Change Your Life - What's Holding You Back?

You may have set our New Year’s resolutions and are determined that this year it will be different. But take yourself forward to December 2010 - will you be looking back on this year the way you looked back on the last one? Will your dreams and goals be recognised? Will you be looking back on 2010 and saying –

* Wow, that was my best year ever!

* What a fantastic year!

* And I’m looking forward to a fabulous future!

Wouldn’t that be great?

And setting and reaching your goals is easy if you have a system for getting you where you want to go. You need to know:

* What you want

* What REALLY matters to you

* How you can get there

* What steps you have to take to get there

Once you know all that, all you have to do is... do it!

But you already know this; you’ve set goals before, they’ve been for a mostly worthy cause. You knew what you had to do, and still you didn’t reach your goals.

Now maybe you didn’t set the right goals. Or maybe life just got in your way.

Or maybe the real reason the stuff you want to bring about doesn’t happen is fear. Now we all feel afraid sometimes, but one of the most important things to realise is – the bigger your dream the greater the fear will be. When you feel enormous fear it could be that:

a) You are about to do something incredibly silly – so in this case your fear is protecting you

Or

b) You are about to do something incredibly wonderful – and the implications of that are causing the fear

So which is it?

If you have the really big dream perhaps:

* You’d love to leave the corporate world and strike out on your own

* Your great desire is to get your life sorted out and find out what your dream is (once you know, you’ll easily get there)

* You want to redesign your business to be truly aligned with the real you and to be of service to others... and be financially sound while reaching this dream.

Your big dream takes courage. There will be fear in doing this – fear of loss, for when you move into your new life you’ll be leaving some stuff behind. Fear of moving forward. Fear of your own ability to maintain success. And so on. The human brain is infinitely creative and can dream up all sorts of fears.

So let’s start to get you through the fear thing...

1. What exactly is the fear?

2. Write it down, so it doesn’t keep running amok inside your brain.

3. Now take a 10 second break thinking of something else.

4. Focus on your dream. What would it mean to you? What joy, satisfaction, purpose or divine approval would it bring you? Think about this for a few minutes.

5. Write this down – “If I achieve my dream I’ll get... (make a list here) and I’ll feel... (another list). And it will be SO worth it.”

6. Now revisit your fear for a microsecond. You might need to look at your notes to remind you. Does the fear feel the same? Is it as big?

Repeat 3 to 6 until you feel great!

This is a very condensed version of one of the exercises I do with my clients in Step 1 of the True Courage Coaching Process. Facing the fear and managing it will give you a sense of control, real joy, and will get you moving forward to realising your dreams!

(c) 2010 Liz Copeland