We need courage to function successfully in life. The list below outlines a few reasons why. Some may speak to you, some may not. You may even like to add your own reasons to the list.
We need courage to:
- ask for more.
- face difficult situations.
- face difficult conversations.
- find our purpose.
- make a difference.
- be a good leader.
- invent that which has yet to be invented.
- break limiting beliefs about the human race.
- save others from harm.
- feel comfortable in our own skin.
- stand up to bullies.
- stand up for ourselves.
- stand up to others.
- step out of our comfort zone.
- ask the hard questions.
- open ourselves up to possibility.
- be vulnerable.
- define our own success.
- be ourselves.
- reject others-imposed rules that do not serve our higher purpose.
What is fear hacking?
Many of you will possibly have heard of FEAR being described as ‘False Evidence Appearing Real.’ Fear hacking uses shortcuts to show your brain that fear is indeed false, and that you can make good decisions with a few helpful tools. These decisions are based on actual evidence, but your brain must make any decisions quickly before fear creeps back in.
Like any building, fear requires four walls to balance the roof it puts above your head. Fear cleverly makes that roof of transparent glass so you think you’re free, you think you can achieve. In reality, fear is holding you back from achieving your dreams, while at the same time taunting you by giving you just a glimpse of them. Many people say you must break the glass roof, but that requires force. It’s most definitely one way to beat fear and rise to the top, but it requires energy and effort at a level most people are too afraid, or too exhausted to put in. As any builder knows, you need all your walls in place to balance the roof; if you remove just one wall, the roof will fall, almost sliding effortless off. The same is true of fear, you have to know how to hack fear to get ahead in life. You have to know how to let that glass roof slide off and smash without you having to take a sledge hammer to it, or worse still constantly hit your head on it. The way to understand how to do this is to understand how the four walls hold fear up, and to recognise which fear hacks can remove which wall. The great news is that you don’t have to remove every single wall for the fear hack to work. You just have to remove one, and the fear and its related glass roof will just slip away, allowing you to achieve your dreams.
In this book I explain the four ways to push down each wall constructed by fear, plus twenty-six other techniques you can use to stop fear re-building those walls. If you apply the principles in this book, you never have to be held back by fear again. The principles take you alphabetically from A to Z through courage, bravery and fortitude. I call it the ‘Map of Courage.’
The Four Walls of Fear.
The four walls that support fear are:
- Absenteeism (Lack of Presence).
- Distrust.
- Attachment.
- Expectation.
Fear hacking is to practise the ‘Four Traits of Fearlessness’ – Self Discipline, Love, Alignment and Perception (S.L.A.P.) By slapping fear in the face, you will not only demolish the four walls that support fear, but prevent those walls from ever rising up again.
The wall of absenteeism is knocked down by self-discipline.
So many of us are absent from our actual lives in the here and now. We live in a world where we’re constantly thinking about the future and all the things we want but can’t have, all the things that might happen to us or be taken away from us. We’re absent from the reality that everything is available to us if we work smart and keep going until we achieve. We need to stay focused, and recognise that self-discipline and perseverance walk hand in hand.
The fact that fear is based on false evidence appearing real, snap judgements, belief that the past can dictate the future, proves that its hold on us is not that strong. The power of determined, relentless, purposeful, steadfast, tenacious and even stubborn pursuit of your dreams, knocks fear right out of the water. It can’t stand up to that. Imagine putting fear on the witness stand, you know the evidence it’s giving is false. If you keep coming at it like a persistent barrister, asking for the same information to expose the lie over and over again, do you agree that eventually that witness will be exposed for the fraud it is? Fear is just that – a big, fat fraud. I’ll explain later in this book about the neuroscience of fear, but threat assumptions are just assumptions. They are not real. There is only evidence and the decisions you make based on that evidence. Everything else serves only to delay you making the right decision, and is a useless waste of energy.
Feelings of fear and anxiety don’t protect you. It’s the decisions you make because of perceived threat assumptions that protect you. The angst, the concern, the distress and the unease that come before making a decision are all delaying tactics. They are nothing but empty space, and prevent you from achieving your actual dreams. Simply put, only threat assessments and decisions exist, anything in between is preventing you from being present in your actual situation.
Let’s consider Roger. He’s an intelligent and articulate individual with a good education and abilities which would normally lead to success in life, but he had a crippling fear of failure and put off making important decisions or setting any challenging goals. He drifted through life and procrastinated. He used to say he would think about things tomorrow and didn’t deal with issues in the here and now, resulting in his lack of being present to the opportunities available to him. To help him overcome his fear of failure and set realistic and achievable goals, we worked together on his self-discipline and procrastination issues using several techniques described later in this book. Roger learned how to hold himself accountable for his procrastination. He learned how to reframe his perception to remind himself there were things in this world that mattered more to him than the excuses he made to be absent from the here and now. Soon he was more focused on making the most of his time, showing up and being present. He learned to become curious about things that once frightened him, to create excitement in learning new things even if he failed at the first attempt. He learned to make better decisions faster, leveraging strategically rather than trading his time for frivolities.
Procrastination is debilitating, and is a prime example of how we use fear to distance ourselves from what we want. Self-discipline will prevent procrastination – you will not fail because you will learn to see failure as being one step closer to success. In the map of courage I’ll show you many different techniques to mastering the art of self-discipline. But for now it starts with deciding on a goal and making a loyal commitment to yourself that you’re going to do whatever it takes to achieve it.
To find out more buy the book…