FACE AND OVERCOME THE 7 BASIC FEARS

If you’re honest with yourself, you must admit that there are fears that attempt to creep into your consciousness, particularly when you are considering doing something new. These fears have a dual purpose: 1) to keep you from enjoying life now to its fullest; and 2) to lure you into placing them in your subconscious mind through inordinate worry about them in order that they may contribute to your early demise. In order to achieve the greatest level of success possible, you must challenge these fears and conquer them completely. Otherwise, they will rob you of the personal joy and satisfaction of all that you have already accomplished and inhibit your belief that you can achieve an even greater level of personal success in the future. The 7 Basic Fears include: criticism, ostracism, being alone, losing everything, aging, having debilitating sickness and death.

No one enjoys being criticized, particularly when it is not constructive—and most of the criticism people will give you tends to be less than helpful and more an opportunity for them to share their negative thoughts about you.  But you must decide that you cannot let your fear of criticism keep you from your destiny. The lesson you must learn is that people will criticize you whatever you choose to do or not do. If you make or refuse to make decisions based on whether or not you will be criticized, then you will forever have to change whatever course you take whenever the criticism gets too harsh. The antidote to this fear of criticism is to realize that since you’re subject to criticism no matter what you do, you need to do whatever you believe will get you to the personal success you seek. You do have a choice:  you can be criticized for succeeding or failing. Choose the former!

If you’re not careful, your fear of ostracism—being put out, separated from the company of those you admire—can work to thwart your goal of becoming successful. If your sense of who you are requires the approval of others to validate you, then you will make decisions not based on what you believe to be the right or best choices, but on the responses of your social validators. In that case, you’re not functioning as a self-determining subject, but rather, as an other-directed object, devoid of the capacity of agency that defines your humanity in a state of freedom.

The fear of being alone is so common in our society that people rush into meaningless and unfulfilling relationships in order to avoid it. In fact, countless people stay in unrewarding and lifeless relationships just so they won’t experience being alone. Somewhere deep in the recesses of our brains is this fear of abandonment, of being left alone forever. As with any fear you may experience, the first step is to acknowledge it and seek to discover what in your past caused this fear. Discovering the root cause of this fear is important for gaining the confidence you need to overcome it.

You cannot get to personal success without taking risks—large, life-changing risks. The risks related to moving forward, however, are not as scary or difficult to face and overcome as the risks associated with leaving the comfort zone of your present experience. If you’re not careful, the fear of leaving and losing everything you have will keep you from moving into the future where your success lies. In order to take any journey, you must leave where you are to get where you’re going.

Your fear of losing everything you know, understand and with which you’re familiar rears its ugly head whenever you’re required to move away from your past in order to embrace your future. Countless people let this fear of losing everything inhibit them from risking the loss of their current life to gain the benefit of a better, more fulfilling life. Success cannot be achieved without taking significant personal risks—not once, but over and over again.

Fear of aging is not something that crosses the minds of young people: they presume that they will be young forever. But for people over the age of 35, there just may be some momentary, fleeting thoughts about what life will be like when they’re older.

Modern medicine has actually heightened the fear of aging for many people. Because medical science has found ways to treat chronic illness and prolong life, many people are worried about outliving their resources. So the thought of aging brings with it the fear of ending up in poverty, regardless of the financial success that may have been part of life when they were younger. You must decide not to worry or fret about what might happen to you when you’re 95. You must believe that you will never get old until you decide to be old—which may be when you’re 137!

The fear of contracting or inheriting a debilitating sickness is more on the minds of aging people and younger persons who are aware of their family medical history than on people in the population generally. This fear has the ability to limit people’s choices for themselves today because they feel tethered to inevitable time-lines in which they see themselves crippled physically, mentally and/or emotionally tomorrow. Consequently, they make what they believe to be “safe” choices—not the choices they would even consider for themselves if the fear of a debilitating sickness were not hanging over their heads.

Like every other fear that stands in the way of your success, this fear must be faced squarely and conquered. You must decide and focus your thoughts on the fact of your long-term health and well-being. You must live your life believing that nothing can keep you from achieving your destiny. Such an attitude will allow you—in the worst case scenario—to adjust to whatever happens to you and keep moving forward into the future, undeterred. Your Faith and Iron Will are sufficient to get you where you desire to be in life.

Death is probably the biggest fear that most people have. It can come at any moment and it is usually unexpected. There is a real sense in which each of the six fears mentioned before this one have direct, though long, tendrils that connect to your fear of death—the final frontier. For example, your fears of criticism and ostracism are related to your not wanting to experience social death. Your fears of being alone and losing everything mirror your views about the isolation and the “You can’t take it with you when you go” reality of physical death. Finally, your fears of aging and debilitating sickness are metaphors for the emotional and psychological death that you view as an inevitable precursor to death itself.

Although a discussion about the fear of death is a difficult one to hold, you must pursue and master it if you seek to be personally successful. Even when you tell yourself that death is a natural part of living it doesn’t get at the heart of your fear of death. Fear of death is linked to a deeper fear that you will not be able to accomplish all the things you have planned to do in your life. Therefore, your fear of death is less about the process of dying, and much more about not having enough time to finish what you’ve started.

When you examine this root cause fear carefully, you will discover that the “dis-ease” the fear causes you is illusory. When you really think about it, you have to admit that you don’t really care, deep down, whether you finish or not. If you finish, you’ll be looking for your next big project. If you don’t finish, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that death came to you while you were working on the project at hand. In either case, life is the process of living, learning and loving and not necessarily finishing a particular task or project. In this context, finishing is of no importance whatsoever.

If you’re ready to face and overcome the fears that are holding you back from a more prosperous, meaningful and happy life, then consider contacting me to find out whether you are a good fit for my taking you on as a coaching client. But, I warn you: I don’t take on everyone—“Many are called, but few are chosen.” I’m only interested in serious people who have the courage and tenacity to change, stretch themselves, and who are teachable. Contact me ONLY if you believe you meet my criteria for taking on coaching clients:

https://johnmaxwellgroup.com/johnelliottchurchville

Concentrate on a Worthy Dream

  One of the signal endowments of human beings is our ability to imagine a situation, circumstance or reality that we have never experienced in the past. It is the gift of seeing the future, as well as the capacity to create what we have seen internally into a visible manifestation that we and others can see externally. Our endowments of imagination and creativity are proof that we all have God’s DNA within us. It is also evidence that the Law of Concentration is immutable.

  The Law of Concentration teaches that it is the focused attention of your imagination that creates the future. It is your disciplined thought life that is the major determinate of your destiny. In his classic work, The Law of Success in Sixteen Lessons, Napoleon Hill defined concentration as follows:

Concentration is the act of focusing the mind upon a given desire until ways and means for its realization have been worked out and successfully put into operation. (p. 404)

 Hill argued that auto-suggestion—i.e., embedding the desires of your imagination into your subconscious mind—and habit are the two pillars upon which concentration, as he defined it, takes root.

   Whatever you think and practice repeatedly is stored in your subconscious and acts silently and relentlessly to bring about the realization, in concrete form, of the object of your imagination. Thus, concentration is the habit of fixing in your mind the thoughts, desires and creations of your imagination and insisting on their reality. You can do this because of the DNA of God that is within you and because of the unchanging nature of the universal Law of Concentration.

   The Apostle Paul made this same point in an even larger context:

As it is written: “I have made you a father of many nations.” He [Abraham] is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed—the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were. Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (Romans 4: 17, 18 NIV)

    In this passage, Paul speaks of God’s having told Abraham that he was already a father of many nations at a time when Abraham had no children. Just as God spoke to Abraham’s future as if it were in present existence, and Abraham believed in and relied on God’s pronouncement, so too, can you imagine and speak to your future state as if it were already in existence and believe in and rely on what you have spoken to be actualized in your future.

   However, as the biblical passage maintains, in order to concentrate on your desires in a way that will bring results, you must believe that what you desire or what you are creating in your imagination will come to fruition. This principle of calling things not yet in being as though they already exist is content-neutral. In other words, it doesn’t matter what the object of the calling is. For example, if you keep calling you sick or inept or clumsy, you will eventually get sick, be inept and become clumsy. If you call you a failure at something, you will most assuredly fail at that thing. On the contrary, if you call you well, you will indeed be well, even if you’re sick right now.

   What you believe and what you speak about what you believe will determine the content of your future. So the issue of concentration is a double-edged sword. If you concentrate on the bad and the destructive dream, you will have it. If you concentrate on the good and the constructive dream, you will have it. The Law of Concentration teaches that you have unfettered freedom and enormous power—the freedom to choose what your life will be and the power to create your own future as you decide it will be. The real crossroads issue that emerges is whether you wish to take full responsibility for your own life or whether you will choose to behave as if you were powerless. If you choose the former road, the sky is the limit for the dream you create and on which you concentrate. If you choose the latter, you will become the victim you have chosen to be and suffer the consequences of remaining in a state of self-induced powerlessness. Thus, the Law of Concentration admonishes you to choose the dream upon which you concentrate carefully, because you will create for yourself and inherit whatever dream you make a habit of meditating on and placing into your subconscious mind.

   I have three worthy dreams on which I am concentrating. My first dream is to be the catalyst that positively impacts the lives of others through offering them world-class speaking, teaching, training and coaching services. My second worthy dream is to model what I speak, teach, train and coach. My third worthy dream is to gain your respect, confidence and trust by keeping my promise to be transparent and honest with you throughout our relationship, and to focus my energies on helping you to be all that you can be. Contact me at: https://johnmaxwellgroup.com/johnelliottchurchville.

Develop Self-Mastery, Interdependence and Reflection

   Successful entrepreneurs develop Self-Mastery. Self-Mastery is the first and deepest laid foundational building block for your business success. It is taking complete responsibility for your own behavior and deciding to control your own reactions to outside pressures. This means that you will not blame others for your past mistakes and your present circumstances. You will use your own self-awareness, self-knowledge, imagination, conscience and will-power to be self-determining and proactive. Self-Mastery says, “My success depends on me.”

   Successful entrepreneurs seek Interdependence. Interdependence is the second layer of foundational building block after obtaining Self-Mastery. Interdependence teaches you to develop strategic relationships with key people and to understand that you need them to help you create successful business outcomes. Once you have achieved Self-Mastery, you will realize that you cannot attain maximum effectiveness by your own thinking and behaving alone. You learn that by working in concert with others while being personally responsible for your own actions, a team mentality develops. The team mentality allows you and every member of the team to contribute to the effort at maximum levels and to experience maximum satisfaction from the process of working together.

   Successful entrepreneurs use Reflection to improve business outcomes. Reflection is the “beyond myself, my family, my community and my organization” third course of foundational building block that requires interdependent organizational strategic partners to function as a “think-tank.” The goal of this Reflection is to think and plan together in new ways, using new approaches to create new products, services and solutions that meet needs and effectively address common problems. At this foundational level, there is a collective focus on working together to leverage the strengths of each group involved to maximize their collective profitability in their particular sphere of influence.

   I can help you develop Self-Mastery and Reflection as your coach, and you will develop the skill of Interdependence when you join one of my Mastermind groups. Contact me today at https://johnmaxwellgroup.com/johnelliottchurchville.  

Discover Who You Are

   The “Who am I?” question is the most important question that you can ask, because the answer to that question describes the soil—your identity (the real YOU)—that must be prepared for any planting that will be done in your life. When it comes to the values you hold and the behaviors you practice, with some patience and perseverance, you can always find most answers within yourself or within your immediate family. But the “Who am I?” question—the question related to the very essence of your existence—has answers that are external to you. In other words, you cannot look within yourself to discover who you are. Your own internal explorations will yield only your values at best, but will not disclose the compass by which you travel in life. Your notion of your own identity is learned from others outside yourself.

   There are many external voices telling you who you are: your family, the schools you attended, your religious institutions and advertising and commercial messages, to name just a few of the myriad voices that scream every day into your ears that you are what they say you are. So the real challenge is finding the external voice that tells you the whole truth, the objective, unembellished, certain, there’s nothing-in-it-for-the-truth-teller truth. In order to be the voice of truth, this voice must speak based on irrefutable laws of nature—laws which have the same weight as the laws of gravity, physics and mathematics.

   Such a voice is found in the Law of Attraction. What you focus your mind, your feelings, emotions, and actions on is what is drawn to and attracted to you by you. So, one way to find out who you are is to consider carefully and study the people, places and things that come into your life. The old wisdom proverb says, “As a woman thinks, so is she.” In other words, at this very moment of your life, you are what you have thought, felt and behaved yourself to be. However, the great thing about life is that nothing stays the same.

   The Law of Change teaches you that you cannot and will not stay where you are. Change will impact you and force you into being and doing more than you are being and doing right now. Change will use such events as death or disaster, injury or accident, loss of income or an increase in your family’s budget to make you change. Whether you like it or not, you are a person who is undergoing the process of change!

   Be proactive and change yourself! In fact, you’re already in the change process—you’re looking at starting a business of your own. That’s certainly a change from what you were thinking at an earlier stage of your life. The fact that you are changing means that you are a person who is ever changing, ever evolving, and ever moving toward a definite goal—even if that goal is not very clear to you yet.

   The Law of the Farmer teaches that you cannot begin to plant any seeds until you have prepared the soil to receive them. The Law of the Farmer also teaches that what you plant today in a field will not grow today, nor will what you harvest from that field in the future bear any resemblance to what you planted today. Finally, the Law of the Farmer teaches that crops take a lot of time to grow. Accordingly, you have to develop the patience to wait for whatever you have planted to grow in its own time—it can’t be rushed. It must grow at its own pace.

   In the same way, you must learn to be patient with yourself as you grow the business you intend to own—you will not conquer your bad habits or develop an Entrepreneurial Mindset overnight. But you must start by planting seeds in the ground of your mind—seeds that will yield a harvest that is the development of your character.

   I can help you discover who you are by raising your awareness and holding you accountable for keeping the promises you make to yourself to know yourself so you can grow yourself. Contact me at: 

https://johnmaxwellgroup.com/johnelliottchurchville. 

Do One Thing Each Day to Reach Your Goal

Wherever you are on your life’s journey, do what’s at your hand to do. Don’t sit around waiting for your purpose in life to show up one day. Seek it; pursue it. The way to go after your destiny is to take small deliberate steps to explore what interests you. Some people know what their passion is early in life and are able to run with that passion. But if you happen to have several interests, none of which is so compelling that you would give every other interest up in order to follow one, then simply take each interest, one by one, and take one action each day to explore it.

Your commitment to do just one act every day related to a goal you have set for yourself has powerful significance. You may begin with only one step that you can see ahead of you. But after you take the first step—and sometimes it’s the only step you can see to take—another step, not visible to you before you took the first step, will emerge for you to take. You may never be able to fully script your life’s journey in advance, but it will always emerge as you move forward, one step at a time. It’s like driving through a thick fog that has been forecast to hang around for several days. You can decide to pull to the side of the road and wait until the fog lifts, or you can drive slowly in faith and inch toward your destination. However, unlike a fog, life does not lift in several days—it tends to go on interminably!

So, you are forced to come to grips with the Law of Faith. You can’t take a step forward in the fog or the dark or into the unknown without having accepted the Law of Faith at some level. Somewhere inside of you, you have to believe that what you’re doing will turn out right, whether you can see clearly now or not. Living by the Law of Faith means simply believing that your life has meaning and purpose, even if you don’t know what it is yet. The Law of Faith teaches you that you don’t have to know—indeed, you cannot know—everything. All you need to know is that if you muster the courage to move ahead, the way will be opened for you to advance. The Law of Faith is completely unrelated to your religion or religious preference or nonpreference—it is related to your belief in you and your knowing that you are not alone in the universe. There is help out there, waiting for you to summon it and appropriate it. The biblical definition of the Law of Faith is still true:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. (Hebrews 11: 1-3 NIV)

Every person who has achieved success at any level has believed that whatever his or her goals in life were, they were achievable. In almost every case, great achievement has come to those who moved past criticism and the negative comments of those who kept telling them that what they were after was impossible to attain. What drove them on was their adherence to the Law of Faith.

Every solid created thing that you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands is made up of things that you can’t see with your eyes or touch with your hands. All matter is made up of elements that are made up of atoms and their three components: protons, neutrons and electrons—none of which is visible to the naked eye. In the same way, every new invention, every great idea, every forward advance in science begins in the invisible realm and only later manifests itself in the visible realm. In other words, everything that comes into existence begins with and is brought to its birth through the Law of Faith. But, that’s just the beginning—and not the end—of the story, as your own life experience and the biblical record maintain:

In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. (James 2:17 NIV)

So, the Law of Faith teaches you that faith alone is insufficient to get you where you want and need to be. In order for your faith to be effective, you must act—do something—that puts your faith into action. If you say that you have faith that the big chair in the corner can hold your weight, and yet you refuse to sit in the chair, then you don’t really believe the chair can hold your weight. You cannot believe yourself into success without taking relevant and timely action to get you there. Your faith is what inspires you to take one step at a time to get to your next destination. But it is your action spurred on by your faith in yourself that takes you to the next destination!

If you have enough faith in yourself to accept the challenge of being teachable, accountable and willing to do what it takes to succeed, I pledge that I will do all in my power to help you succeed in business and in your life. Contact me at https://johnmaxwellgroup.com/johnelliottchurchville.