Real. There are some others that I really like too including, finding excuses and reasons, and frantic effort to avoid reality. All of these have one thing in common and that is that they are a reason not to do something. They hold us back and stop us from reaching our goals.

I was having a discussion with my daughter, Emma, the other day while we were taking our dog Max for a walk. She made a comment about being afraid of learning to cycle a bike. I asked her why and she said she was afraid she might fall off. I reminded her that she was afraid of something that might happen. It might not happen either. I was telling her that whenever we are afraid of something, we are fearful of something that hasn’t happened. We worry ourselves to the point of not trying it at all because we are scared of a future event. I reminded her of the time when she was afraid to go up the big slide in the playground because it looked high and she was afraid that she wouldn’t like it. After watching her younger brother go up and down it laughing and having great fun she finally decided to give it a go. It took a few attempts for her to get to the top and then she would come back down the ladder again. After about 10 attempts and me constantly reassuring her that she would be fine she went down the slide. She reached the bottom and was smiling. She loved it and went up and down again and again until we had to go home.

Once I reminded her of this, she laughed and said, “I’m going to learn how to cycle my bike this summer Mom”. She was grinning at me and I knew she had purposely said it in an affirmation as I am always reminding my children of the importance of the words we say and how we manifest things through the words we use.

“The words we say create our reality.” tweet this

It made me realise, that fear and success really do go hand in hand. No matter what you want to achieve, you have to take action and 99% of the time, this will mean stepping out of your comfort zone. So how do you remove the fear and take that action? Well you could try reframing the word fear or even reminding yourself what fear stands for. Fear is always going to be in the future and in order to succeed in anything, we need to become present and live in the present moment. That is how you move forward, doing one thing at a time and taking action.

Making Fear an Ally

When I was looking at the different acronyms for FEAR, I came across some really nice positive meanings. I was reading these and it suddenly dawned on me that if I were to reframe the word “Fear” and use on of the positive acronyms, it might make it easier to take action and step out of my comfort zone. I decided to test this out this morning and these are the two acronyms that I choose to use:

FEAR = Feeling Excited And Ready
FEAR = Face Everything And Rise

What do you think of those? They really do make you think very differently don’t they?

“Reframe your FEAR and Feel Excited And Ready” tweet this

My experiment involved baking cookies. Now in our house, my husband is the master chef and the one with all the baking experience. He ran his own coffee shop many years ago and used to bake on a daily basis. I have never really baked and to be honest the whole idea of it scared me. I tried to make fairy cakes once and they turned out like biscuits so that was that. I never tried again. Today I decided to try baking cookies as a treat for my children and a way to test out my “positive” fear acronyms.

I read the positive statements while thinking about making cookies. I started feeling excited and ready and knew that I was going to be successful. It made such a difference. I followed the recipe, put them all in the oven, and set the timer on my phone for 11minutes as per the instructions. Now I could just imagine my husband laughing at me for setting a timer, he doesn’t believe in using them as he reckons that you should know when things are cooked. Maybe for the more experienced baker, but for me the beginner, I wasn’t taking any chances.

Fast forward 11 minutes and I took my cookies out of the oven. I knew to leave them to cool before seeing whether they had turned out right or not. About ten minutes later I was tucking into a chocolate cookie and it was delicious. I had stepped out of my comfort zone, I had taken action, and I had achieved success. Here’s a picture of my cookies so you can see them for yourself. They may not be perfectly shaped, but that’s okay. I’m an individual and I made Amanda Cookies. I turned my fear of baking into an ally and it worked.  Now I know that next time I will look forward to baking and who know’s, I might even try something new like a cake.

 

Reaching Your Success Zone

There is one phrase that always stays with me. I remember listening to Dr. Wayne Dyer saying it and I realised just how true it was.

“if you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always gotten.” tweet this

You should really read that a few times and let it sink in. Better still, re-tweet it to all your friends and colleagues so you can help them remember it too. You will never get anywhere in your life if you don’t make changes. No matter whether it is losing weight, running a marathon, becoming a nurse, a teacher, writing a book, coaching people, or eating healthy, if you don’t change, you will never get there.

If you are someone who says, “I want to write a book”, but you never seem to get it done you have to stop and ask yourself why not. Maybe you use the excuse that you don’t have time to write. I know I did, many times, but what you need to remember is that if you’re not writing, you can’t complete a book. We can all spare ten minutes in our day. Even if you were to say that you were going to write a page a day, you would have 365 pages at the end of the year. That’s a full book. So why haven’t you written your book? More than likely, if you sit and question yourself, you will find that fear is what is stopping you; fear of success and even fear of failure.

“If you’re not writing, you can’t complete your book” tweet this

How do you combat this?

You have to step out of your comfort zone. You could try reframing your fears as I have done above or you could try taking baby steps. If you change just one little thing every day, you will have different results. If you write one paragraph every day, eventually you will have a book. It may take you a little longer but you will still get your book written. It is the same no matter what you are striving for. You have to face fear and take action. You have to step out of your comfort zone. Once you have stepped even just one foot over your comfort zone line, you begin conquering any fear standing in your way. You begin moving forward and you begin seeing results. You are changing your life.

Think of what is holding your back. Where is fear getting in your way? Now what you need to do is place your attention on the thing that you are afraid to do. Bring up that fear, feel it with all your emotions, really feel it. Now what you need to do is repeat one of the positive fear acronyms. Keep repeating “feeling excited and ready” over and over while still visualising yourself doing what you need to do. Keep going until your emotions change and you find yourself getting excited about completing your task. After doing this you should have no problems taking the first steps towards creating the life you dream of and going for success.

For me, I have a fear of both failure and success when it comes to my writing. I fear that people will hate what I write. I also fear the change that may come about should I become a huge success. These are both out of my control and they are both future events that haven’t happened. I can only control my present so what I do now is focus on the joy that I get from my writing. I focus on the joy of being able to share my stories and the joy in knowing that there are people out there who enjoy reading them.

I have reframed my fears so that now when I sit down to write my novels or books, I don’t worry any more. I find that I am excited at what is coming out on the page and I look forwards to showing off what I have written. I have really stepped out of my comfort zone and if my blog statistics are anything to go by, I am successful.

Why not try it for yourself? Reframe that fear and make your dreams a reality. Be sure to let me know in the comments how you get on too.

Until next time,

Amanda