Be wary of these 3 primal fears. They are all created by your own personal expectations, in different ways. They limit all of us.
When you shift away from paying attention to these fears, you will take control of your career. I’ve done it and so have my clients.
Here are three primal fears so many of us experience, with proven techniques to shift away from them.
The Imposter: I’m not good enough.
How often do you doubt yourself? I get it. I used to doubt myself, a lot. The constant conversation in my mind was all about selling myself short.
It’s no wonder. Research shows we’re told “you can’t,” 150,000 times before we were 17. We’re told “you can” 5,000 times. That’s 30:1 limited programming. The Imposter Syndrome is born.
The resulting limiting voices hold us back. “Who do you think you are? You can’t do that? They’ll find out you’re a poser. You can’t double your income. Start a business, you?” blah blah blah.
The reality is that we are all absolutely good enough. Period.
How do you ditch this attention-driven primal fears programming? You change your focus. Here are some techniques I use with myself and my clients.
- Make a list of all the great things about you. Be detailed. Pay close attention to everything you put on that list. Give each addition your attention and remember at least 3 times that you’ve applied it in your world. Take some time to appreciate yourself. Then, if your Imposter speaks up, use a great thing about you to prove that you are good enough. Period.
- Pick 2-3 accomplishments that you are the most proud of in your life. Write 4 bullets about each of them including; why this accomplishment was a big deal, what you overcame to succeed, what you learned about our own powerful self and how you will take that power forward into your next projects. Remember those moments. If your Imposter speaks up, use these memories to focus on your proven power and success.
- Start putting a piece of paper in a box for everything you accomplish. Then, the next time you feel like you’re not good enough, or haven’t done anything worthwhile, read everything in the box. Or just look over at it as it overflows.
The Bag Lady: I’ll be on the street.
Like similar primal fears,l this one tells you that you’re going to screw up and end up a Bag Lady ( or Bag Guy).
The Bag Lady syndrome makes us tentative. It scatters our power by keeping us attentive to constant stress and worry. You can’t be focused and productive when you’re worrying in the background. Especially when it wakes you up at 2am… been there, lived that.
These kind of primal fears were my constant companion for most of my adult life. Whether it was a Bag Lady or a public failure. Not any more.
Here are some of the techniques I used to Banish my Bag Lady.
- $1,000 a day. Get a notebook and start with $1,000. Write what you would buy with that $1,000. Every day, add another $1,000. So on day 2, you have $2,ooo. Write what you would do with that $2,000. The only rule is you can’t do the same thing twice. Do this exercise every morning and you’ll feel your Bag Lady Begin to Begone!
- My Bag Lady Plan. I logically looked at my life. Yes, I’m an only child of 2 only children. I have no family to bail me out. I didn’t have kids so there’s no help there. But, I have friends who would host me and my horse trailer on their property, so I have a place to live. The horses and pups would come with so I’m not alone. I could work at McDonalds and make enough to feed us. Seeing that plan as a potential reality was my best way of countering the irrational fears. Whenever they arise, I remember my plan. Of course I can do better than that plan, but I have a plan.
- The List. I made a list of all the ways I can earn a living if all heck breaks loose and I can’t work in my normal roles. Guess what I learned? I have a lot of ways to survive!
The Pity Party: They have the power. I don’t. I can’t win.
What a crock. I can say that because I had pity parties for decades. These bouts of powerlessness left me exhausted, scattered and a less confident with each round. Not a recipe for controlling my world, now was it?
The reality is this. We are not victims of some external fate. We’ve created the reality we live right now, all on our own. The good news? You can take control and create career success. You have that power.
How? By focusing your attention on what you want. Ignoring what you don’t want. Focusing on living as if you have the dream or goal already, right now. How do you do that?
- Pick something you want in your life.
- Take some time, sit down, and think about what having that thing would mean. Close your eyes and create a picture of having that thing. Make that picture really, really detailed. Be a part of that picture. See yourself having that something. Stay focused on it until you have it imprinted in your mind’s eye so that you can call it up any time you want.
- Every morning, call up that picture and focus on it. Live that picture. Do the same thing before you go to bed every night.
- If your programming starts a pity party, call up the picture. Focus on it and live it until the pity goes away.
- Stay focused on what you want. You’ll begin to see less of the pity party and more of what you want within a week or two. Sometimes sooner… depending on your power of focus.
The Truth About Primal Fears
We all have primal fears to some degree or another. It’s part of the way the human mind is designed, enhanced by the way we are trained to pay attention to the negative by society and our life experiences.
Releasing primal fears of all types is actually quite simple.
- Pay Attention. To your logical thoughts as you consciously work on a problem. Be sure you’re focusing on the solution and not all the reasons things can’t or won’t work. Pay Attention to success. Period.
- Pay Attention. To your daydreams. That’s when your unconscious mind is processing it’s attention. Instead of acting out defensive conversations, retelling stories of why you can’t and just plain scaring yourself, shift your attention toe what you want. Something simple, something that makes you happy. A new job, a successful project, a better life.
- Pay Attention. To your every focus in every moment of the day. When you catch yourself being limiting or negative, whether due to one of these primal fears of others, STOP. Laugh about it and then tell yourself what you really want. Then, PAY ATTENTION to that.
When you truly Pay Attention to all the limiting, scary stuff you tell yourself, and shift your attention, your expectations and your experience will follow. Try it for a week and then tell me what you think.
When you’re done, you’ll find that these primal fears are silly, now aren’t they?
Image courtesy of Graphics Mouse at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
