Substituting Happy Thoughts for Fear

Written by Stanley Lang Wednesday, 10 August 2011 04:21

Hello, this is a continuation of a series on dealing with fear. We're looking specifically at how fear could control you in your developing a home business. However, we have fears in every part of life which we need to deal with, and the things we'll learn about dealing with fears pertaining to the home business can also apply to fears in any other part of life.

Hello, this is a continuation of a series on dealing with fear. We're looking specifically at how fear could control you in your developing a home business. However, we have fears in every part of life which we need to deal with, and the things we'll learn about dealing with fears pertaining to the home business can also apply to fears in any other part of life.

So one of the things I want to make sure is that I don't leave the impression that there's a permanent cure for fear, because there isn't. It is a normal feeling, but for some people there is no question that the fear in their life is controlling them more than it ought to. And if that person is you, and you want to break free to do the things that are real goals in your life, then you have to figure out a way to overcome the fear. These strategies have worked for me and for others, and so I'll share with you the ways that you can get ahold of this area in your life.

Now for this particular strategy today, we're going to be learning how to substitute a thought and a feeling in place of the fear and to use that as a way of focusing to bring a completely different sense to the experience. So the goal with this strategy is to do what you're doing with a smile on your face. Now, what we want as a secondary goal is that this is a genuine smile, meaning that it comes from a genuine feeling that would support a smile. So we're not looking for a plastic smile on top of a fearful face. We're looking for a smile that comes from something funny going on in your mind.

So for this strategy to work, I want you to come up with two or three scenes that will always strike a smile, either internally for you or on your face, whenever you think about them. There are a few things that come to my mind; for instance, whenever I think about them, I start to smile. And it may be totally unrelated to whatever the circumstances are that I'm in, but I still will start to smile. Now I want you to come up with two or three of these things. I'm asking you to think of things that are funny, not things that are peaceful. We're looking for a different emotion here. Now I want you to remember the image, get into the scene completely, feel what it felt like, and smile a big smile on your face as you remember that scene. And just keep thinking of that scene, keep feeling that feeling, and now transfer all of that, even as you're thinking it, feeling it, to the situation that's making you feel afraid.

So what you're going to try to do in this is to overlay this funny scene on top of the scene that is making you feel afraid. So you're going to actually be seeing two things at once, in a sense. It's like you took a semi-clear picture, and you put it over the real picture so that you could see them both at the same time. And that's what you're trying to do in your mind with this strategy. So you're focusing on this little thing that makes you smile, and you're focusing on the thing that usually makes you feel afraid at the same time. And what will happen is that you'll have this sort of a flicker of a smile as you're considering doing whatever that activity might be. And that might be picking up the phone and calling someone you're afraid to call; it might be talking to someone you're afraid to talk to; it might be doing some new task that you just have put off because it seems too daunting, and once you overlay this feeling of happiness with a smile on top of it, it completely changes the nature of what you're experiencing. It will be much easier to proceed with what you plan to do.

I recommend having two or three of these scenes that you can cycle through your mind that you can pull out whenever a fearsome situation arises. When you begin to feel fear, just overlay one of those funny scenes. Most of the time when we feel fear, it's fear of something that's not even real, so it's not as though we're trying to turn something real into something unreal; on the contrary, it's our feeling of fear that is based on something unreal, and the scene we're using to cover that with is a real scene, giving us a different perspective of our fear. By doing this, your feeling of fear will become much smaller, and it could even go away completely.

This is important to practice. Without practice, it won't happen automatically. I recommend practicing it multiple times every day for at least a month. After that it'll be more of an ingrained strategy which you can use when you feel afraid. I hope this is helpful and I look forward to talking to you more in the future. I wish you success in your life, especially in your home business. God bless you, and have a good day.