How to Create a Master Plan for Your Life | Jim Rohn

Everything you do is a link in the chain of events that will lead you to your final destination.

Wouldn’t you prefer a life of productivity rather than a life of endless tasks with little accomplishment? Of course! When you carefully set your goals and keep them at the forefront of your mind, you can work smarter instead of longer. You’ll know that a life worth living comes from a life of balance.

In order to maintain that balance, here’s a key technique you can use in your life to help keep you on the right track: “visual chain thinking.”

Ambitious people know that each step toward their goals is not a singular step. Each discipline is not a singular discipline. Each project is not a singular project. They see everything they do—and every discipline they adhere to—as a link in the chain of events and actions that will lead them to their final destination. Every action and every discipline achieved today is a link in the chain. Every action and every discipline achieved tomorrow is a link. And every action and every discipline achieved in the more distant future is also a link.

Your direction, activities and disciplines all make up crucial links in your chain of success. When you can see that one thing affects everything else, when you come to realize that every discipline affects every discipline, when you look at your future as a chain that needs strong links all along the way… then you’ll build a reservoir of strength and courage that will serve you well during the down times.

When you can see that every link in the chain will eventually lead you to the things you want most out of life and to the person you want to become, then you won’t grow discouraged, fearful or impatient with today. When you can see where you’re going through visual chain thinking, even on the toughest days, you’ll keep moving toward your goals because you know where you’re going.

Building your visual chain of thought begins when you have well-defined plans for your career, your family activities, your investments and your health. Your plans and goals are your visual chain. You know where you’re going before you get there.

It’s ironic how we all understand the importance of mapping out a strategy for a football game or a basketball game. Not one professional team in the world begins a game without a game plan. But few of us take the time to map out such a strategy for our lives.

It’s so important to make this sort of plan. Here’s the first rule for your game plan of life: Don’t begin the activities of your day until you know exactly what you plan to accomplish. Don’t start your day until you have it planned. Do this every day. I know all this writing takes time and a disciplined effort. Remember, however, that reaching your goals is the fruitful result of discipline, not merely hope.

Once you’ve mastered the art of planning your day, you’re ready for the next level. Don’t begin the activities of your week until you know exactly what you plan to accomplish. Don’t start your week until you have it planned.

Just imagine what life would be like if you took time out every Sunday to plan your week. Come Friday, you wouldn’t be saying, “Boy, did this week fly by. Where did it go? What did I do?” No, if you plan your week before you start it, you’ll know exactly what you want to do, what you want to accomplish and what you need to work on. If you learn to plan your days as part of your overall game plan for the week, the parts will fit much better. Your days will be better. You will be more effective. You’ll be working smarter, not harder.

And when you’ve learned to plan your week, guess what? You’ve got to plan your month! Don’t start your month until you’ve mapped out your game plan.

By developing and following your game plan, your days, weeks and months all become part of a larger plan, a bigger design you develop, a long-term view of your life, a visual chain. You’ll start gaining a greater perspective of it all… because you are planning.

If visually seeing your future is new to you, if you’ve never developed a game plan before, let me offer a few tips. There are two things you need to understand before you create a game plan.

1. A game plan, a visual chain of your future, is like a spreadsheet. Instead of listing numbers, list activities. It’s like a to-do list
2. The technique of developing a game plan can be used for a single day, a single project or a variety of projects that are happening simultaneously.

Here’s how you do it. Game plans work best on graph paper. Take a sheet of graph paper and make vertical columns corresponding to the number of days this plan is to cover. Then on the left-hand side of the paper, write the heading “Activities.” Under this heading, list all the activities to be accomplished within your time frame.

For example, you’ve got one week to finalize a marketing plan. It’s an overwhelming amount of work to complete, but it’s got to be done. So break it down piece by piece. The best way to start is by listing all of the individual components on the left-hand side of the page. Some of these things will need to be completed before others can be started. You need to obtain your market research results before you can determine your target market. You need to know your target market before you can develop your marketing strategy. You need to have your marketing strategy before you can create a budget for collateral materials, and so on.

When you break down the project piece by piece and deadline by deadline, you can be more effective in putting together the appropriate parts of the puzzle—and in doing your own work while delegating the rest.

The final result of developing your game plan is a clear visual presentation of the tasks before you. This method is used quite often in business to coordinate and develop projects of any length. It’s the only way to see the entire project on paper and manage its progress.
Admittedly, game plans are frustrating to create. They’re frustrating because it’s difficult to completely prioritize your life and all your projects. You might go through several sheets of graph paper before you produce the perfect format. But as soon as you develop your first one, you’ll see the value in this discipline.

Keep your game plan in plain sight. Put it up in your office where you can easily look at it. Have a copy of it at home and tape it to the bathroom mirror. Keep a copy in your journal for quick reference. Your game plan will serve as a constant reminder of all you need to do to get where you want to go.

If you’re doing all you’re scheduled to do, game plans are very rewarding. Day by day, week by week, month by month, you’ll see the magic of your dreams and plans turning into reality. You will have an incredible feeling of being in charge of your life, your surroundings and your future. It’s like creating a work of art on the biggest canvas imaginable. It’s creative. It’s beautiful.

This is powerful stuff. To dream a dream, plan for the dream, and then watch your dream turn into reality. Here’s what’s really powerful about creating game plans: You can see your future right before your eyes. So on those days when your energy isn’t up to par, your enthusiasm is a little low, your ambition isn’t pushing you forward and your attitude isn’t on the positive side, use your game plan to see how far you’ve come. Take the time to visualize exactly where you’re headed. On those days, it’s your discipline and visual chain of the future that will push you ahead. People and circumstances might try to set you back, but your visual chain will propel you toward your goals.

Adapted from Leading an Inspired Life

Isn't this amazing?  Let me know what you think below.

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The Day That Turns Your Life Around | Jim Rohn

This is a truly inspirational video from Jim Rohn.  Enjoy!

Four parts to the day that turns your life around:

1. Disgust: Enough is Enough! 
2. Decision: Clean up a list of decisions: Inspirational 
3. Desire: how bad do you want it? 
4. Resolve: I will, I will, I Will NEVER give up ! "I'll do it or die"

Let me know what you think below.

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6 Ways To Focus Your Attention And Be Happier | Sarah McLean

Become Fully Engaged And Improve The Quality Of Your Life

The questions that follow are designed to illuminate your ability to manage your attention as you notice what you pay attention to, how you pay attention, and the quality of your attention. 

I include this questionnaire in my book, The Power Of Attention.

Read through each question and either use them as journal prompts or simply reflect upon them as you go about your day. This inquiry will reveal to you the way you use the currency of your attention.

Ask Yourself These Questions

1. Do I give enough attention to the people, activities, and things that are important to me?

2. How does someone or something respond when I give him/her/it my undivided attention? How do they respond when I am distracted in his/her/its presence? (You might be too distracted to notice!)

3. Do I pay attention to and listen to my inner knowing?

4. How do I feel physically - and where in my body do I feel it - when I judge, feel spiteful, or have ill will toward a particular person or situation?

5. How do I feel - and where in my body do I feel it - when I offer loving and supportive attention to a family member, a friend, or a stranger?

6. How do I feel - and where in my body do I feel it - when someone ignores me, disregards my requests, or is generally not present when they're with me?

7. How do I feel - and where in my body do I feel it - when I am truly being paid attention to?

8. Do I often multitask or am I able to sustain an uninterrupted continuum of attention?

9. What external stimulus most distracts me? (My phone? My relationship? The people or objects in my environment?)

10. What internal stimulus distracts me? (My obsessions? My daydreams? My grudges? My limiting beliefs? Body sensations?)

11. How long can I engage and be present with someone without looking at an electronic device?

12. Do I feel a sense of rushing even when there are no deadlines and nowhere to go?
With this inquiry, you'll be more conscious of how you want to spend this valuable currency of attention.

You might get frustrated as you see that you live in a world full of distractions and potential addictions. And, yes, the contemporary culture seems to encourage the half-hearted way some of us attend to the world around us.

By noticing what distracts and detours you, you can begin to create some boundaries around them to reclaim your focus.

Here are some tips to reclaim your attention:

1. Set Your Priorities

Make a commitment to give your attention to what matters to you, whether it's your body, your relationships, your creativity, your work, your family, your pets, your plants, your spiritual life, or your environment. The ability to fully engage in a relationship with others and attend to yourself is expressed in your ability to listen, to love, to connect, and to respond in compassionate and meaningful ways.

2. Practice Fully Engaging In A Conversation

Mindfully listen and stay connected as the person in front of you speaks. Don't interrupt, or assume. Simply be present. When you respond, speak mindfully and with your full attention.

3. Get To Know Your Body

Listen with the same loving attention you offer to others. Ask yourself, "How do I feel when I focus on this?" the "this" in this case can be anything: a goal, a memory, a co-worker, your family, your pet,a  project, social media, a problem at work, nature, a television show, a news article, or any activity you are engaged in. Choose to focus more on that which nourishes you.

4. Go Analog

Stop sleeping with your phone. Instead, use a clock or watch. Don't start the day in emergency mode. Create a relaxing morning routine, one where you can be present and calm. This will establish a restful response as you embark on your day.

5. Unplug

Whether a few hours a day, or one day a week, unplug from your devices and social media. Create boundaries around what distracts you. Make time to be completely available to your three dimensional reality. Uninterrupted time is when creativity and inspiration can arise and your real-life relationships can flourish.

6. Get A Dose Of Nature

Research shows that a 20-minute walk can improve attentional issues. The natural world is a conduit for connecting to reality. It brings you to your senses and can charm your attention. This gives your brain a break from endless to-do lists and habitual thinking patterns that keep you distracted.

You can reclaim and increase the power of your attention and pay full attention, on purpose, to whom and what you choose.

Harnessing your ability to pay attention will restore the relational space between you and who and what you focus on.

Your attention is powerful, and you can be in charge of it when you set your mind to it.

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RAMPAGE * Deeply Satisfied & Eager (with music) | Abraham Hicks

Excerpted from the Abraham Hicks workshop in Pheonix, AZ, December 10, 2016.

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Do These 7 Things to Get (and Stay) Motivated | Brian Tracy

The best motivation is self-motivation. Here’s how to get in an inspired state of mind.

How do you stay motivated and inspired? How can you keep your passion, your excitement, fired up? By reviewing these self-motivators on a regular basis:

1. Get serious.

Make a decision to go all the way to the top. Up to now, you've thought about it. Up to now, it's passed your mind. But now make up your mind to go all the way to the top, and your life will take off. It's the most extraordinary thing.

Your life is like a shadow going up the dark side of a hill—until the moment you decide that "I'm going to be the best at what I do.” And suddenly you rise into the sunshine, and your life is forever after different—wonderful.

Get serious. Don't fool around anymore.

2. Know your limiting step.

What's your limiting step? What's the one skill area that's holding you back? What's the quality? What's the action? Ask other people. Find out what you need to become good at.

Find out what's keeping you stuck. What is the critical limiting step that's determining your success today?

3. Get around the right people.

Who are the right people? Winners. Get around positive people. Get around people with goals and plans, people who are going somewhere with their lives and have high aspirations. 

Get around eagles. As Zig Ziglar says, "You can't scratch with the turkeys if you want to fly with the eagles."

And get away from negative people. Get away from toxic people that complain and whine and moan all the time. Who needs them? Life is too short.

4. Take care of yourself.

Take excellent care of your health. That means good diet, good exercise. Everybody knows they should eat better foods, work out regularly and get lots of rest. If you're going to work hard five days a week, go to bed early five days a week.

5. See yourself as the best.

Visualize yourself as the very best in whatever you do—continually. Remember, all improvement in your life begins with an improvement in your mental pictures.

6. Talk nicely to yourself.

Control your inner dialogue and practice positive self-talk. How? Say, "I'm the best." Say it. Say, “I like myself,” “I can do it,” “I love my work.” If you say those things to yourself and you don't believe them, isn’t that lying to yourself? No, that's not lying to yourself—it’s telling the truth in advance. Because it doesn't matter where you're coming from—all that matters is where you're going.

Talk to yourself the way you want to be, not the way you just happen to be at this moment. Remember, you may have gotten where you are today largely by accident. But where you're going in the future is purely by design.

7. Get going.

Move fast. A sense of urgency is the one thing you can develop that will separate you from everyone else. Develop a bias for action. When you get a good idea, do it now.

And the faster you move, the better you get. And the better you get, the more you like yourself. And the more you like yourself, the higher your self-esteem is. And the higher your self-esteem is, the greater your self-discipline is. And the more you persist, then you ultimately become unstoppable.

Want to be successful? Check out 7 activities you should be doing in your spare time.

Excerpted from Success Mastery Academy by Brian Tracy 

I hope you found this useful.  Please let me know what you think below.

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The psychology of self-motivation | Scott Geller | TEDxVirginiaTech

Scott Geller is Alumni Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech and Director of the Center for Applied Behavior Systems in the Department of Psychology. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the World Academy of Productivity and Quality. He has written numerous articles and books, including When No One's Watching: Living and Leading Self-motivation.

Scott examines how we can become self-motivated in "The Psychology of Self-Motivation."

You will feel competent at doing worthwhile work if you can answer yes to the following three questions:

Do you believe you can do it?

Will it work?

Is it worth it?

Let me know what you think below!

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The Courage to Live Consciously | Steve Pavlina

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature,
nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits
in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
– Helen Keller

In our day-to-day lives, the virtue of courage doesn’t receive much attention. Courage is a quality reserved for soldiers, firefighters, and activists. Security is what matters most today. Perhaps you were taught to avoid being too bold or too brave. It’s too dangerous. Don’t take unnecessary risks. Don’t draw attention to yourself in public. Follow family traditions. Don’t talk to strangers. Keep an eye out for suspicious people. Stay safe.

But a side effect of overemphasizing the importance of personal security in your life is that it can cause you to live reactively. Instead of setting your own goals, making plans to achieve them, and going after them with gusto, you play it safe. Keep working at the stable job, even though it doesn’t fulfill you. Remain in the unsatisfying relationship, even though you feel dead inside compared to the passion you once had. Who are you to think that you can buck the system? Accept your lot in life, and make the best of it. Go with the flow, and don’t rock the boat. Your only hope is that the currents of life will pull you in a favorable direction.

No doubt there exist real dangers in life you must avoid. But there’s a huge gulf between recklessness and courage. I’m not referring to the heroic courage required to risk your life to save someone from a burning building. By courage I mean the ability to face down those imaginary fears and reclaim the far more powerful life that you’ve denied yourself. Fear of failure. Fear of rejection. Fear of going broke. Fear of being alone. Fear of humiliation. Fear of public speaking. Fear of being ostracized by family and friends. Fear of physical discomfort. Fear of regret. Fear of success.

How many of these fears are holding you back? How would you live if you had no fear at all? You’d still have your intelligence and common sense to safely navigate around any real dangers, but without feeling the emotion of fear, would you be more willing to take risks, especially when the worst case wouldn’t actually hurt you at all? Would you speak up more often, talk to more strangers, ask for more sales, dive headlong into those ambitious projects you’ve been dreaming about? What if you even learned to enjoy the things you currently fear? What kind of difference would that make in your life?

Have you previously convinced yourself that you aren’t really afraid of anything… that there are always good and logical reasons why you don’t do certain things? It would be rude to introduce yourself to a stranger. You shouldn’t attempt public speaking because you don’t have anything to say. Asking for a raise would be improper because you’re supposed to wait until the next formal review. They’re just rationalizations though – think about how your life would change if you could confidently and courageously do these things with no fear at all.

What Is Courage?

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
– Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.
– Mark Twain

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.
– John Wayne

I like the definitions of courage above, which all suggest that courage is the ability to get yourself to take action in spite of fear. The word courage derives from the Latin cor, which means “heart.” But true courage is more a matter of intellect than of feeling. It requires using the uniquely human part of your brain (the neocortex) to wrest control away from the emotional limbic brain you share in common with other mammals. Your limbic brain signals danger, but your neocortex reasons that the danger isn’t real, so you simply feel the fear and take action anyway. The more you learn to act in spite of fear, the more human you become. The more you follow the fear, the more you live like a lower mammal. So the question, “Are you a man or a mouse?” is consistent with human neurology.

Courageous people are still afraid, but they don’t let the fear paralyze them. People who lack courage will give into fear more often than not, which actually has the long-term effect of strengthening the fear. When you avoid facing a fear and then feel relieved that you escaped it, this acts as a psychological reward that reinforces the mouse-like avoidance behavior, making you even more likely to avoid facing the fear in the future. So the more you avoid asking someone out on a date, the more paralyzed you’ll feel about taking such actions in the future. You are literally conditioning yourself to become more timid and mouse-like.

Such avoidance behavior causes stagnation in the long run. As you get older, you reinforce your fear reactions to the point where it’s hard to even imagine yourself standing up to your fears. You begin taking your fears for granted; they become real to you. You cocoon yourself into a life that insulates you from all these fears: a stable but unhappy marriage, a job that doesn’t require you to take risks, an income that keeps you comfortable. Then you rationalize your behavior: You have a family to support and can’t take risks, you’re too old to shift careers, you can’t lose weight because you have “fat” genes. Five years… ten years… twenty years pass, and you realize that your life hasn’t changed all that much. You’ve settled down. All that’s really left now is to live out the remainder of your years as contently as possible and then settle yourself into the ground, where you’ll finally achieve total safety and security.

But there’s something else going on behind the scenes, isn’t there? That tiny voice in the back of your mind recalls that this isn’t the kind of life you wanted to live. It wants more, much more. It wants you to become far wealthier, to have an outstanding relationship, to get your body in peak physical condition, to learn new skills, to travel the world, to have lots of wonderful friends, to help people in need, to make a meaningful difference. That voice tells you that settling into a job where you sell widgets the rest of your life just won’t cut it. That voice frowns at you when you catch a glance of your oversized belly in the mirror or get winded going up a flight of stairs. It beams disappointment when it sees what’s become of your family. It tells you that the reason you have trouble motivating yourself is that you aren’t doing what you really ought to be doing with your life… because you’re afraid. And if you refuse to listen, it will always be there, nagging you about your mediocre results until you die, full of regrets for what might have been.

So how do you respond to this ornery voice that won’t shut up? What do you do when confronted by that gut feeling that something just isn’t right in your life? What’s your favorite way to silence it? Maybe drown it out by watching TV, listening to the radio, working long hours at an unfulfilling job, or consuming alcohol and caffeine and sugar.
But whenever you do this, you lower your level of consciousness. You sink closer towards an instinctive animal and move away from becoming a fully conscious human being. You react to life instead of proactively going after your goals. You fall into a state of learned helplessness, where you begin to believe that your goals are no longer possible or practical for you. You become more and more like a mouse, even trying to convince yourself that life as a mouse might not be so bad after all, since everyone around you seems to be OK with it. You surround yourself with your fellow mice, and on the rare occasions that you encounter a fully conscious human being, it scares the hell out of you to remember how much of your own courage has been lost.

Raise Your Consciousness

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
– Anais Nin

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
– Amelia Earhart

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
– Eleanor Roosevelt

The way out of this vicious cycle is to summon your courage and confront that inner voice. Find a place where you can be alone with pen and paper (or computer and keyboard). Listen to that voice, and face up to what it’s telling you, no matter how difficult it is to hear. (The voice is just an abstraction – you may not hear words at all; instead you may see what you should be doing or simply feel it emotionally. But I’ll continue to refer to the voice for the sake of example.) This voice may tell you that your marriage has been dead for ten years, and you’re refusing to face it because you’re afraid of divorce. It may tell you that you’re afraid that if you start your own business, you’ll probably fail, and that’s why you’re staying at a job that doesn’t challenge you to grow. It may tell you that you’ve given up trying to lose weight because you’ve failed at it so many times, and you’re addicted to food. It may tell you that the friends you’re hanging out with now are incongruent with the person you want to be, and that you need to leave that reference group behind and build a new one. It may tell you that you always wanted to be an actor or writer, but you settled for a sales job because it seemed more safe and secure. It may tell you that you always wanted to help people in need, but you aren’t doing so in the way you should. It may tell you that you’re wasting your talents.

See if you can reduce that voice to just a single word or two. What is it telling you to do? Leave. Quit. Speak. Write. Dance. Act. Exercise. Sell. Switch. Move on. Let go. Ask. Learn. Forgive. Whatever you get from this, write it down. Perhaps you even have different words for each area of your life.

Now you have to take the difficult step of consciously acknowledging that this is what you really want. It’s OK if you don’t think it’s possible for you. It’s OK if you don’t see how you could ever have it. But don’t deny that you want it. You lower your consciousness when you do that. When you look at your overweight body, admit that you really want to be fit and healthy. When you light up that next cigarette, don’t deny that you want to be a nonsmoker. When you meet the potential mate of your dreams, don’t deny that you’d love to be in a relationship with that person. When you meet a person who seems to be at total peace with herself, don’t deny that you crave that level of inner peace too. Get yourself out of denial. Move instead to a place where you admit, “I really do want this, but I just don’t feel I currently have the ability to get it.” It’s perfectly OK to want something that you don’t think you can have. And you’re almost certainly wrong in concluding that you can’t have it. But first, stop lying to yourself and pretending you don’t really want it.

Move From Fear to Action, Even if You Expect to Fail

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.
– Orison Swett Marden

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
– John Quincy Adams

Now that you’ve acknowledged some things you’ve been afraid to face, how do you feel? You probably still feel paralyzed against taking action. That’s okay. While diving right in and confronting a fear head-on can be very effective, that may require more courage than you feel you can summon right now.

The most important point I want you to learn from this article is that real courage is a mental skill, not an emotional one. Neurologically it means using the thinking neocortex part of your brain to override the emotional limbic impulses. In other words, you use your human intelligence, logic, and independent will to overcome the limitations you’ve inherited as an emotional mammal.

Now this may make logical sense, but it’s far easier said than done. You may logically know you’re in no real danger if you get up on a stage and speak in front of 1000 people, but your fear kicks in anyway, and the imaginary threat prevents you from volunteering for anything like this. Or you may know you’re in a dead end job, but you can’t seem to bring yourself to say the words, “I quit.”

Courage, however, doesn’t require that you take drastic action in these situations. Courage is a learned mental skill that you must condition, just as weight training strengthens your muscles. You wouldn’t go into a gym for the first time and try to lift 300 pounds, so don’t think that to be courageous you must tackle your most paralyzing fear right away.

There are two methods I will suggest for building courage. The first approach is analogous to progressive weight training. Start with weights you can lift but which are challenging for you, and then progressively train up to heavier and heavier weights as you grow stronger. So tackle your smallest fears first, and progressively train up to bigger and bigger fears. Training yourself to lift 300 pounds isn’t so hard if you’ve already lifted 290. Similarly, speaking in front of an audience of 1000 people isn’t so tough once you’ve already spoken to 900.

So grab a piece of paper, and write down one of your fears that you’d like to overcome. Then number from one to ten, and write out ten variations of this fear, with number one being the least anxiety-producing and number ten being the most anxiety-producing. This is your fear hierarchy. For example, if you’re afraid of asking someone out on a date, then number one on your list might be going out to a public place and smiling at someone you find attractive (very mild fear). Number two might be smiling at ten attractive strangers in a single day. Number ten might be asking out your ideal date in front of all your mutual friends, when you’re almost certain you’ll be turned down flat and everyone in the room will laugh (extreme fear). Now start by setting a goal to complete number one on your list. Once you’ve had that success (and success in this case simply means taking action, regardless of the outcome), then move on to number two, and so on, until you’re ready to tackle number ten or you just don’t feel the fear is limiting you anymore. You may need to adjust the items on your list to make them practical for you to actually experience. And if you ever feel the next step is too big, then break it down into additional gradients. If you can lift 290 pounds but not 300, then try 295 or even 291. Take this process as gradually as you need to, such that the next step is a mild challenge for you but one you feel fairly confident you can complete. And feel free to repeat a past step multiple times if you find it helpful to prepare you for the next step. Pace yourself.

By following this progressive training process, you’ll accomplish two things. You’ll cease reinforcing the fear/avoidance response that you exhibited in the past. And you’ll condition yourself to act more courageously in future situations. So your feelings of fear will diminish at the same time that your expression of courage grows. Neurologically you’ll be weakening the limbic control over your actions while strengthening the neocortical control, gradually moving from unconscious mouse-like to conscious human-like behavior.

The second approach to building courage is to acquire additional knowledge and skill within the domain of your fear. Confronting fears head-on can be helpful, but if your fear is largely due to ignorance and lack of skill, then you can usually reduce or eliminate the fear with information and training. For example, if you’re afraid to quit your job and start your own business, even though you’d absolutely love to be in business for yourself, then start reading books and taking classes on how to start your own business. Spend an afternoon at your local library researching the subject, or do the research online. Join the local Chamber of Commerce and any relevant trade organizations in your field. Attend conferences. Build connections. Enlist the help of a mentor. Build your skill to the point where you start to feel confident that you could actually succeed, and this knowledge will help you act more boldly and courageously when you’re ready. This method is especially effective when a large part of your fear is due to the unknown. Often just reading a book or two on the subject will be enough to dispel the fear so that you’re able to take action.

These two methods are my personal favorites, but there are many additional ways to condition yourself to overcome fear, including neuro-linguistic programming, implosion therapy, systematic desensitization, and self-confrontation. You can research them via an online search engine if you wish to learn such methods and increase the number of fear-busting tools in your arsenal. Most of these can be easily self-administered (implosion therapy is the notable exception).

The exact process you use to build courage isn’t important. What’s important is that you consciously do it. Just as your muscles will atrophy if you don’t regularly stress them, your courage will atrophy if you don’t consistently challenge yourself to face down your fears. In the absence of this kind of conscious conditioning, you’ll automatically become weak in both body and mind. If you aren’t regularly exercising your courage, then you are strengthening your fear by default; there is no middle ground. Just as your muscles automatically atrophy from lack of use, so your courage will automatically decay in the absence of conscious conditioning.

Now this may sound overly gloomy, so here’s a positive way to look at it. Heavy weights can be a physical burden, but they are helpful tools to build strong muscles. You would not look at a 45-pound dumbbell and say, “Why must you be so heavy?” It is what it is. Heaviness is your thought, not an intrinsic property of the dumbbell itself. Similarly, do not look at the things you fear and say, “Why must you be so scary?” Fear is your reaction, not a property of the object of your anxiety.

Fear is not your enemy. It is a compass pointing you to the areas where you need to grow. So when you encounter a new fear within yourself, celebrate it as an opportunity for growth, just as you would celebrate reaching a new personal best with strength training.

Catch a Glimpse of Your Own Greatness

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.
– Erica Jong

The highest courage is to dare to appear to be what one is.
– John Lancaster Spalding

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson

So what do you do with your newly developed courage? Where will it lead you? The answer is that it will permit you to lead a far more fulfilling and meaningful life. You will truly begin living as a daring human being instead of a timid mouse. You will uncover and develop your greatest talents. You will begin living far more consciously and deliberately than you ever have before. Instead of reacting to events, you will proactively manufacture your own events.
Courage is something you can only truly experience alone. It is a private victory, not a public one. Summoning the courage to listen to your innermost desires is not a group activity and does not result from building a consensus with others. Kahlil Gibran writes in The Prophet, “The vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.” The purpose of your existence is yours alone to discover. No one on earth has lived through the exact same experiences you have, and no one thinks the exact same thoughts you do.

On the one hand, this is a lonely realization. Whether you live alone or enjoy the deepest intimacy with a loving partner, deep down you must still face the reality that your life is yours alone to live. You can choose to temporarily yield control of your life to others, whether it be to a company, a spouse, or simply to the pressures of daily living, but you can never give away your personal responsibility for the results. Whether you assume direct and conscious control over your life or merely react to events as they happen to you, you and you alone must bear the consequences.

If you commit to following the path of courage, you will ultimately be forced to confront what is perhaps the greatest fear of all – that you are far more powerful and capable than you initially realized, that your ultimate potential is far greater than anything you’ve experienced in your past, and that with this power comes tremendous responsibility. You may not be able to solve all the woes of this planet, but if you ever do commit yourself 100% to the fulfillment of your true potential, you can significantly impact the lives of many people, and that impact will ripple through the future for generations to come.

What is the difference between you and one of those legendary historical figures who did have such an impact? You both had many of the same fears. You both were born with talents in some areas and weaknesses in others. The only thing stopping you is fear, and the only thing that will get you past it is courage. What you do with your life isn’t up to your parents, your boss, or your spouse. It’s up to you and you alone.

Catching a glimpse of your own greatness can be one of the most unsettling experiences imaginable. And even more disturbing is the awareness of the tremendous challenges that await you if you accept it. Living consciously is not an easy path, but it is a uniquely human experience, and it requires making the committed decision to permanently let go of that mouse within you. Going after your greatest and most ambitious dreams and experiencing failure and disappointment, running butt up against your most humbling human limitations instead of living with a comfortable padding of potential – these fears are common to us all.
The first few times you encounter such fears, you may quickly retreat back to the illusory security of life as a mouse. But if you keep exercising your courage, you will eventually mature to the point where you can openly accept the challenges and responsibilities of life as a fully conscious human being. Continuing to live as a mouse will simply hold no more interest for you. You will acknowledge within the deepest recesses of your being, I have awakened to this incredible potential within me, and I accept what that will require of me. Whatever it costs me, whatever I must sacrifice to follow this path, bring it on. I’m ready. Even though you will still experience fear, you will recognize it for the illusion it is, and you will know how to use your human courage to face it down, such that fear will no longer have the power to stop you.

Embrace the Daring Adventure

Before you embark on any path ask the question, does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it and then you must choose another path. The trouble is that nobody asks the question. And when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart the path is ready to kill him.
– Carlos Castaneda

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
– Kahlil Gibran

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
– Dale Carnegie

As you develop a sense of your true purpose in life, you may begin to feel an uneasy disconnect between your current life situation and the one you envision moving towards. These two worlds may seem so different to you that you cannot mentally conceive of how to build a bridge between them. How can you balance the practical reality of taking care of your third-dimensional obligations like earning money to pay your bills and taxes, pleasing your boss, raising your family, and maintaining social relationships with people who can’t even relate to what you’re experiencing vs. the new vision of yourself you desperately want to move towards? A whole host of new fears may crop up related to this seemingly impossible shift. How will you support yourself? What will become of your relationships? Are you just deluding yourself?

The best advice I can give you here is to forget about trying to build a bridge. Focus instead on independently beginning the process of manifesting the new vision of yourself from scratch, as if it were a totally separate thread in your life. If this creates a temporary incongruence in your life, just do it anyway. For example, suppose you currently work as a divorce attorney, but your courage tells you that you must eventually abandon such adversarial work. You envision yourself passionately teaching couples how to heal their broken relationships. But you can’t even fathom yourself as a trial lawyer trying to speak about healthy relationships, and on top of that problem, you can’t see any way to make a decent living in this new career, at least not quickly. There’s just too big a disconnect between this new vision and practical reality. So instead of trying to bridge this gap, just begin building your new vision completely from scratch in whatever time you have, even if it’s only an hour or two each week. Keep doing your regular work as an attorney, but in your spare time, start posting anonymously on relationship message boards to give couples advice on how to heal their relationships. Use the oratory skills you developed as an attorney to begin speaking to small groups about healing relationships. Perhaps create a new web site, and start writing and posting articles about your new passion. You don’t have to hide the fact that you’re an attorney, but don’t worry about bridging these two worlds. Live in paradox. Just start developing the new you, and allow the old one to continue in parallel for a while.

What will happen is that you’ll develop skill in your new undertaking, and you’ll eventually be able to support yourself from it, even if you can’t see how to do so right away. You may not be able to see a way to support yourself in your new vision right now, and that’s fine. Just begin it anyway, doing it for free, without any concern of how to turn it into a new full-time career. Patiently wait for clarity; you will eventually find a way to make it work. Then when the time is right, you’ll be able to peacefully let go of the old career and focus all your energy on the new one. At some point you’ll be able to commit fully to your new self. Your passion for your new work will eventually overwhelm your fear of letting go of your old source of stability. So instead of trying to transform your old career into your new one, just start the process of building your new one, and let your old one gradually fade. Even if you can only invest an hour a week in your new undertaking, you will probably discover that this hour is more fulfilling to you than all the other hours put together, and that passion will drive you to find a way to gradually grow this presence until it fills up most of your days. The most important thing is to begin now by introducing your new vision of yourself to your daily life, even if you can only initially do so in a small way.

No matter how difficult it may seem, make the choice to live consciously. Do not succumb to that half-conscious realm of fear-based thinking, filling your life with distractions to avoid facing what you feel in those silent spaces between your thoughts. Either exercise your human endowment of courage and progressively build the strength to face your deepest, darkest fears to live as the powerful being you truly are, or admit that your fears are too much for you, and embrace life as a mouse. But make this choice consciously and with full awareness of its consequences. If you are going to allow fear to win the battle for your life, then proclaim it the victor and forfeit the match. If you simply avoid living consciously and courageously, then that is equivalent to giving up on life itself, where your continued existence becomes little more than a waiting period before physical death – the nothing as opposed to the daring adventure.

Don’t die without embracing the daring adventure your life is meant to be. You may go broke. You may experience failure and rejection repeatedly. You may endure multiple dysfunctional relationships. But these are all milestones along the path of a life lived courageously. They are your private victories, carving a deeper space within you to be filled with an abundance of joy, happiness, and fulfillment. So go ahead and feel the fear. Then summon the courage to follow your dreams anyway. That is strength undefeatable.

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