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How do you approach fear? Take this quiz!

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Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor. I don’t even play one on tv. This is just for fun. If you have serious problems, please seek professional help.

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If you could do anything, if nothing was holding you back and there were no rules, no constraints, no money problems, no judgmental faces… what would you do?

Take some time to think about it. What do you want most in the world?

Now, what’s stopping you from getting it?

I’ve asked this before, and I’m asking it again because it’s not something we figure out once, then set it and forget it. As our lives change and we grow, it’s good to revisit this question. Sometimes the answer stays the same, but often it changes as we change.

For me, what I’ve wanted most has varied from communion with God to being loved to peaceful solitude to yarn. What’s held me back? Doubt, perfectionism, fear of failing, aversion to looking foolish, unwillingness to step into the unknown.

The problem with facing reality is that then you have to do something about it. So I tried to avoid that whenever possible. My terrible marriage, my dull job, my ever-present feeling that life was passing me by? All shoved under the rug. Everything was fine, dammit!

It’s the path of least resistance, and some people keep it up for years. How many people do you know who are going through the motions of life right now? Get up, go to work at a job that’s passionless at best and soul-sucking at worst, fight traffic, arrive home with a headache, exhausted. Eat dinner, maybe fight with your spouse, maybe veg in front of the tv. Bedtime comes before you know it. The next day, you get up and do it all again.

That was my life a few years ago, and I had no idea it could be any different.

I’m not talking about self-employment, necessarily–that’s my dream life, but it’s not for everybody. I’m talking about doing what you really want, what fires you up and makes you feel alive. I’m talking about whatever gives you joy, meaning, and purpose.

Instead of going through the motions, living. Diving in, letting yourself get dirty, risking, sweating, savoring. Being real, falling in love, going all out.

I’ve done it both ways, and I can tell you that there’s no comparison. The life of fear feels safe, but that’s an illusion. In reality, when you obey fear, you risk losing everything.

If I had kept listening to fear and living its small life, here are a few things I would have missed:

• This blog and the awesome community we have here.
• Meeting amazing, inspirational people and making friends.
• Helping other people change their lives and be happier.
• Racing cars for fun.
• Getting help and support from people I admire.
• Quitting my job and following my dream of supporting myself as a writer.
• Falling in love.

The old me could not have imagined my life as it is now, but all of this was in my power the whole time. I just didn’t see it. Back then, my own fears, doubts, and mistaken beliefs trapped me in a life of misery. I had the key to my own cell and chains. I just didn’t realize it.

But you know what’s almost as awesome as stepping into your dream life? The exhilaration of facing down your fears and overcoming them. It’s an amazing feeling, and the more you do, the better it gets.

Many people struggle with the same things I did. You may feel stuck and trapped. You may not even know what you want to be or do–maybe you’re afraid to know. Or maybe you’re one of the many who want to help people, do meaningful work, and change the world. Maybe you’ve always wanted to publish a book or support yourself with your art.

I want to see you do all this and more. I want to see you living your dreams, and dreaming bigger and bigger.

To help you make that happen, I created a free guide to facing your fears and finding out what’s holding you back. The response was overwhelming, but not everybody got to read it then. Today, I’m re-releasing that guide in case you missed it the first time.

This free guide will show you:

If that sounds like something you want, sign up below, and I’ll make sure you get a copy. Here’s to conquering fears and following your dreams!

What’s holding you back? Sign up for the free guide.

Name:

Email:

(Please sign up even if you’re already a newsletter subscriber–this is a special list. If you can’t see the form above, you can go back to the original post and sign up there.)

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One night, I saw a car wreck about to happen. From the west, a rollerblader wearing dark clothing, flying down the hill toward the road. From the east, a car going a little too fast, about to turn onto the same road.

With all my being, I wanted to stop it from happening. I wanted to reach down with the hand of God and knock the skater safely into the grass, or make the car go straight instead of turning. I wanted to stop time and make the car come along 2 seconds later, or shine a spotlight on the skater so the driver would see him.

I wanted to scream, but there wasn’t even time for that. There was nothing I could do but watch the crash.

That happened years ago, but it’s still burned into my memory. I doubt I’ll ever forget it.

A few weeks ago, I had the same feeling again. I could see something about to happen, and I wanted with all my being to stop it, to prevent it. Only this time, I wasn’t powerless, and this time, it wasn’t something terrible.

The big scary thing I wanted to keep from happening? Falling in love.

I’m afraid of lots of things: car accidents, getting mugged, running out of money, being laughed at, getting rejected, failing. I’m kind of used to those fears. But this…

I wanted to run away. I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted so badly to flee, far and fast.

Of all things to be afraid of, why was I so afraid of falling in love?

I didn’t want to be stupid. I didn’t want to be wrong. I didn’t want to get hurt again. I didn’t want to get sucked into an all-consuming passion. I didn’t want to lose myself, and I didn’t want to get distracted from my business. I was already having a hard enough time concentrating on that.

I also didn’t want to destroy what was becoming an invaluable friendship. In my experience, the more intense the feelings, the greater the flaming crash-and-burn at the end. I couldn’t bear the thought of that.

The intensity is really what scared me the most. It started feeling like my first love, back when everything was rockets and stars and I believed in true love and soul mates, and I hadn’t really been hurt yet. Then it eclipsed even that.

I thought nothing this dramatic could be real. It had to be some love potion delusion, where I was falling in love with a projection, and later I’d get to know the real person and the spell would be broken. Misery and angst would follow, everyone would be hurt, and he’d probably end up hating me, at least for a few years. That’s how the intense ones have always gone, and this was setting up to be a world record for intensity.

I didn’t want any of that, so I tried to prevent it from happening. I knew fighting against my feelings or denying them would only make them stronger, so I tried blowing them off.

Oh this? Just a silly little crush. Nothing important. It will blow over in two weeks.

It didn’t, though. It just kept getting stronger and more irresistible.

We all have times in our lives when we have to make a decision.

Take the risk, make the change, follow the passion? Or stay tucked away at home, where everything is known and safe?

In business, my greatest successes have come from following the pull of my most outrageous ideas. Things got good when I stopped believing my passion was way out there and should be restrained, and started believing it was awesome and should be harnessed.

Was I ready to do the same in my personal life? Sure, I always say life is short, live like you were dying, make your best days a common occurrence. But this?

In the end, it was words of wisdom from my sister that got me off the fence.

It’s not just fools who rush in. You don’t have to overthink and try to control everything. Let yourself feel and enjoy your feelings. It’s ok.

Why am I so afraid to live?

It’s big and scary and I don’t know what I’m doing and I might screw it up.

That’s the arithmetic of fear. All you see are the tigers and monsters and defeat and pain you might face if you try. Fear never lets you see the other side of the equation: the part where you live your dreams, do great things, flow, soar, love. Live fully, deeply, truly, richly. Become your best self.

Life is risk. When you do your calculations, don’t forget to figure in what you’ll miss if you don’t try. It’s usually far greater than what you risk if you do.

Oh, the irony.

I know all this stuff. I’ve spent enough time learning and writing about fear. But it seems I still have to keep learning it over and over, more deeply each time. The good thing is, every time this happens, I get to do something even bigger and cooler than before, and my life exceeds my vision of what was possible–again!

I know I’m not alone in being afraid. I can’t tell you how many people have written to tell me that the biggest obstacle keeping them from happiness is fear. We know it, and we all struggle with it. That’s why I created Beyond Fear last fall.

The response was overwhelming. And that’s why I’m getting ready to do it again. I can’t believe I almost cheated myself out of love, just because I was scared. I don’t want to see you miss out on any of your dreams or passions because of fear, either.

Fear is part of our biology. We never completely leave it behind. But we can learn not to let it control us or torture us. We can learn the courage to act in the face of our fear. We can learn to listen to its wisdom but decide for ourselves what we’ll do. That’s when we become the rulers of our own lives.

That’s what Beyond Fear is about. We’ll be launching again soon.

Meanwhile, I’m re-releasing What’s Stopping You? in a few days. It’s a completely free guide to facing your fears and finding out what’s holding you back.

This guide will show you:

If that sounds like something you want, sign up now, and I’ll make sure you get a copy. Anything that’s worth doing is going to scare you. You don’t have to let that stop you. Life is out there, and I’m going for it. What about you?

What’s holding you back?
Sign up to get the free guide.

Name:

Email:

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I’m doing an experiment. Would you be willing to help?

Legend has it that if you make enough initial sales to get Amazon to embrace your book, they will promote it for you, and you never need to touch it again. Amazon works their magic selling your book, and you can get on with writing your next masterpiece. If you’ve ever been unable to resist their suggestions for other books you might enjoy, you know how good they are at promotion. They’re geniuses.

It sounds too good to be true. They’d allow me to harness all that power to sell my book without a lot of ongoing work for me? I wouldn’t believe it, except that a real person who I’ve actually met in real life told me that’s how it went for him. I’ve heard other stories to back it up, too.

According to his experience, if my book sells 60 copies in the next four days (by the end of April 3), Amazon will start promoting it. For him, those initial sales translated into 10-20 sales per day on average, ongoing, with no further action from him. For a $2.99 book, that’s about $900 per month in royalties.

I don’t know how $900/month sounds to you, but to me, it sounds like about half of my living expenses. It sounds like the end of worrying about whether I’ll run out of money and have to return to corporate America. It sounds like every writer’s dream: you just write the best book you can, and let someone else worry about promotion and marketing.

If this really works, it will be like a fairy tale come true for me.

This is where I need your help. I don’t know if it will actually work for me the way it did for him, but I know it definitely won’t work if I don’t get a critical mass of initial sales.

Please go to Amazon and buy my new book: Reclaim Your Love (How to Fix Your Relationship). It’s only $2.99. (You don’t need a Kindle to read it–there’s a Kindle reader for PC and Mac, plus apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.)

If you don’t want to help, that’s ok. But here are some reasons to consider buying it:

• for science! How will we know whether this works if we don’t try it?
• because you wouldn’t mind a few tips about how to build a close, loving relationship that just keeps getting better.
• because you’d rather support an indie author than a publishing conglomerate.
• because you’re a generous person and you know you’ll feel good all day by giving me a hand.
• because I once wrote something you needed to hear, and you’ve always wished you could buy me a cup of coffee or something to say thanks. (At $2.99, it’s about the same price as a coffee–and would help me so much more.)

Click here to check it out.

If you want to go even farther, please leave a review, especially if you like it. Apparently, reviews from verified buyers have a significant impact on how much Amazon is willing to put into a book.

Again, if you don’t want to, that’s totally fine, but I’d really appreciate the help if you can. I’ll let you know how it goes.

If this works, you will have changed my life in a major way. Thank you.

Me at autocross two years ago. Image courtesy of Huntsville Car Scene.

Once upon a time, I was afraid of nearly everything. I could barely make myself pick up the phone to call the pizza man, and I had a claustrophobic freak-out in a car wash. Autocross proved to be an unexpected fast track to overcoming fear.

There are two main ways people suggest when they tell you how to overcome fear: gradually expanding your comfort zone by taking baby steps, or leaping outside your comfort zone and letting it spring out to catch up with your new position. The first time I tried autocross, about three years ago, it was definitely a leap. It worked amazingly well, and I had a lot of fun. Yet, I didn’t stick with it.

The last time I tried autocross, I lost control and spun out. That’s ok–the course is set up to be safe in the event that you lose control. To drive well, you have to push the limits. When you do that, it’s inevitable that sometimes you’ll go too far.

But the experience scared the crap out of me. Especially, one of my friends teased me about almost hitting a telephone pole. Even though I was nowhere near any telephone poles when it happened, from then on, I couldn’t get the idea out of my mind that I could have hit a telephone pole and wrecked my beloved Miata.

For the rest of that season, every time it was a race weekend, I was too tired or too busy, or I had some other excuse. I had a season pass that year but went to only one race.

If I had admitted to myself that I was scared, I would have dragged myself by the ear and made myself go. So I didn’t admit it. I just kept finding myself really tired, way too tired to do something as exhausting as autocross. Two years passed.

Last weekend, I decided to try it again. The autocross guys were offering performance driving school, so I signed up. One thing autocross gives me is a safe environment for pushing the limits. Driving school helped me get much clearer than I’ve ever been about where the limits are and what my car can do.

Notably, it can maintain traction in a turn going much, much faster than I ever dreamed.

The thought of my spin-out was still with me all weekend, but the things I learned gave me new insight into what must have happened. The car can hold a turn at a surprisingly high speed, and I know I wasn’t going that fast when I spun out. Nowhere near. If I hadn’t felt it myself, I would have sworn up and down it was completely impossible for my car to take a turn as fast as I now know it can without losing control.

What caused the spin-out is I hit the brakes.

When you’re driving, you only get 100% traction on each tire. That seems obvious, right? How could you have more than 100%? But we don’t think of it that way when we’re driving.

If you’re using 100% for turning, you can’t ask for another 30% for braking. 100% is all you get. I was probably using 70% on that turn and asked for an additional 50% for braking. I guarantee that’s how I lost it.

In normal driving, you use so little of the car’s capabilities, you generally have no problem braking and turning. I’ve got about 20 years’ experience with normal driving, and I tend to drive like a granny on the street. When I get scared, which happens pretty easily, my first impulse is to hit the brakes.

Holy crap, metaphor for life right there.

I’ve always been one of the slowest autocross drivers, because I was afraid to go too fast or drive too aggressively. I love the feeling of catching Gs going around a curve or through a slalom… in someone else’s car, with someone who knows what they’re doing in the driver’s seat. With me at the wheel, I was still playing it very safe.

I started out that way last weekend, too. We did a full day of skills training on Saturday, and then had an autocross Sunday. For my first three runs in the autocross, I took it easy. The other students’ times were in the 50s (seconds); mine were 67-69. I was getting discouraged, and I didn’t know what I should do differently.

But I talked to one of the experienced guys, and he asked how I was doing. “Slow,” I said. He asked if I was sliding around or losing control at all. No–nowhere near.

“Well, this is your last run. Try pushing it. Go a little faster. Don’t worry if you hit a bunch of cones, just see what you can do. Make it count. Drive it like you mean it.”

I took his advice, and this time, instead of shying away when I started to feel the outward force in the turns, I remembered how the edge felt and realized how far I still was from it. I still felt a strong urge to slow down, but the other part of my mind knew it was ok. I let that part win, despite the discomfort.

Sometimes I imagine my fear as an ugly little bastard gremlin that I want to punch a few times and throw out the car window. But yesterday, it was more like a small child in need of comfort. I let it sit in its car seat, all strapped in. But I didn’t let it drive. At least, not nearly as much as usual.

And, what do you know? I knocked 8 seconds off my time, finishing at 61.399. That is a huge improvement.

When I was into autocross before, I always wondered how I could possibly go faster. I’d try as hard as I could, and maybe over the course of the day, I’d shave off a second or two. I’d still be at least 10 seconds behind the pack and utterly unable to do any better.

All that time, maybe the secret to going faster really was as simple as…going faster!

The next autocross is this coming weekend, and I’m excited to go into it with this mindset.

Another thing I noticed this weekend is I worry way too much about whether I’m doing well. I want to be good at this! I hate coming in third to last (although it beats last)! I don’t expect to win a trophy every time, but it would be nice not to be so far below average.

But I think that’s one way autocross is really good for me. I make mistakes, I do it badly, and what happens? Nothing. The world doesn’t end. Nobody makes fun of me. I don’t have to kiss anyone’s boots or pay some imaginary fine for sucking. In fact, everyone is unfailingly helpful and nice, and I get a day in the sun, talking to people and zoom-zooming around in my Miata with the top down. Last weekend, there was even barbecue for lunch.

I went ahead and bought a season pass. As much as I want to drive faster and get good at this, my goal for this year is to let go of judgment. If I can go, learn, and have fun, rather than worrying about times or feeling incompetent, that will be a major win for me. If I drive faster, too, that’s a bonus.

A lot of people stay away from autocross and keep their kids away because they’re afraid of losing control. They’re afraid if they let their kids try it, they’ll go hotdogging all over town and get in wrecks.

If anything, it’s the opposite. A few weeks ago, someone pulled out in front of me, and my autocross skills saved me from crashing into them.

Sometimes, hitting the brakes makes things worse, not better. Sometimes, the scary thing is what pays off. Some fear is the voice of wisdom, but a lot of it is just keeping us in our safe little boxes, never fully living. Whether your response to fear is to throw it out the window or give it a good safety seat, just make sure you’re the one driving.

Image by Sappymoosetree on Flickr. Creative Commons License.

When you fight against yourself, you’re guaranteed to lose.

My awesome coach, Jonathan, pointed this out to me last week. It’s true. Even if it’s a tie, you still lose, because you’ve wasted all that energy.

I’ve been fighting against myself a lot over the past few months, and it’s really been holding me back. But I think I’ve had a beginning insight on how to let go of the struggle and get in harmony with myself. I often feel like I need to fully understand something before I write about it, but in case you’re engaged in the same struggle, I want to share this now, not someday when I have it all figured out (i.e., maybe never).

For me, a major part of the struggle is fighting against my feelings. I know a lot of tricks for thwarting bad feelings, and sometimes they’re really handy.

A big part of that is stopping yourself from manufacturing unpleasant feelings where there were none. So many times, we get upset purely because of what we tell ourselves about a situation. That’s a huge waste of energy, and it’s useful to be able to talk yourself down from it.

But sometimes, the feelings just show up. We didn’t make them, but they’re there, and all the disputing, positivity, and pep-talking we might try simply doesn’t work.

I think one of the hazards of wanting to be happy and working toward that is that we can get so caught up in it, it becomes another thing we judge ourselves about. Like, I know all this stuff about happiness, so why am I still being tossed around by these unhappy feelings? I should know better than this–what’s wrong with me? It feels like a failure.

What’s more, if we get too caught up in wanting to get rid of feelings, we forget that they have a purpose. Our feelings are there to point out to us when something is wrong (or right!).

For example, I used to fight really hard against anger. I thought that good and virtuous people are patient and kind and overflowing with God’s love. If I was angry, that was the opposite, so I must be a bad person. But I really wanted to be a good person, so I struggled as hard as I could to try to wrestle myself into being patient, kind, and overflowing with love.

Needless to say, it didn’t work. The problem was, I was angry because I was being mistreated and not getting my needs met. The anger was there to point out to me that something wasn’t working. Until I addressed the cause of the anger, I could wrestle all day, but all I’d accomplish was wearing myself out and turning up the pressure.

I think it’s important to distinguish between emotional reasoning and using your feelings as a guide. Emotional reasoning is a cognitive distortion where we assume our feelings indicate the ultimate truth of a situation. For example, if you feel angry and therefore conclude that you must have been wronged, that’s emotional reasoning. Or because you feel hopeless, you conclude that your problems are insurmountable and you might as well give up. That’s a self-reinforcing way to lead yourself astray.

But using your feelings as in indicator is different. Instead of treating them as an oracle, you can treat them as a sign post. You look for what they have to tell you without blindly doing their bidding.

To do this, the first step is awareness. Notice your feelings and label them. If you’re not sure what’s going on, pay attention to your body. How do you feel physically? Look for pain or a feeling of tightness. Where is it in your body? What emotion might that physical sensation indicate?

For example, I often feel tension in my stomach when I’m anxious about something. When I’m sad, my chest or throat feels tight. When I’m hurt, sometimes I feel a pain behind my eyes. When I’m really happy, I may feel a tingling on the back of my neck and shoulders, or an openness about my chest.

Once you’ve recognized your feeling, you can consciously choose to be open to what it has to tell you, rather than fighting it. Ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way? What’s going on?” Listen for an answer. If nothing comes to you, you may be afraid of the answer, or of being wrong. It’s ok; just guess. If you had to guess, what would you say is behind this feeling?

Keep going deeper until you feel satisfied that you have the true answer. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

Sometimes, though, there’s still more feeling there, and you can’t release it until you feel it fully. We’re often afraid of the pain of feeling our feelings fully, so we try to stuff them down or talk ourselves out of what we’re feeling. That just makes things worse.

I experienced this last week: I was feeling down and couldn’t seem to shake it. I went for a walk in the woods, but as I was walking, I felt like I was fighting back tears the whole time. That gets old fast, so I decided to try this technique I just read about.

It’s called the Center of Remaining Energy (CORE) technique. It guides you to feel your feelings fully so that they can disperse. Here’s what you do:

1. Sit in a comfortable spot with your eyes closed.
2. Notice the uncomfortable feeling and where it resides in your body.
3. Zoom in: where is it most intense?
4. Move your awareness to the center of the most intense part of the feeling. You may find something that feels like the eye of the hurricane at the center of your feeling, at the most intense part. Lean into it and feel it fully for a few minutes.
5. Notice whether the sensation is getting more intense, less intense, or staying the same.
6. Keep feeling into the center of the intensity of the sensation, until you’ve felt it all and there’s nothing left in that spot.
7. If any of the feeling remains, move your awareness to the center of that and feel it completely.
8. Keep repeating until you feel resolved.
9. Sit comfortably for a few more minutes before moving on.¹

When I tried this, I sat down by a spring in the woods, where I could listen to the water trickling. I asked myself what was wrong and identified the roots of my sadness and anxiety. Then, I focused my attention on the sensation.

It was most intense in my chest, so I focused on that. I felt the sadness, and my tears burst out. It hurt, but a lot less than I expected. The amazing thing was how much less uncomfortable it was to feel the sadness and anxiety than to fight against it. I refocused a few times and the sensation dissipated within a few minutes.

I was pleasantly surprised at how little time it took to fully feel the emotions. Normally, I’d walk around all day not-quite-feeling something like this; instead, I felt it fully for less than five minutes, and then the cloud lifted and I was free.

Everything seems to be pointing me in the direction of mindfulness as a route to self-compassion and unconditional love. This seems like the first tiny step. As I learn more, I look forward to sharing it with you.

Meanwhile, if you think this might help others, please pass it on. Click to tweet:

¹ Love For No Reason: 7 Steps to Creating a Life of Unconditional Love by Marci Shimoff. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2010. pp. 115-116.

Image by el_floz on Flickr. Creative Commons License.

In a book I read a few months back, there was a question that’s haunted me.

“When it is dark and you are alone, do you ever say to yourself, ‘What will I do when they find out I’m me?’”

–Walter Anderson¹

I pride myself on being open, being congruent, being real. I used to do the opposite, being careful to hide everything about me that I thought others might not like. Instead, I went all out trying to be what I thought they wanted. I was smart, studious, well-behaved, mild-mannered–”a joy to have in class,” according to almost every teacher I ever had.

The problem is, when you’re always trying to please others, there’s no room for your real self to shine though. Aside from the inherent waste of that, it prevents you from ever having deep, intimate relationships. When nobody can get past the pleasing front you present in attempt to make them like you, you can’t have interactions deeper than that faux surface.

I know all this. As I emerged from the shambles of my second marriage, I could no longer deny that the old way was clearly not working. With great trepidation, I started being real with everyone. As scary as it was, it was the best thing I’ve ever done, and I committed to living that way from then on.

So why should I still be afraid of people finding out I’m me, as it says in the quote? If I was following my policy of being real, everyone would already know I’m me. So what am I afraid of?

A few weeks ago, I figured it out. I’m still afraid of people knowing that I’m scared, and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m not sure I can do this.

I know a lot of people think I was crazy to quit my job, and some of them haven’t been shy about their opinions. I want so much to be right about this!

At the same time, I’ve been having a lot of doubts about it myself. It’s hard to admit, but things haven’t been going as well as I expected financially, and for awhile it seemed like nothing I was doing was working at all. I started feeling like a fool and a failure, and I started trying madly to hide that from everyone but my closest friends, because I thought if people knew I was anything but a hero, I was definitely doomed. Everyone would catch the whiff of failure on me and run away before it spread to them.

Being fake and being afraid has made it almost impossible to work, which has only added to my anxiety. Most of what I like about myself is tied to achievement, so when I’m not getting anything done, my self-esteem tanks, which makes it even harder to work. Meanwhile, my fear was feeding on itself, using my lack of productivity as further proof that I was a loser.

With all of this mental static taking up more and more of my brain and sucking away my energy, I got on a plane to Portland for a meetup of a mastermind group organized by my awesome coach, Jonathan. I told myself I was excited and couldn’t wait to get new ideas and energy from interacting with all these brilliant people and hearing their suggestions and feedback.

The truth, which I didn’t even consciously admit to myself, was I was scared shitless that they would realize I totally didn’t belong there.

They all seemed so brilliant, so ambitious, so creative, so knowledgeable. So inspiring! And here I was, clueless, afraid, and depressed. What was I doing there? I felt like a fraud for even showing up.

When the group’s focus turned to me, I had to lay bare the numbers for my business, what I had been doing, and what results I was getting. All of my answers seemed utterly pathetic to me, but I spilled it anyway.

You have to understand, two of my three greatest fears are having people realize I don’t know what I’m doing, and crying in front of people. But there was no hiding in this group, and the others were so awesome, I decided to let go and trust them. I still hoped I wouldn’t cry in front of them, but everything felt so hopeless, I just couldn’t help it.

I told them everything. I cried. We talked. I cried some more.

I’m sure you know, from your perspective as Not Me, that the others wouldn’t laugh, scorn me, and throw me out of the group. I knew that, too, intellectually–but no deeper. At best, I still half-expected they’d go home that evening and think, “God, how did that basket case get in here? What a mess! I’m glad I’m not her!” before going back to their brilliant works.

Instead, they rallied around me beyond anything I could have imagined. Someone finally asked, “Do you believe you can do this?”

It was a moment of truth for me because I knew the “right” answer was “yes,” but the honest answer was “no.” I wanted to believe, but if I looked into my heart and faced reality, I knew I didn’t.

All my life, I’ve been a master at detecting the “right” answer. Giving it has carried me a long way–I always attributed a majority of my success to that, in fact.

I spent a moment suspended in time. Right answer, or true answer? What I know people want to hear, or real me?

I decided. I told the truth, wavering out the saddest little tear-strangled “no” I’ve ever spoken.

“Well, I believe you can do it. And I think everyone else here feels the same. [nods all around] You can do this!”

I don’t think I’ll forget that moment as long as I live. Everyone said a lot of comforting and inspirational things, and gave me a ton of great suggestions for making everything work, but that was what did it for me. That and my two biggest heroes offering me all-encompassing hugs while I sobbed on their shirts.

Why am I telling you all this?

Some might call it self-indulgent. I’m halfway in that camp myself. But two reasons:

1. I feel like I’ve been putting on a false front here. If I’ve told you my failings at all, it’s only been when it could be cheerfully couched as a victorious learning experience. After all, I wrote a book called How to be Happy, and my flagship product is Beyond Fear. I feel like I should already have all this stuff handled and be out there kicking its ass. My friends had to point out to me how ridiculous that expectation is.

   Meanwhile, I think trying to act like I’m successful and know what I’m doing has caused such a conflict, it’s been getting in the way of what I want to do here. I quit my job because I loved writing, and here I’ve been, dreading every blog post and writing almost nothing. I’m through with that (I hope).

2. If there’s even one person out there feeling like I have been, it’s worth writing this. You’re not alone. What’s more, you don’t have to earn compassion. That’s what really blew me away about the mastermind. I didn’t deserve any of that. But it was there for the asking, if I could only be strong enough to admit I was weak.

I’m tired of being afraid, so I’m admitting it again here. I don’t really know what I’m doing. A lot of things aren’t working so far. I’m afraid I’m going to run out of money before the business gets off the ground. I’m afraid I’m inherently lacking in some quality that makes successful entrepreneurs. (A few come to mind: faith, charisma, a passion for marketing…)

Every launch so far has been utter torture for me because I’m afraid nobody will ever buy my stuff, and I’m afraid it’s because they can all see how inadequate I am. I’m afraid I’m nowhere near cool enough to pull this off.

I’m afraid I’m wasting your time. I’m afraid I’ve already said everything useful I’ll ever say. I’m afraid no one will read this, or if they do, they’ll all laugh (and then unsubscribe).

I’m afraid this is all just a mirage and soon I’ll have to wake up and go back to sitting in some beige box somewhere while my life ticks away. I’m afraid I’ll die without ever having really lived.

* * * * *

I think situations like this are especially hard for perfectionists, people with impostor syndrome, and overachievers, all of which I am (or am recovering from). If you get used to things coming easily for you, especially if they’re things others struggle with, it’s easy to get stuck in outrageous expectations: mistakes are for kids, everything should come easily to me, not knowing what I’m doing means there’s something wrong with me.

For example, the day I fell in the woods and skinned my knee, I was ridiculously shocked. One of my best friends was totally casual about it: “oh, yeah, everybody falls sometimes.” I was like, “what? They do?!?!”

I think the last time I skinned my knee before that was in high school when someone pushed me down on the blacktop when we were playing basketball. Before, that, it was probably when I was six. I had no idea I was spending waaaaay too much time in my comfort zone.

The problem with never falling down is you start to think the world will end if you do.

I’d like to replace that idea with another image. A few weeks ago, before my mastermind trip, I was walking in the woods. I do that all the time, in pursuit of sanity. On this particular day, a young boy and his dad were out riding bikes, and we happened to start the same trail at the same time. They’d pass me and ride on ahead, and then they’d stop to look at something or the boy would get his bike stuck, and I’d pass them, so we ended up doing the entire trail sort of together.

At one point, we got past a big muddy spot and the trail became smooth and wide, with a slight uphill incline. The dad rode beside the boy with his hand on the child’s back, giving him a little extra gas to get up the hill.

Seeing this brought tears of longing to my eyes, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. I have a great dad, and when I was little, he always helped and protected me, comforted me and treated me with compassion. So why the wistful tears?

It was only after I got back from the mastermind and walked the same path that I figured it out. I had been feeling like, now that I’ve quit my job and gone out into the big bad world by myself, nobody can protect me any more, or even give me a little extra push.

Now I know that’s not true. We’re all in this together, and our problems always seem larger from the inside. That doesn’t mean I’ll never despair again, but it feels good to know.

If you know anyone else who could benefit from this message, please tweet it or share it on Facebook. Thanks for reading.

1The Confidence Course: Seven Steps to Self-Fulfillment by Walter Anderson. HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 1997, p. 32.

Image by pcullen on Flickr. Creative Commons license.

What would it be like to be totally confident that you’ll be ok, no matter what happens?

Frankly, I have no idea. But it sounds great! To me, that would be the ultimate freedom. Freedom from anxiety, freedom from worry, freedom from fear. I don’t know if anyone really achieves it in this lifetime, but we can work toward getting closer to it.

For most people, it’s hard enough to even achieve a more basic level of freedom of thought where we know ourselves and do what we would do. Instead, we do what we think our parents, our friends, our bosses, or society dictate.

As much as people say we love freedom, and as angry as we get when someone tries to take away our rights and choices, we often act as if it’s more of a burden than a pleasure. When your options are open and what you do is up to you, that’s a lot of responsibility, and a lot of thinking. Sometimes it’s easier to let others choose for you.

Or, we take the path of least resistance. Go to the school that offers the best financial package. Pick the major that comes easily to you, rather than the most interesting. Join a religion that will define the rules of living for you. Get married, buy a house, settle down. There are good reasons to do these things, but often, we just do them so we have one less thing to decide or think about. I’ve certainly done that myself. It’s easier to follow the expected path and do what “everybody” does than to think out what your ideal life would look like, and then have to figure out how to make it happen.

Even in the smaller picture, we create structures and rules for ourselves in all kinds of situations. It helps us feel safe. For example, do greenways really need to specify bike vs. pedestrian lanes? Where I live, the paved paths all have lines and pictures to indicate where people should walk and where they should bike. Heaven forbid we all had to figure that out for ourselves–anarchy would reign!

This need for structure pervades our lives, and most of the time, we don’t even notice it. When I quit my job, the most common advice I got was to create as much structure for myself as I could. Schedules, office hours, routines… most blog posts about working from home are adamant that you’ll do better if you dress up as if you were going to the office. One book I read actually advised me to put on a full face of makeup every day so that I’d feel professional.

Is it really our khakis and mascara that make us productive? Of course not. But apparently, for many people, the terror of going feral is too strong to allow them to concentrate, even if it’s just going feral in mild-mannered pajama pants kind of way.

When it comes down to it, we’re afraid our lives will fall apart. We may not like the way they are now, but we know we can handle it, so we cling to what we know, even if it’s not what we think we’d choose.

For me, it was also a fear of not being good enough that kept me far from freedom. I had all these rules for what a good person would do (many of them helpfully provided for me by religion). In my imagined world, good people do as much as they can to help others, and they get a selfless joy from doing so. When I tried to do that and it usually left me more frustrated and exhausted than joyful, I assumed something was wrong with me, so I tried harder.

I always tried to serve and please others. I strove to be humble, reliable, prepared, and probably any other Boy Scout virtue you can think of. In fact, I tried to be perfect.

What I learned is that seeking approval is the opposite of being free.

I began my journey toward freedom when I realized that it’s not a crime to take care of yourself. I used to think being selfish was the worst thing anyone could be, but selfishness gets a bad rap. No, I don’t recommend being greedy, stepping on others, or being a selfish jerk, just the healthy level of selfishness that says “put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.”

It starts there: with valuing yourself, taking care of yourself, and listening to yourself enough to know what you need and want.

Sometimes that’s the scariest part of all. I used to be so afraid of what might be inside my head, I did everything I could to avoid knowing myself, what I was like, or what I thought about my life. That’s the terror of freedom: when you know, then you’re responsible. You can choose not to act, not to go after what you want, but you can’t escape knowing it was a choice. Many times, we choose to stay oblivious instead.

Life is full of things we think we “should” and “have to” do, but if you look closely, most of them are artificial constraints that keep us from freedom. We see things this way in attempt to keep ourselves in check, or to keep from having to face the void of endless possibilities. But we could choose otherwise if we wanted. If you look at why you do what you do, there’s usually another way to achieve the same outcome, if that’s what you want.

For example, I always assumed I had to work full time at a regular desk job. That’s what adults do–who questions that? But one day, I was reading the university staff manual, and I discovered the option of cutting back to 80% of full time but keeping full benefits. I realized I’d still have enough money at that rate, and by working noon to 6 pm four days a week with one normal full-time day, I’d buy myself four mornings a week to use as I liked. To my amazement, my boss was fine with this plan. I felt like I’d bought my life back!

Later, I went even farther in the realm of the “impossible” by quitting altogether. Freedom can be pretty awesome once you get used to it!

Anyone can have freedom. It starts with knowing yourself and being yourself as fully as you can. The more congruent you are within yourself, the less you have to worry about what other people think of you. No secrets, no worries.

Someday, maybe we can even stop worrying what we think of ourselves. Being that free from judgment seems to be the key to ultimate freedom. If we can accept ourselves and life, no matter what happens, what is there to fear? That’s what I aspire to.

What does personal freedom mean to you? Please share in the comments!

This post is part of a series on personal freedom. Here are the other posts:

• Make Freedom Your Reality – Mike Routen at Route To Freedom
• How Free Do You Think You Are? Really. (part 1) – Paige Burkes at simple mindfulness
• Simple Steps to Create More Freedom For Yourself (part 2) – Paige Burkes at simple mindfulness
• On Freedom: The counterintuitive way to fly – Jenny Blake at Life After College
• From serfdom to freedom – Fabian Kruse at The Friendly Anarchist
• Go Do Something So Freaking Awesome That It Completely Overrides all Your Fears and Insecurities- Doug Grootveld at Wellness Renegade
• What does freedom mean to you? – Sean Ogle at Location 180

Image by Bernat Casero on Flickr. Creative Commons License.

A few months ago, my friend Ethan Waldman told me he was taking off work to go on a long bike tour of the Northwest. I’d call this a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, but Ethan is the kind of guy who will go on to have many more. Here’s his story.

On September 10th, 2011, I shut down my computer, triple-checked my extensive packing list against what was in my bags, and boarded a plane to Seattle, WA. In Seattle, I would re-assemble my bicycle and other gear which I had already shipped to the west coast a week prior. It was in Seattle that I met my cousin, Dan, a yoga teacher and writer. Together, we boarded a train to Vancouver, BC, to begin what would be a month-long unsupported bicycle tour of the pacific coast.

The trip was simultaneously nothing I expected it to be and everything I had wanted. Bicycle touring was an interest for years at this point, and I had worked hard to get myself to this point.

I’d like to share the three most important lessons I learned from the planning, execution, and return to normal life from the trip.

Ask for What You Want

In the lead up to this trip, my greatest source of anxiety by far was the thought of actually sitting down with my boss to request the time off. Before the conversation happened, I had already run through a thousand progressively worsening scenarios in my head, including being fired on the spot simply for asking.

Before even having the conversation, I was already lowering the number of days I would accept for the trip and offering to take more than I needed to unpaid. Luckily, Dan provided the reality check. “Ethan, you’re succumbing to demands that haven’t even been made yet. Ask for what you want.”

“Ask for what you want” was a great piece of advice. My boss did not react badly to my request for two months unpaid. It provided the starting point for a series of negotiations that ended up as me taking 3 weeks of vacation time (everything I had saved up) plus one week unpaid. In the back of my mind, 1 month was the minimum I would accept for this trip. I got what I wanted! I can only imagine what I would have ended up with if I had started the negotiations off at 1 month. Almost certainly less.

The lesson here is that you need to ask for what you want. The worst answer you’ll get is ‘no.’ Don’t compromise what you’re willing to accept before you find out if the other party is willing to accept it as well.

Less Really Is More

As you can imagine, you have an extremely limited amount of space when you’re carrying everything you need in small packs (called panniers) on your bicycle. After you fit in your tent, sleeping bag, ground pad, and cooking equipment, there’s even less space then you expected for things like casual clothing, shoes, books, and electronics.

Before the trip, I angsted over what to bring. These sneakers or those sandals? These jeans or those pants? iPad or laptop? When I boarded my plane to Seattle, I still wasn’t sure if I had made the right choices.

But once I hit the road and started living with my decisions, all was forgotten. In my experience, the process of choosing what to downsize to was a lot more difficult than living with less. Sure there were times where I wished I had brought an extra layer or a different pair of shoes, but overall, my experience with living with very few items was positive.

There was this feeling that I can only describe as a lightness that I felt when I knew I had everything I owned (at the time) with me. There was nothing I needed that I didn’t already have. Conversely, I found returning home to closets, cupboards, and drawers full of “stuff” were overwhelming.

I think the phrase “less is more” has become overused to the point of cliché. In my experience, less was only more once I was actually living it– certainly not before while I was “thinking” about it or considering it. It was this realization that has inspired some other big changes in my life. More on that in a minute.

Change Comes Later

While I was planning my trip and talking about it with others, the most overwhelming response I got was something along the lines of “this is going to be a LIFE CHANGING trip for you.” To be honest, I was really hoping that it would be. I had the foggy notion that I would quit my job when I got home and focus full time on my “side” business.

With the pressure of expectation about serious life change, I would check in with myself from time to time while I was riding. “I don’t feel any different…I don’t think my life has changed.” Even when I got back, I didn’t feel like anything had changed.

Now that I’ve been back to my regular life for 5 months, I cannot deny that the trip WAS a life changing experience. My love for living with fewer possessions led me to the tiny house movement. I have given up my apartment and moved in with family to save money so that I can build my own 120 square foot tiny house on wheels.

I honestly do not think I would have decided to move my life towards minimalism and building my own tiny house if I had not experienced a month on a bicycle. When people ask me, “but how do you know you’ll like living in it? Have you ever LIVED in a tiny house?”, I can confidently answer yes. For one month I lived in a 2-person tent with about 30 possessions. And believe me, it was awesome.

The lesson here is that real change doesn’t happen to you DURING an event. First, you have to experience something, and then you have to spend some time living with and reacting to that experience before a change will occur.

Coming off of my liberating experience of bicycle travel, and living with less, I’ve thought deeply about ways that I can help others achieve this same feeling of lightness in some small area of their lives. After all, I’m not saying that you should move into a tiny house, or go on a bike tour. Those are my dreams, not yours.

How I’ve Been Inspired to Help You

One area that I do have expertise in is email. Specifically, I help people learn to deal with the staggering loads of email they receive and create systems to automatically organize their inbox.

I’ve found that I can replicate that same feeling of lightness in others people’s lives, when I show them a better way to handle email–and liberate a lot of their time in the process.

That’s why I’ve just released the most comprehensive free resource I’ve ever put together on this topic. It’s called the Automated Inbox Blueprint, and it will show you everything you need to create an email inbox that organizes itself. Here’s where you can download it.

Ethan Waldman helps people live and work in harmony with technology at the Cloud Coach blog. Right now, people are liberating themselves from email hell using the free Automated Inbox Blueprint.

Image by GaryColet on Flickr. Creative Commons License.

What would you do if you won the lottery?

The first time I pondered this question, I was lying in the bathtub, and I decided that I’d go to seminary, learn all I could about God, and devote myself to a life of prayer. (I guess I always was an oddball.)

Seminary is the last thing I’d want to do now, but it was still a useful exercise because it got me thinking about what I really wanted. Our desires and plans for our lives change over time, but as we grow and learn, we can keep building better and better lives for ourselves.

One thing that makes people really miserable is feeling like we have no control over anything. Even as toddlers, we like see our power in the world, even if it’s just our ability to throw something off the high chair a hundred times and watch our parents keep picking it up.

Power comes in many forms, large and small. That’s why when I’m depressed, I clean something or chop some shrubs. It’s a way of proving to myself that I can change the world, even in the tiniest way.

At the other end of the spectrum, some of the greatest ways to be powerful are to help other people and create your ideal life.

Many of us stay stuck for years, thinking we don’t have enough power or control to change our lives. We wait for the lottery or some magical day that, deep down, we know isn’t coming.

Nobody is going to rescue you from meh. You can stop waiting, because it isn’t going to happen.

But that’s good in a way, because we don’t need rescuing, and it’s better if we can do it ourselves anyway.

The lottery is an easy trap because most people don’t think beyond “If I had a million dollars, I’d be rich.” Ok, so you don’t have to eat Kraft dinner any more… now what? What do you eat instead? Who do you have over to share these feasts? Where do you live? What do you do with your days?

It doesn’t take winning the lottery to go to seminary. That’s the realization of the bathtub. I could just go. (I didn’t, in case you’re wondering, but it was because I chose something else that seemed better, not because I thought I couldn’t. There’s a big difference there.)

You don’t have to win the lottery to go fishing, or to paint or write or open a yarn shop. You can surf, teach, learn to fly, travel the world, or join a rock band, all for far less than a million dollars. And it doesn’t matter if your dream turns out not to be your best dream after all and you end up doing something else instead. The point is investing in yourself, believing in yourself, and loving yourself enough to take one step, and later another and another.

For me, the seminary was replaced with teaching, followed by falling in love, living a quiet life, owning a yarn business, and writing. For each of these things, I started with one step, then gradually added more and more of it into my life.

For instance, with writing, I started with fantasies of being a writer, which I’ve had since junior high. Then I started a blog. I expected to get bored and drop it after a few months, but I wanted to start one, so I did. Then I was seized with the desire to write a book, so I wrote How to be Happy (No Fairy Dust or Moonbeams Required). As I felt drawn to it more, I kept investing more time and energy into it, until I quit my job to pursue it full time.

I’m dead serious when I say that if I won the lottery this afternoon, almost nothing would change in my life. I’d buy some stuff, of course–I’d probably start with new tires, fancy cheese, and a whole lot of chocolate. And I’d probably have to hire someone to figure out the taxes and handle the money. But otherwise, I’ve already crafted a really awesome life for myself. I’m doing what I want now, even without the big bucks.

The point of all this is, you can do it, too. Your ideal life doesn’t have to be some far-off dream that never touches your real life. I remember sitting in my office reading about people like Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau, and Everett Bogue, thinking how ridiculous and impossible that would be for me–how they must be magical people with trust funds or something to be able to do just go around without a job.

I guess for the person I was, it was impossible in a way. All I had ever known was the shaky security of a normal job and paycheck (and being afraid of getting fired all the time). I couldn’t imagine another kind of life. I had to grow into the kind of person who could take a leap like that and make it work. It was all the tiny steps that transformed me along with my life.

No matter where you are now, you can take tiny steps that get you closer and closer to your millionaire dream life. You don’t even have to have an end goal in mind, other than making your life a little better. If you could take half an hour today to do anything you wanted and really enjoy yourself, what would you do?

Will you make the time and do that?

I hope so. It’s those small steps that add up to a great life over time.

…

If you happen to be one of the many people whose dream life includes working for yourself doing something you love–what I call a passion business–I want to tell you about something that could help you speed things up. I went from zero to business in about six months by signing up for a coaching program, and it’s the best investment I’ve ever made. I loved writing but had no idea how to create a business or make money. Why do some people seem to just take off immediately, while others can strive for years and never seem to get anywhere? That’s what I hired my coach to find out, so I could be one of the “lucky” ones. It cost $3000 and was worth every penny and more.

The same coach, Jonathan Mead, is offering a course on the exact same strategies and process he taught me, and it’s only $497. Seriously, it’s the best deal I’ve ever seen if you want to figure out how to create a passion business for yourself. Jonathan specializes in helping people nail down their offer to the world, communicate it clearly, and build a business around it. Even though I was really clueless when I started working with him–I wasn’t even sure whether to focus on writing or yarn or computer programming–he helped me figure it out and start making money. Pure and simple, his program works. You might want to check it out: Trailblazer.