Purposeful Growth

Don’t let recurring bouts of fear limit your personal development. We all face fear when contemplating changes. Learn to overcome your fears and grow.

Has fear shattered your dreams? Have you had great ideas, terrific dreams for your future, only to have the cold chill of fear shatter your dreams and paralyze you into inaction? Fear is holding you back, preventing you from becoming all that you can be. If you’re serious about personal development, at some point you will need to overcome fear to make your dreams come true.

The scenario usually goes like this: You have a dream, a great idea and you’re immediately excited and energized. You feel alive and highly motivated. The dream for your future seems right for you and calls you to it.

But you stop. Sometime very soon after the initial excitement you become afraid. You start thinking about all the things that could go wrong, the time and money involved, and the many aspects of your dream for which you have no experience. And you stop cold. (See Beliefs Limit Development for more general information on limiting beliefs.)

Sadly, most of us have had this same experience. We tell ourselves we are just being realistic and cautious. Perhaps we convince ourselves the timing isn’t right, so we put it on hold for now. And we never get to it. Because the real reason is that we’re afraid. We’re afraid to fail, afraid to be humiliated, afraid to be ridiculed, afraid that we’re incompetent.

Remember when you learned to ride a bicycle? You were afraid of falling. You probably did fall, but eventually, if you kept at it, you learned to ride and it was fun. Remember when you were learning to swim? You were scared; humans can’t breathe under water. But if you persisted and learned to swim you felt the joy of overcoming a fear and joining your friends in the pool.

Use these past experiences at facing and overcoming fear to help you move forward through fear again. One thing for sure when it comes to big dreams, you will experience bouts of fear. As if you can’t think of enough reasons to be afraid, friends will help you with even more terrifying possibilities.

What can you do if you are seriously committed to personal development? Face your fears. Embrace them. Look them square in the face and admit that you’re afraid. Voice your fears out loud or on paper, capturing what you’re afraid could happen and how you’ll feel as a result. Now decide to overcome each fear. What can you do to minimize the chances of the feared event? Recognizing that most fears don’t materialize, decide how likely it is that this feared event will occur. If it does occur, can you live with it?

You’ll find that getting your fears out in the open diminishes their power over you. And you’ll realize that the choice you make to move forward is a first step toward your dream. For your dream to become reality, you must choose to step forward over your fears. Focus on your dream. Let your fears dissipate by refusing to pay them further attention.

This article first appeared in the Personal Development Topic at Suite101.com.

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Reflection, the art of looking within quietly and calmly is an effective tool of purposeful growth.

The formula for a happy life is to build personal development with the inspiration of life purpose. Earlier articles described the importance of life purpose and the role of meditation in clarifying purpose. Another critical life skill you’ll find helpful is reflection. To reflect is to look within quietly and calmly. While meditation quiets your mind so you can hear the small voice of intuition or spirit, reflection uses your mind to ponder and analyze; both are useful tools of personal development.

One of the keys to personal development is understanding your beliefs. As we grow and gain experience we build a data bank of beliefs. When encountering a situation, we subconsciously look into the belief data bank for guidance. Most beliefs are helpful to our daily lives, keeping us safe and alive.

For example, I stop and look both ways before crossing a street. I believe that being hit by a two-ton vehicle will threaten my life. On the other hand, when I cross my lawn I don’t stop and look both ways because I believe that the occupants of my lawn are of little danger to me. Granted, this is a trivial example, but we have countless beliefs which similarly govern our behaviors.

So what? Some of the beliefs you’ve stored may be inhibiting personal development. If you find yourself frustrated by the inability to move forward on some aspect of your life, a stored belief is likely the cause.

Try this: Find a quiet place and make a list of all the exciting ideas you’ve had that failed to materialize. You may have had ideas for new products or services you could offer, or exciting places you’d like to see, or work you’d like to do, people you want to get to know better, etc. If an idea came to you with energy, inspiration, and excitement, yet you somehow failed to follow through on it completely, you have a belief that held you back.

Often these inhibiting beliefs are things like:

• I’m not smart enough
• I can’t afford it
• People will laugh at me
• I’ll fail
• Who am I to attempt such a thing?

Sound familiar? Now, is the belief true? That’s for you to decide after you’ve brought the subconscious belief out into the open and examined it. Maybe Aunt Bertha told you “You’ll never make it in the real world” when you were ten years old and you believed her. Is it true now that you’re a functioning adult?

Sharpen your awareness and watch yourself as well as others. What beliefs are driving your behavior today? Reflect upon and challenge every belief. Some are helpful. Some are not.

Originally published at Personal Development, Suite101.com.

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