Tuesday, Jul 6, 2010Are You Always Afraid?

If you are always afraid, it can be tough to change. But if you can make a decision in your life to continuously change, you will always make forward progress.  It’s making that decision that can cause you some distress.  Once it’s made, life becomes a lot easier as you slide into Being the Change you want to see in your life.

The process of Being the Change will ask you to perform in ways that I couldn’t even begin to imagine as I write this. Some of those changes will be simple and a snap. Some will be more difficult. Some will make you want to dig in your heels and not move at all. Some may require dynamite.

“If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got.” This quotation is all over the internet. It’s referred to as an old adage. I’d love to tell you who said it, but I was not able to pin that down. I did find an alternative to that saying though, and it packs a real punch. “If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you deserve to get what you’ve always got.”

It seems obvious to me that if you want something new or different in your life, you are going to have to do something differently. And since it’s your life, you get to decide what to do, how much to do it, when to do it, and how to do it. I can provide pointers, but the ultimate decision is always yours. Are you up for it, or is your inside revving up right now to do the backwards dash?

There are ideas rampaging through your mind right now I suspect. You would probably like to know how far out of your comfort zone you’ll be asked to step? Only as far as you want to go. You would probably like to know how intensely you have to work on those areas where you say you’d like to change? Only as intensely as you want to work. You are the pace car of your life and although many folks may have tried to “make” you do things, ultimately it’s you who says Yes or No.

You may be feeling fear right now. You might be hearing a tiny little voice that is listing all the “What ifs…” that you can think of to scare yourself with. It might be telling you that you’re okay just the way you are, so why create more work for yourself? It might be telling you that you won’t get the message – that you won’t understand what you need to do to change. Fear  needs to be quieted down.

You could be on a teeter-totter right vacillating between “Yes, I want to change and I can” or “I’m feeling afraid I’ll make a fool out of myself and fail.”  It’s been my experience in Being the Change that once you decide to move with forward progress and actually do the thing you are most afraid of, you turn back in wonderment at why you ever balked because the thing you feared has become so small and unimportant.  The feeling of fear disappears and your forward progress accelerates.