overcoming fear

Affirmations and “Laziness”

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Affirmations and Laziness

Has anyone told you you are lazy? Perhaps you’ve told yourself that many times. You can use positive affirmations to move yourself past your reluctance or inability to take action. But first, let’s look at what might be behind the supposedly laziness.
How Fear Impedes Action
Most people others call lazy actually have deep-seated fears. Some of the most common ones are fear of:
  • responsibility
  • failure
  • success (which often is related to responsibility)
  • being different
  • being separated from friends and family

Any fear you have is based upon the belief that what you are contemplating doing is unsafe. Your acquired these beliefs when you when you were very young. Almost all of them originated before you were the age of five.

When you were little you may have been punished or made fun of when you initiated something. Perhaps you started a game and someone was angry because you woke up Mom or Dad.  You might have a desire to be an artist but the rest of your family is into sports or business. Your passion may take you away from loved ones and the security of home and friends.

It’s important to take time to recognize your fears. You might even have a fear of knowing what your fear is! That’s a never ending circle, isn’t it.

How Not Knowing Impedes Action

Many people appear to have a lack of ambition simply because they don’t know what they would like to do with their life. They haven’t found their passion yet. They haven’t discovered what it is that will motivate them to do something more than they are doing now.

If someone appears to be a dedicated couch potato, you can be sure that if there is a fire they will get moving. Having passion calls for having an activity which ignites the fire within to find a goal and follow through with it.

Usually fear of making the wrong choice interferes with discovering something the person is passionate about. Those who have always been excited about something in life or who have always known what they wanted to do when they were adults have a difficult time understanding anyone who can’t find themselves.

I was blessed with knowing what I wanted to do. I studied psychology, have three degrees in it, and still enjoy learning about the field. I’m the only one in my family of origin who is doing what they initially studied. Many of my nieces, nephews and their children also took a few years to figure out what they wanted to do.

Not knowing what you want to do can be disconcerting, but it is nothing to be ashamed of. If someone tries to shovel shame on you, don’t take it! You can’t find your passion if you have shame clinging to you.

How Affirmations Help

People who appear lazy often repeat the same statements, “I don’t want to,” “I can’t,” “I’m not interested,” or other self-limiting beliefs. Each time a limiting belief is repeated, it reinforces the limitation. When you use positive affirmations, positive statements, you are counteracting the limiting belief. You are also beginning to construct a new pathway in your brain which will open you to different possibilities.

Suggestions to Move You Forward

If you want to change, you have to take action. This begins by changing the messages you give yourself.

Changed the “I can’t” to “I can.” Follow that up with doing something different that you know you can do. It can be as simple as walking around the block.

You might want to replace “I don’t want to” with “I want to find out what I enjoy.” Follow that with the action of listing three things you enjoy doing. Then repeat to yourself, “I am discovering what I truly want to do with my life.”

If the difficulty is that you are afraid, take a deep breath, hold it for a count of four, and then exhale as much as you can. Follow that with the positive affirmation, “I have the necessary courage to overcome my fears.”

Whatever limiting affirmation you are repeating, turn it around. Develop affirmations which open you to limitless possibilities.

Jumped Starting the Subconscious

Every time you use a positive statement rather than a limiting one, you are opening your subconscious mind to a different possibility in life. When you use limiting words, your subconscious mind wants to support those words. When you use words opening you to possibility, your subconscious mind wants to support you in that area.

Not only the words need to be open to possibility, but also your attitude. You could ask, “Why” with an attitude of anger which closes off getting the answer. When you attitude is one of wanting to know the answer, your subconscious mind says, “Oh, you really want to know? Let’s look for the answer.”

Developing affirmations take some skill. Once you learn how to do it, you’re on your way. Just remember to put your whole self into them as I talked about in the last post.

The Mastery of Fear

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The Mastery of Fear

The Mastery of Fear can be a wonderful emotion that keeps you alive. It is fear which has you react quickly and without thought when there is an on-coming car. Your instincts take over and, without thought or analysis, you move quickly out of the way of danger. As much as fear can keep you alive, it can also freeze you into inaction. You can become so terrified you will be hurt in some way that you refuse to take risks and try new things. In this situation fear is simply False Evidence Appearing Real.

False Evidence

When your mind runs wild with the danger of taking a particular action, you are convincing yourself of something you have no evidence will actually happen. Let’s say you’re interested in mountain climbing but you’re terrified you’ll fall and either die or be severely hurt. True, this has happened to many people, but not to as many as you might think. The news takes great relish in furiously reporting death and destruction. It rarely reports life and excitement, unless it’s involving a national or college sports team.

How many people do you know who have successfully climbed the 55 fourteeners (14,000+ foot high peaks) in Colorado? I have no idea, but I did a quick internet search using the keywords, “climbing the 14000 foot mountains of Colorado.” There were 774,000 results with the top ones containing a tremendous amount of information of the 14ers, the moniker used by one web site. If you have a desire to climb, are you going to be paralyzed by the negative of what might happen or by the positive accomplishments of tens of thousands of people who regularly climb?

By researching you can learn the definite danger spots of climbing mountains, or any other endeavor for that matter, and form a plan to overcome them. All you need is education, a plan of action, the right equipment or tools, and the desire to move forward.

Appearing Real

When your self-talk is negative, you are training your brain to be afraid. You’ve heard the saying, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” (This came from the movie “The Fly” with Jeff Goldbloom.) Although, the actual intent of the slogan was humorous, your negative self-talk is training your mind to be in a state of fear. You would protect yourself more by being wary of what you can do to yourself through your thoughts and beliefs than fearing whatever effect an action you take can have. When you combine the power of your emotions with thoughts, you form a chemical bond which imprints upon your brain. Your thoughts plus emotion can form a loop which is difficult to break out of. Use positive feelings with positive thoughts and you will move further in life in one year than you have ever done before.

Your brain and your mental abilities are amazing. Science is just beginning to seriously study the power of the combination of your thoughts plus your emotions. We are learning that the thought plus emotion combo fools your brain into believing that what you are thinking of is real. When you combine emotions of fear with thoughts of “I can’t do this or something bad will happen,” your brain believes it is real. You’ve just created for yourselfFalse Evidence Appearing Real.

Napoleon Hill in “The Law of Success” talks about how the enemy of progress is fear. It can immobilize you if you let it. It can prevent you from accessing the power residing within you to fulfill your dreams. It will quench the passion which fuels your action.

The promise in the power you have within you if you only allow it to bloom, is that by controlling what you think and feel, and that includes fear and thoughts of fear, you can accomplish more than you ever dreamed possible.