Clearing the Path: 4 Ways Fear Wreaks Havoc on Your Dream and What to Do About It by Kim Castle, BrandU®
[NOTE: Some words in this article may have been disguised to avoid triggering sp*m filters.]
Please take a moment before you read any further and answer these three simple questions:
1. Are you making daily progress towards accomplishing your business vision?
2. Do you find that despite a strong desire to make your vision happen, obstacles always seems to pop up and slow you down?
3. Do you find that doubt is chipping away at your vision, keeping it from ever becoming a reality?
Thank you. N*ow let's do something about it.
This lack of progression towards a desired accomplishment can rarely be blamed on someone else because it is you who must believe in it to make it happen. The root of the problem, often unseen and unnamed, comes from you, or more specifically, one part of you.
No matter the level of success, every entrepreneur and small business owner with whom I have worked has experienced barriers while making their business dream a reality – even if they've already made mill*ions. The barrier to them or for them is ALWAYS some degree of concern, procrastination, uncertainty, disconnection, lack of passion... fear. Yes, I said it — the dreaded f-word.
Many of you may have immediately said, "I've worked through all of my fears." You may even say that you don't really feel fear any more. Or that you ignore fear's little twinges, or that you're good at feeling fear and doing "it" anyway. Frankly, you're just really skilled at pretending the thoughts don't exist. Don't worry, it's not you. It is just fear protecting its turf.
Concerned about how tricky these thoughts can be? Let's see if fear is woven into your inner dialogue without you even knowing it. Let's start with your vision.
• You have an idea for a new business you want to create, or an idea to expand the business you already have.
• You see it in your mind's eye and it gives you a rush of energy just thinking about it.
• It starts to take shape when you tell a few people close to you your idea and share emotionally how it's going to affect you. They feel it because you feel it.
• With great gusto you make a plan, on paper or in thought, and you look for people and information to help you accomplish it.
And then... things start to slow you down. Your path fills with some of following variations of entrepreneurial fears:
You start putting off the tasks that you have defined; you procrastinate each time you schedule a task or have a call to make. A clear example of this variation of an entrepreneurial fear is the epidemic of "Shelf Help': buying a book or information product to assist you in making your business dream real. The product sits on the shelf without you ever applying the information in which you decided to invest. This dimension of fear will keep you in a feeling of a growing black hole – it will always feed the following three variations.
Or
Once the initial energy rush of telling people about your dream and the plans to make it real starts to fade, a different feeling starts to flood in. Every time you think about taking a step forward doubt and second-guessing pop up. A clear example of this variation of fear is that you start looking for more information or other tactics to try without ever applying the ones you've already identified. This dimension of fear will keep you in the chase – and will always hold your dream like a carrot in front of you.
Or
Despite painting a very clear emotional picture of your business dream to yourself and others, the rest of the picture starts to become cloudy. You become unable to see your way through to making it happen, and become stuck in the feeling of the dream. You look for a guara*ntee to make reaching for the dream worth it. A clear example of this variation of fear is when you start saying "I don't know...", "I need some more validation," or "If I could just find someone who has done the very same thing." You say these things... a lot. This dimension of fear ensures that you will never – know.
Or
The buzz that you used to get from even thinking about your business dream is replaced with a feeling of hopelessness, and despite the power that once surged through your heart every time you thought about your dream, you n*ow feel like a victim. A clear example of this variation is when questioned about your progress you let yourself off the hook by saying, "It was a neat idea, but it's really pointless to even try," "I don't have the resources," etc. Even if you are ne*ver quest*ioned, you say this to yourself. This dimension of fear is deadly. It leads to "dream atrophy" – it often causes people to stay in businesses or jobs they don't love for their entire lives.
Do any of these seem familiar? Don't worry. You are not alone. Everyone feels fear. Fear is a natural human reaction. Fear serves a function. It gets you out of the way of a speeding train or a growling bear. Don't strive to stop fear, you can't. Even if you are largely successful in the short-term, it will always come back in some other way and hit you harder because the stakes are bigger.
There is an easier and more dependable way to deal with fear so that you can prevent these destructive energy leaks from taking the wind out of you and your dream.
To help assure that your dream becomes a reality, he*re are four insights into what is really going on behind the scenes of when you're in action:
• First you must realize that each and every thought comes from your brain. Yes, your brain alone. It has been put in the position of looking out for you since you were born. In fact, YOU gave it the job. It's the same manufacturing plant that gave you the ideas that became your dream.
• You must also appreciate that your brain feeds you countless thoughts every day, even if they ne*ver entered your awareness or interrupt you in your daily tasks. They grow like unattended weeds in the fertile garden of your mind, forming barriers of disbelief that prevent you from ever experiencing the fruits of your vision, sometimes from ever even "seeing" them.
• It may seem hard to comprehend but your brain has no emotional attachment to any of the thoughts it feeds you – none. It's simply doing its job of looking out for you by providing you with the thoughts. Both the thoughts of your dreams AND the limiting thoughts are simply that – thoughts. You then get to decide what to do with them. The trick is to do this BEFORE an emotional reaction is triggered.
• You need to develop the new skill of recognizing each and every one of the limiting thoughts, then create the habit of removing them before they take you down. Your "garden" must be fr*ee of these "weeds" so that you can actually plant the seeds of your business vision, which you can then tend as they grow.
These steps are easy to do IF you have a reliable and easy to follow process that you can walk through even if you are in the middle of the fear emotional response. See the fail-proof process we use.
Embrace these simple understandings so you can take command over your thoughts and their effects on your dream and your entire life. It is far more powerful to make decisions from choice, instead of by reacting. Don't react... choose. Your dream will then become a reality faster than it is possible to imagine.
© Castle Montone, Limited
Are you making one of the 15 MISTAKES THAT KILL BUSINESS SUCCESS? Find out at www.15mistakes.com.
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can. Simply include this blurb with it: Brand Visioneer and BrandU co-founder, Kim Castle teaches entrepreneurs and small business owners how to turn their business ideas into a moneymaking marketable brand. If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank™, get your FR*EE branding tips now at www.whybrandu.com.
Clearing the Path: 4 Ways Fear Wreaks Havoc on Your Dream and What to Do About It by Kim Castle - To learn more about this author, visit Kim Castle's Website.
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Kim Castle
(Visit Kim's Website)
With nearly two decades in the advertising
and design business, with clients like
Domino’s Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV,
Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave
Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products,
Disney, and Paramount, as well as
thousands of entrepreneurs around the
world define, structure, communicate, and
position their business for greater
profits, BrandU® co-creators Kim Castle
and W. Vito Montone discovered that
entrepreneurs could experience the same
power that big brands command for a
fraction of the cost with the world’s only
process-based results-drive Integral
approach to business creation.
BrandU® is helping entrepreneurs grow with
the power of extreme clarity from idea…to
brand…to market™ and helping one million
entrepreneurs become successful and whole
so that they can make a difference in the
world. Are you one of them?
If you want to experience clarity all the
way to the bank™, get started now at www.brandu.com/rd.cfm?id=743.
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The first is fear.
The fear that you'll have to implement whatever you dream up.
The fear that you will fail.
The fear that you will do something stupid and be ridiculed by your peers for decades.
I was moved to write another manifesto on the nature of Dreaming in relationship with Passion. 
