{"id":72600,"date":"2010-05-04T05:15:00","date_gmt":"2010-05-04T12:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/customerthink.com\/fear_is_making_you_a_loser\/"},"modified":"2010-05-04T05:15:00","modified_gmt":"2010-05-04T12:15:00","slug":"fear_is_making_you_a_loser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/fear_is_making_you_a_loser\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear is Making You a Loser."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><imgx style=\"float:left; margin-right:10px\" src=\"http:\/\/danwaldschmidt.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/05\/istock_fear1.jpg\" width=\"250\"><\/imgx><\/p>\n<p>You were born a winner.   And life taught you how to be a <a href=\"http:\/\/danwaldschmidt.com\/2010\/04\/fear-failure-what-you-want-for-you\/\" target=\"_blank\">loser<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Ironic isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p>You beat the odds.  From conception to nine months of pre-natal nurturing to emergence in a world full of dangers, you survived.<span id=\"more-3109\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>You thrived.<\/p>\n<p>You explored the boundaries of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You screamed until you could talk.  And then you wouldn&#8217;t stop.<\/li>\n<li>You pulled the table cloth off the top of the table so you could see what was on top of the table.<\/li>\n<li>You licked anything in site &#8211; the bathroom floor and the dirty window.  Germs didn&#8217;t seem to bother you.<\/li>\n<li>You reached out to touch the hot stove even after your mom yelled at you 17 times that it would burn you.<\/li>\n<li>You smelled everything even when it made your nose bleed and eyes water.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">And then you learned that you weren&#8217;t supposed to do that&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>You were told that you needed to &#8220;learn from your experience&#8221; to &#8220;grow up&#8221; and &#8220;stop dreaming&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Any of those sounds familiar to you?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">At that moment, here is what began to happen:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>&#8220;Fear started turning you into a loser.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And from then until now, you have been fighting to get back into the winner&#8217;s circle.<\/p>\n<p>Every effort, ever strategy, every tactic &#8212; everything has been been about limiting the <a href=\"http:\/\/danwaldschmidt.com\/2010\/02\/seth-godin-indispensable-edginess\/\" target=\"_blank\">effects of fear<\/a> on your performance.<\/p>\n<p>You fell like you aren&#8217;t winning as often as you want to, so you put in the effort to turn that around.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You read more books.<\/li>\n<li>You go to conferences and listened to experts.<\/li>\n<li>You start scanning the the top 20 blogs by the leading gurus.<\/li>\n<li>You go to webinars to get the latest tips and tricks.<\/li>\n<li>You hire a coach to help you achieve your goals.<\/li>\n<li>You put in a little extra effort each day.<\/li>\n<li>You join a networking group to see what other people are doing.<\/li>\n<li>You start a &#8220;high achiever&#8221; group on LinkedIn.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And at the end of the day, you still feel like a loser.<\/p>\n<p>Like too many times you are losing when you <a href=\"http:\/\/danwaldschmidt.com\/2010\/02\/8-paths-to-domination-and-1-big-way-to-fail\/\" target=\"_blank\">should be winning<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And the answer is pretty simple:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Fear is Making You a Loser.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Fear is crippling your performance.  Undoing every dream you want for you.  Destroying the advantages you gain by your extra effort.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s deep in your soul.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the <em>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid I don&#8217;t know&#8221;<\/em> reply that slips through  when you get asked a question you might not have the answer to.  It&#8217;s the<em> &#8220;I&#8217;m afraid to ask&#8221;<\/em> rebuttal you give when you are told that bad news awaits you.  It&#8217;s the<em> &#8220;I&#8217;m afraid you&#8217;re right&#8221;<\/em> concession you give when the facts point to a different point of view than our own.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s fear.  And it&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/danwaldschmidt.com\/2010\/02\/4-reasons-you-cant-shortcut-your-way-to-success\/\" target=\"_blank\">stealing your destiny<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The same senses that made you a winner as a young tyke get all twisted up by the time you get old enough to be reading articles like this one.  It&#8217;s hard to know where you went wrong and to make it right.<\/p>\n<p>Fear isn&#8217;t a school bully you can tackle or a plywood wall you can punch a hole in.   It&#8217;s in your soul &#8212; in your mind.<\/p>\n<p>And here are some secrets you need to know:<\/p>\n<h2>1. Fear distorts your view of reality.<\/h2>\n<p>Most of the time what you see is what you get . But what you see may not be what is really there.<\/p>\n<p>Fear is like a kaleidoscope.  Except with demons and monsters instead of funky colors and shapes.<\/p>\n<p>When you are anxious, nervous, or scared, you start reacting rationally for the reality that you see.  Except what you see isn&#8217;t really happening.<\/p>\n<p>Take off the &#8220;Fear Goggles&#8221;.  Ask someone you trust, <em>&#8220;Does my perspective make sense&#8221;?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Do this a few times and you will start to see a pattern.  You ask like a crazy man when you are afraid.  It&#8217;s temporary insanity.<\/p>\n<p>You can disarm fear by trusting that what you think is there, might not really be there at all.<\/p>\n<h2>2. Fear quiets the chants of your supporters.<\/h2>\n<p>Everybody has fans.  Even weirdos, wimps, and winos.  Someone somewhere loves you deeply and wants you to succeed.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s true.  You are a hero.  That you win is terribly important to someone else.  You need to really stop a minute and let that sink in.<\/p>\n<p>When you are afraid, it&#8217;s easy to believe that you <a href=\"http:\/\/danwaldschmidt.com\/2010\/04\/feeling-lost-when-you-know-the-way\/\" target=\"_blank\">are all alone<\/a> and that no one cares that you win.<\/p>\n<p>Your supporters need you.  You need to know that they are there.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s strangely curious how after you come through the big storm  &#8212; hit the finish line &#8212; that you hear how loudly the crowd is cheering.<\/p>\n<p>Guess what?  They were there the entire time.  You were just too afraid to notice them stomping their feet and waving their arms.<\/p>\n<p>You were focused on you.  On not losing.<\/p>\n<h2>3. Fear makes you feel irrationally inadequate.<\/h2>\n<p>You have everything you need to be successful right now.  You are <a href=\"http:\/\/danwaldschmidt.com\/2010\/04\/survival-you-cant-avoid-the-bad-stuff\/\" target=\"_blank\">capable <\/a>of achieving every success you can ever imagine.<\/p>\n<p>Fear drives you to think you might not be good enough.  Nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n<p>You were born a winner&#8230;  Once upon a time, that&#8217;s all you knew how to do.  Do you fully understand that?<\/p>\n<p>At one point in your life the only thing you knew how to do was to <a href=\"http:\/\/danwaldschmidt.com\/2009\/06\/de-crippling-fear\/\" target=\"_blank\">conquer life<\/a>.  Sure you took it one breath at a time.  But it worked&#8230;  You won.  You won consistently.  You were all you needed to succeed.<\/p>\n<p>The only thing that has changed is that the world has scared you into believing that you might not be enough, have enough to change the world.<\/p>\n<p>And that notion is purely irrational.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Stop fear from making you a loser.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Stop <em>working <\/em>more and start <em>being <\/em>more.<\/p>\n<p>Start being more <a href=\"http:\/\/danwaldschmidt.com\/2009\/07\/what-courage-looks-like\/\" target=\"_blank\">courageous<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You were born a winner. And life taught you how to be a loser. Ironic isn&#8217;t it? You beat the odds. From conception to nine months of pre-natal nurturing to emergence in a world full of dangers, you survived. You thrived. You explored the boundaries of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell&#8230; You screamed until [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128,85],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72600"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6979"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72600\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/customerthink.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}