PHILOSOPHY & SELF

Want to Succeed? Start With Making Any Effort Toward Your Goal

One of the scariest monsters in the human mind is the monster called “fear of failure”. There is only one way to beat this nightmarish beast. You do it one tiny step at a time.

Have you ever had a vision and in it you could clearly see yourself as you always wanted to be? Do you dream of joining a competition, learning a new language or traveling overseas? Starting a business? Maybe you just want to make one good friend.

Whatever it is that you dream of you are the only one that can turn that dream into reality. That dream lives inside your heart and so, you are the caretaker of this fragile dream.

No one else.

Inspirational dreams are part of what keep us going. They allow us to hope for a future that doesn’t exist yet. But sometimes we are afraid to believe that we can bring that dream to life. Terrified, in fact.

The first step to living in dream town is actually that. A step. Before you buy any equipment or seek out a mentor, you begin by taking action. All on your own.

And guess who is going to show up dressed in that scary “you can’t do it” outfit the moment you start? That’s right, our old friend fear. Fear will whisper in your ear about how “there’s no use” or “you might as well give up”.

Fear will tell you that you don’t have any money to get started, that your clothes aren’t right, that you don’t have the right connections.

Fear will very effectively argue that you should just give up before you even try.

Let it happen! Let fear blather and on and on and on while you start doing your legwork. Find out how you can open your business without money. Explore ways to make the clothes you already have a little better. Fear very much wants to keep you away from two things, problem-solving and action.

The moment that you so much as scribble a dream on a cocktail napkin it becomes real. Once you scribble, that dream lives in the physical world, outside of your head. Chances are that if you can make that much of an effort, you will make others. Fear hates that!

And so, by these tiny steps, the world you know was and is created.

Go ahead and start small. Start TINY. But start. And start now. And over time you will win, and successes will come. Real success happens when failures cease to be so damn scary. In fact, you will see them as way to train and grow stronger. Because that is what fear monsters are.

Not scary demons. Just big, hairy life-coaches. Mentors, even.

Your dreams will probably morph into something else or take you places you can’t imagine…once you start to follow them. And once you understand that the fear isn’t truly scary because you have learned how to win, oh, then your dreams really begin to pop!

“He who is not every day conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

So, start already! Go get a cocktail napkin. Buy your monster a drink. And while it drones on and on and on about all the ways you can’t make your dreams come true, map out a plan.

Save your dreams from oblivion. Let yourself be happy. And successful.

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