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If your self-doubts and fears stop you from getting things done, here are some techniques and processes that can help you break through them.
- Make a list of your fears. Only by admitting that they exist can you seek solutions.
- Write down how these fears affect your life.
- Become aware of the voices in your head and write down those negative messages.
- Start building a support system of friends and eliminate people from your life who foster feelings of negativity.
- Join a support group of people who have similar issues.
- Change each negative message to one that is affirming and constructive.
- Read books that help you feel better about yourself.
- Be aware of your past, and be willing to let go of it.
- List your goals and the actions you need to achieve them.
- Take one of those actions every day. Each time you do something that brings you closer to achieving your goals you will feel better about yourself.
From “Break Through Self-Doubt and Fear” by Simmer Lieberman
The 5 Myths of a Positive Mental Attitude at ThinkSimpleNow.com
6 Ways to be Positive in any situation at ThinkSimpleNow.com
9 Ways to Live a More Positive Life at RirianProject.com
Wake Up Feeling Great with These 22 Tips for High Self-Esteem at RirianProject.com
Positive Mental Attitude by Rob Davies (Rob Davies Comic Career Articles, rec.arts.comics.info)
Thinking Positive at 100ventures.com
Dealing with Failure by Chandresh Bharwaj
Dealing with Failure by Dion Melchior
Conscious competence (learning model matrix) from businessballs.com
Dunning-Kruger effect at Wikipedia, and associated article at DamnInteresting.com
- Keep it in perspective: balance the frequency of your failures against the frequency of your successes
- Could they have been worse – could you have failed more dramatically if you hadn’t used your existing skills and experience to intervene (even if you were not able to completely avoid difficulties)?
- What actions or behaviours or assessments might have changed the outcome?
- What systems (skills, knowledge, processes) can be put in place to avoid repetition?
- Can this knowledge be shared to benefit others?
- We only find our limitations by stepping over them and stretching ourselvers; the cost of adopting any approach that diligently avoids failure is never to challenge ourselves, and ultimately to prevent any chance that we might fulfil our full potential
- How many toddlers are so destroyed by their failure to walk first time that they give up for life? Can we learn from their lack of self-consciousness?
- “Try to be a failure” – look back over the things you have done and see if you really can classify yourself as a failure. If there’s any successes in there, you’re just not enough of a failure to qualify (this is what your perfectionist negative filter is doing, just the other way around).
- What is there to be redeemed from failure? If it is unrealistic or limiting/counter-productive to try and avoid it completely, is there something in the experience in which we can find some redemption? (such as being good at identifiying the lessons to be learned from failure, without being hindered or paralysed by the challenge it poses to our pride and appearence)
- Acknowledging a personal limitation that might have lead to failure can be uncomfortable. It can also be a useful opportunity to really get inside the experience of that acknowledgement, and identify what it is that is holding you back in recognising your own limitations. For example, are you reminded of an instance in the past where your limitations have had intense or negative consequences, that has left an impact. What is the risk if you fail or are responsible for failure? What is the risk if you never risk failure?
- If you are very unable to acknowledge your own limitations, it is impossible to become consciously aware of your lack of skills, the impact of that on the situation, and the limits it places on your future opportunities. You are stuck at “unconscious incompetence” forever, because you are unable to (or refuse) to become conscious at it. Failures can be painful experiences; those around us who may also have their own issues around failure in their life can be critical and destructive. Don’t let them rob you of the opportunity to learn and develop yourself to your full potential.
Alternative Therapies – Meditation, with Dr Kathy Sykes
- Matthieu Ricard (French) - translator for Dalai Lama – Nepal, Kathmandu, meditation
- Dr Herbert Benson – the relaxation response - book
- Marharishi Vedic City
- Transcendental meditation, impact on coronary health
- pubmed.gov for papers
- “reviews” collate information from a number of papers, periodically
- Professor Mark Williams, Oxford
- Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)
- Anti-depression/clinical-depression
- 80% mindfulness meditation, 20% cognitive therapy
- Uses meditation similar to that taught by Mattiau in Nepal
- Buddhist practices
- focus on breathing
- Observing without trying to fix
- Seeing thoughts as just thoughts
- Reduces risk of recurrence by up to 50% in patients who have had 3 or more depressive episodes
- Helps other anxiety – can help everyone (universal anxieties, self-doubts etc, awareness)
- Available to some on the NHS
- Dr Richard Davidson, University of Wisconsin – Madison
- Meditation shifts brain activity over time from left-hand-side to right-hand-side
- Dr Sarah Lazar
- Meditation over time is associated with increased cortical thickness
- Effects are cumulative (“every minute sitting counts”)
- Cortex associated with attention and sensory processing
- alters ability to concentrate
- alters response to “sensory” stimuli – physical sensations (pain, hunger etc) but also emotional sensations (fear, anger etc)
