The Fear Trap

When you are comparing yourself to others, you are probably only seeing part of the whole picture.

If you are making an excuse not to try something new, because you are comparing yourself to others who are experts in the field, remember that they were also inexperienced at some stage.

The unknown can be scary, but it may not be a negative thing. Many good things can come from taking a step into the unknown.

• Saying No Doesn’t Mean You’re a Bad Person: Saying no doesn't mean that you are being rude, selfish, or unkind. These are all unhelpful beliefs that make it hard to say no. Learning where these beliefs have come from is a great way to learn to let go of them.
• Knowing Your Value:  Learning to say no is realizing that you are valuable and choosing your own opinion about yourself over others.
• Is It Really Worth It?: Learning to say no is also deciding if saying yes is really worth it. Think about the anguish, stress, and resentment that saying yes has caused you. Wouldn't it be so much easier and straightforward to just say no in the first place?

• Be direct.
• Don't apologize and give all sorts of reasons.
• Be honest.
• Don't delay your response.
• Be polite.
• Practice saying no. This will get you feeling a lot more comfortable with saying no.
• Know your worth. Don't mind what other think of you.

It happens when we focus on how you believe other people are doing you wrong or what you think they are doing to cause you pain. It means focusing on other people's flaws and how you feel mistreated.
This fuels feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and despair.

How someone else treats you is outside your control.
But noticing who or what you are exposing yourself to is within your control. And so you should focus on that.

It encourages you to claim your successes and to deflect your failures.

When something good happens, you take the credit, but when something bad happens, you blame it on something out of your control.

• Lies: This is one of the worst types of excuses—a straight-up lie.
• Self-handicapping excuses: Such as “I don’t have the skills to do that”, or “That’s not my job.”
• Blame-shifting excuses: Instead of putting the blame on your lack of abilities, you accuse external factors for your missteps or lack of performance.

The key to shifting your perspective and developing the habit of thinking big involves stepping outside of yourself and into another persona — essentially becoming someone who will help you see things bigger, better and more creatively.

You must also think from the perspective of having no limitations or fears and ask big questions persistently until the right answer comes to mind.

• Limiting habits: procrastination, immediatism, negative thinking, making excuses, solving insignificant problems, over-analyzing, perfectionism.
• People criticize and judge the unknown and big ideas are often so.
• Fears of failure and the unknown restrict us to small thoughts, decisions, and actions. 
• Lack of time turns us into small thinkers and immediatists. 
• Lack of incentives robs you of the motivation to stretch yourself emotionally or physically. 

Distractions can be either:

• Temptations: When we take a break from work to check social media
• Interruptions: When we get annoyed or repeated emails disrupting our workflow.

While we can deal with these external problems, what can be more challenging is our internal urge to be distracted.

Distractions are a way to mask what we are fearful of. Fear is a deception that comes from looking at something you’ve never done. It’s simply how your brain works — it believes anything could be death and everything you’ve already done has proven itself to be safe. Embracing fear makes it lose the grip on us.

While some people have a clear calling from an early age, many spend their whole careers without having ever discovered their passion.

The most basic foundation of passion is an intense interest in what you're doing.

These mindsets determine how we face challenges: We either give up when we are faced with difficulties or we persevere knowing that we will improve over time.

Things add up. You learn one skill. Then another. You finish one project. Then another. Over time, your accomplishments add up to form an impressive feat.

Pick some media from different industries. You may find that other industries have problems similar to yours but maybe they were solved in a different way.

You may also find new linkages between your own industry and another, linkages that may lead to innovative partnerships in the future.

Religions are a way for us to understand our relationships with the supernatural and with each other. Learning how such relations are structured can teach you a lot about how people relate to each other and the world around them.

Seeing the reason in other religions can also help you develop mental flexibility.