LIFE - NeoStrategy - Page 4

Solution # 17 – PERSONAL COACHING

Personal/Life Coaching is gaining prominence in India slowly. This service is reasonably well known in many of the western countries. Personal coach role is very different from a physiologist. Phycologist (through CBT) would be beneficial when you are facing with specific and deep rooted fears/phobias. When we are dealing with fears related to key changes/decision/transformation, coach would be more beneficial. It is very difficult to get a good coach who can bring holistic understanding. Most life coaches provide first session as a free session so you can try out different coaches to get a feel for the right coach for you. A good coach will take accountability for your transformation or change and work with you until you get the desired outcomes.
Solution # 18 –  RUB SHOULDERS WITH BRAVE HEARTS

Your environment has a huge impact on every thing – how your beliefs will shape up, your emotions and your behaviors.  Do you know why people from certain nations or regions or places bring more leadership and courage than others? It is all about environment. Even though it is very difficult to change your core DNA after very early age, it will still hugely benefit moving with people who have high level of courage and guts. Negative and fearful people will suck the energy from you and where as brave hearts will give you energy. You will be average of five people with whom you roam around. Period.

Solution # 19 –  KNOWELEGE IS POWER – STYUDY DEEP ABOUT YOUR FEAR

This statement looks very boring and old. Right? Not really. Fear ideally should not exist if one has good knowledge in that specific area. Did you notice you get angry and worried when you don’t know what you need to do about some problems or situations? Why? Because your brain does not know what to do and how to go about next. Hence it will try to ventilate through the emotions like anger and worry. Pick up the fear that is stopping you and making you uncomfortable and then study about it in detail. And talk to the people who have crossed the similar situations. You would gain good knowledge and there by you will be able to face the fear with power. It is real fun to dig deep into fear!!

YK

Solution # 15 – ACTION is ANTIDOTE for FEAR

“Fear could paralyze. Action was the antidote.” – Ken Follett

Most often fear becomes stronger when you hesitate to act. I think the real fear is to act and if you act the fear loses its power automatically. Also, once you start moving forward with decision and action you would realize that the fear is the illusionary and the action is real. I feel we try to hide under the name of fear or some thing else just to avoid action. Why? Action can create discomfort/pain. That is why as I mentioned in one of the earlier solution that getting comfortable with pain is very important. Also, once you start getting into the habit of action then you automatically focus on action and not on the fear. And when you focus on action your creative solutions will open up simultaneously. Take any fear you have and just to try take massive action without listening to your self-talk. See what happens to that fear !!
Solution # 16 – CBT (COGINITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY)

Root of the fear (in fact for any thing) is the corresponding belief you are holding. Based on the belief you start behaving certain way. So, if you must eliminate the belief then what you do? If you have enough self-awareness on your thoughts and behaviors, then probably you can change it by yourself. But that is not that easy mainly because most people are not self-aware about the disempowering/negative belief they are holding on. Even if they are aware about these it is difficult to eliminate them as these beliefs might have rooted during the childhood times. This is where CBT helps significantly. Unfortunately, in many societies people hesitate to see psychologist because they think that others might see them as weak or some problematic. And they continue to live their life carrying the same old beliefs and curse on the planets and destiny. Good news is now a days more awareness is coming on taking help from phycologists. CBT is very powerful and effective to remove any blocks provided you get a good psychologist.

YK

Solution # 13 – BUILD PHYSICAL STAMINA

We all know the relation between body and mind. You can take either body route or mind route to conquer fears. Swami Vivekananda was a very big advocate of having a strong body. Here we are talking about body route. Having a strong body and strength has a huge impact on how you think and take decisions. For a moment, assume that you are sad and dull then how would your posture will be? Your head will be down and your shoulders will be lose and down. What kind of thoughts do you think you will get when you are in this posture? Of course negative thoughts. When you are in this dull posture the amount of oxygen you take will be less and there by less energy for positivity. Have you seen how people with strong body walk? Their head will be up and they walk strong and head up. There by very less room for negative thoughts and fear. Next time, after your workout try to feel low and dull. Not possible!.

Solution # 14 – EXPERIENCE FEAR IN DETAIL

Whenever you experience fear observe your thoughts, how your body is responding, how your breath is changing and the kind of emotions (of course negative emotions) rolling. Get deep into each of these areas and observe them deeply. Once you observe deeply you would realize that your mind and body are acting certain way based on the intensity of the fear. You would understand that you are getting stuck with this very uncomfortable experience and not able to move forward to take decision, action and think clearly. Practice this experiencing fear in detail for your fears and you will get comfortable with the uncomfortable experience. Soon you will be able to conquer your fears one by one. It becomes kind of norm to feel uncomfortable but the biggest difference is you move forward unlike earlier.

I have experimented this today !!. I went for paragliding near Himalayan mountains (near Dharamshala). I have never done much of adventurous sports earlier. I felt nervous initially. I tried to implement the theory a bit into practice. I have noticed how my body reacted initially in detail and after some time I got some comfort and jumped ahead finally. It was very scary when the pilot tried to do some sudden jerks in the middle to create “excitement”. But at the end it was very much fun and got some comfort.

YK

Solution # 11 –  VISUALIZATION

When you think about any fear you mostly run a movie inside your mind. Through visualization you can change your movie/images. Visualization is a very powerful tool. The more you run negative pictures in your mind the stronger your brain becomes in running them. So you have to reverse your pictures through very strong repetition of positive images. Take any fear you are running in your mind then create a positive picture until it becomes the default picture.

Solution # 12 –  DEEP BREATHING

Whenever you face any fear your breathing becomes very shallow. Once your breathing becomes shallow then rest of the organs becomes very tight and results in experience of fear. This is a very common technique you see every where. Google on how to conquer fear and you will find this as one of the common technique. Once you get lots of oxygen then your body and mind becomes very calm. Once you become calm you automatically start thinking clearly, calmly and logically. You would also get internal energy to face any challenge and take decision. Also, lot of emotional toxins will get eliminated through breathing. But still I would consider this breathing solution as more like basic and easy step. If you practice breathing regularly then some structural changes will happen and that will give more of impactful benefit. But most often people try to follow these kind of technique when they face fear. Just doing breathing at the time of facing any fear won’t work much.

YK

Solution # 8 –  LIVE YOUR CORE VALUES

Fear comes when you are not living your core values (core beliefs). Most courageous people are very authentic and they live their core values. Who comes to your mind when you have to think about a courageous leader? There are many of course. For me, Mahatma Gandhi comes to my mind. All his strength he got by living his core values to the most. When you live your core values nothing can scare you and not even death. Read about any of the world top leaders and you will understand this very well. Nature has inserted a very beautiful mechanism with in us to tell us if we are living our values or not. When you comprise on your values your internal system will tell you and that why you will be unhappy when you are not living your values. When you are in sync with values you will be the happiest and courageous person.

Solution # 9 –  BE YOURSELF

“Be yourself” is a common thing you would hear now a day. What does this really mean? Being yourself is about knowing yourself ( likes, dislikes, emotions, values, strengths, etc)  and living as who you are. How this will help conquering fear? Similar to the core values deviation when you are not living as you are then the fear arises. The more you live out of sync then more fear will come. There by you lose your inner strength. Never try to be some one else and it will make you very weak. Over the period your environment and people around you would have tried their best to make you as some one else. Come out of it even it is very late in your life !!.

Solution # 10 –  FACE ONE FEAR EVERY DAY

This is my favorite one. This does not necessarily a big fear kind of activity, it can be anything that your mind is resisting and you are not comfortable doing it. Most of often these kind of tasks what would produce most value in your day. This exercise will make you very strong and make you very comfortable with uncomfortable things. Do this exercise for 30 days to inculcate this as habit. You will see how stronger you become on daily basis.

 YK

Solution # 5 –  LOVE IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR FEAR

Does this statement look like a cliché? What is opposite of Fear? It is not courage. It is love. If you have pure love or passion towards any thing then there is no room for fear. Let’s say some one comes and tells you that they are starting a new venture or new career then if you do not have same level of passion for it then your mind will come up with all kinds risks, problems, pains, etc.. Why it so? Because you do not love as much as other person is loving his/her pursuit. Start loving your pursuit and increase it gradually until you are really in love with it. But if you say it is difficult to build love when there is no love at all then it is not worth pursuing it.

Solution # 6 –  LIVE FOR BIGGER CAUSE/PURPOSE

Have you seen any one talking about fears who are pursuing bigger dreams and purpose? Of course every one feels the fear unless the person is a psychopath or really elevated “yogi”. But the point is when you have a bigger cause (most often beyond your benefit) then fears can’t stop them. Why? Because the benefits of your purpose outweighs too much the fears you experience. That’s why great leader in field are not worried about fears. Their purpose is beyond fears and pains.

Solution # 7 –  ELIMINATE ROOT BELIEF

Fears are driven fundamentally by a belief. In fact, each and every thing you experience in life is based on the beliefs you have built in consciously or unconsciously. You take any fear and go to the root of it then you can end up finding the root belief. When the outcome you are expecting deviates from the root belief then the fear arises.  Let’s say you have the fear of failure. What is fear of failure for you? What is the belief you have on fear of failure? You may have belief like “when you fail others will laugh at you” or “you should never fail” or “failure means you not worthy enough”, etc. Question your beliefs deeply. Then you will realize that those disempowering beliefs are not serving you and eliminate those beliefs to remove fear.

  YK

Solution # 4 –  GET COMFORTABLE with PAIN

Actually the title of this solution should be “GET COMFORTABLE with FEAR” but I chose to call it as “GET COMFORTABLE with PAIN” for a reason. When you experience any fear it creates some kind of emotional discomfort/pain. And this pain is what will make you hold back. So if you can manage this pain then you will be able to move forward and the fear will lose its strength and it would disappear. But if you have less threshold limit for pain then you would back out immediately and run away. This is what is called as “flight or fight” response. You will get into fight mode if you have high level pain threshold otherwise into flight.

Even though I wrote very high information about Meditation as the # 1 solution for conquering fear, I think most successful people in any field manage their fears by dealing with the pain very well. They would have mastered on dealing with pain. They are really comfortable with pain!!. You would have heard about “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. Many successful people do this either unconsciously or consciously.

How to get comfortable with pain?. Simply practice. Whatever activity you do in daily routine increase the intensity to a level where you experience the pain. It could be in your physical exercise, work, live in discomfort condition or deal with any thing that you don’t like !!. This principle is very much applied in physical fitness training and many other mental fitness related areas. Remember your mind always look for pleasure so watch out for the story it will tell you before you give up !!.

YK

Solution # 3 –  Build Optimism

At the base level fear is nothing but negative thinking. Our minds would have accumulated lots and lots of negative thoughts through out the years. For many people the default mode of thinking would have been ‘negative’. What this means is that you naturally think negatively about any situation or event. Your brain’s neural pathways are wired to think negatively. Your brain might have the predisposed mode of negative thinking or through the accumulation of events and your way of interpretations (negatively) your brain would have reached to the default negative mode. So ,what is the solution and how can you re-wire your brain to change the default negative mode to positive mode? It is very simple solution and but requires very good amount of effort to change the mode and you need lot of will power and persistence.

For 7 continuous days, you think only positive thoughts irrespective of what and how the situation is.  Remember this has to be continuous. Even if you think one negative thought then you have to re-start 7 days’ process again. This is not very easy process given the amount of negative thought we have been thinking through out our life. It is almost like you have to undo those many number of thoughts with positive thoughts (not necessarily exact number).  Good news is this is very much doable. You most probably will fail many times and you have to re-start many times but it is really worth doing it. There are tons of benefits in thinking positively and we all know the benefits and I don’t need to write about them here again. The main key take away for you should be – you need to be aware that your brain takes over to negative thinking without much of your control unless you consciously change the default negative mode to positive mode.

Also, after you successfully convert into positive mode be watchful about negatives news and negative people. Try avoiding negativity and move with most optimistic people. You have to keep accumulating positive energy. It is very easy to get into negative loop and your brain might get good entertainment in accumulating negative things since it has the deep habit of negativity. You have to be extra cautious to all these things.  In reality there is very high probability that you get into negative thinking from any stressful events. Once in while you might have repeat the positive thinking exercise to cleanse any short term accumulated negative thinking.

YK

Solution # 2 -Living in Present/Mindfulness

In the previous blog, I wrote about Meditation. In this blog I want to discuss on our solution # 2 -Mindfulness.  Most often Meditation and Mindfulness are used very interchangeable. Even though it is very much interlinked I think there is a difference in terms of how they practiced and implemented. Meditation is some thing you practice for some duration of time while Mindfulness is some thing  you have to be Mindful of whatever you do in your awaken hours.

If you google on “Mindfulness” you will get tons of articles on benefits of Mindfulness. This is talk about in all most all areas of life – health, sports, management, leadership, personal productivity, psychology and spirituality (of course), even for criminals (to change them) etc. Living in present moment and being in mindfulness is the ultimate solution for majority of human problems not just for facing fears. But then why this is not taken as major solution. Because this feels very bland and boring.

I am not going to talk about all the beautiful benefits of Mindfulness here.

So our topic -How Mindfulness will help in conquering Fear? Most often fear is an anticipated thing in the future or past memory. Normally, mind has a great tendency to either dig in the past or think about the future. So if you want to eliminate the feeling about a fear then you need to stay present. When you stay present you will be able to clearly feel the emotions, thoughts and self-talk. Once you start practicing this over and over again most often you will realize that some standard script is running your mind that is making you fearful.  Also, when you are in the present moment your creative expression kicks in then automatically you will become solution focused rather than fear focused.

The concept of Mindfulness is difficult to make you understand unless you practice it consciously. Start practicing Mindfulness for one full day and see the difference. The most fears you experience will diminish because you are not thinking about past or future. Take one fear you currently have and try to experience it mindfully and you will see the magic.

YK

When we hear the word “addiction” we typically think of alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, etc. There are tons of other addictions and most people are unconscious about them or not very visible outside.  Let me give you some examples of these not so commonly accepted addictions.

1. Social Media /Web surfing addiction – Find out exactly how much time you are spending on social media per day/week. And you will realize how much time you end up spending. People who build social media companies knows how to make people addicts and they know the science behind it very well.  The more you become addict the more profits companies can make. You know why we keep checking on Facebook who liked your post or what comments people are making about latest selfie?
2. Addiction for praise –  I am sure you know people who will do any thing for you if you flatter them. Why? Because they are addicted to your praise. We tend to say these are “nice people” and helping nature etc. If the intent is purely based on help then it is fine. But if you are craving for the praise then it is an addiction. This is one of the reason why companies have “reward” systems in place. If you more focused on the reward than the actual work then it can become an addiction.
3. Food Addiction –This is very interesting. And most people know about this addiction. Especially we have interesting names for this addiction -” Sweet tooth”. I don’t know who has invented this word. I am sure the guy who has sugar addiction would have invented this word.  Some people say “I am foodie..”. What? If you look at his/her plate most probably he will be consuming huge amount carbs and sugars. Actual food addiction is largest problem in most countries which leads to health and psychological issues. Based on this addiction whole food industry is growing.  Compare to the number of people who smoke we would have more number of people who have food addiction problems
4. High Achievement Addiction  – We give great respect for people who are very hard working and achieve big outcomes. They would have started with small tasks/projects then take up bigger and bigger projects and eventually run a large organization/vision/build a big enterprise, etc. Why take up bigger and bigger challenges/goals? . Because they addicted to the “kick”.
5. Running Addiction – Why people start with 5K and go up Ultra marathons and Iron Man races. We look at them think they are crazy and we don’t understand why they take such a pain to run marathons. They keep raising the bar because they are addicted for “Runners High” – nothing but addiction to feel good chemicals in brain called Endorphin.

While addiction example # 4 and # 5 are supposed to “good addictions”, any extreme level can cause imbalance in life. The point here is not about good or bad addiction. Addiction is an addiction and we must be aware about it and based on personal interest you can keep pushing forward the good addictions. But the main problem is  with the examples like # 1,2 & 3.

Why some people are more addicts than others? Here is the main reason for this. People who have lesser Dopamine in their brains tend to have more addiction problems. What is Dopamine?  Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that is responsible for reward and pleasure system.  So what you do if you have lesser Dopamine and have addiction issue? Simple move away from bad addictions to good addictions. This is the reason if you want to lose weight then you need to exercise more (not because of the calorie burning alone) but because you are changing the one pathway (negative) to another (positive) path to fulfill the same Dopamine.

Bottom line is list down all your addictions and segregate them into negative and positive.  And simply make more of positive addictions and automatically we will have less room for the negative addictions.

YK