Dawn Barclay

Helping you align all that you do with your core values

Moxie Living: Courage and Confidence

All blog post Moxie Living

Day 4 Invent Where’s Your Life At?

We talk about ‘crossroads in life’:  the paths, the journey, the direction headed – how can you know where you are heading if you don’t know you’re starting point?

Think about it, you would never be able to plan a journey from A-B, without first knowing the destination of A!  

Nowhere is this more visible in the questions ‘what do I want to be paid for?’. Many don’t know their current strengths, skills, weaknesses, knowledge, information, expertise, abilities, passions and goals.  How do you know which direction to take, until you know the current surroundings? 

How do you discover where you are now? 

Here’s a few questions that can help you figure out where you’re at:

  • What motivates you the most? (NOT what do you like, what DRIVES you, what MUST you inclide in your life?
  • If you had to make one decision, what would it be? 
  • Describe in detail where you add most value, not what you do.
  • What does your current reality ‘cost’ you?
  • What has been your ‘finest hour’ so far? Is it a hint?
  • What fears keeps you awake at night?
  • What skills do you KNOW you have, yet others don’t yet?
  • If you could have a meeting with your ‘future boss’ who, where would it be? (It could be you!)
  • What do you know, that you excel in and could teach to others?
  • What opportunities did you let slip? Are they still available?
  • What do you fear won’t happen for you? Is it enought to drive you forward?

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Day 3 Invent Make a Decision

When working with clients there is one stage of the process that is more painful to work through than others.  It’s the stage right before they make the breakthrough they want or the point before the ‘a-ha’ moment. 

It would be so much easier to ‘rescue’ and say ‘this is what you need to do next, then this, then this, then that’ (if their answers were obvious), big no, in a ‘typical’ coaching session that is extremely unprofessional and not part of the ethics (direct coaching perfectly okay!) It’s the indecision stage I’m talking about.  Not being able to make a decision is PAINFUL experience, it costs you big time… 

Make a DECISION:  there is so much power in deciding what is best for you.  Some people get it all jumbled up with PERHAPS or MAYBE, they are not the same! 

The meaning of decision is not ‘choice’. 

To make a decision is cutting off and detaching self from all other options.  It’s the conclusion to the process of weighing up choices.  You take the role of the wig wearing judge and you slam the gavel (judges hammer) down and have the final say. 

I’ve had friends who dragged themselves through torment on a daily basis because they could not decide what to do that day, then ended up doing nothing at the end, or dipped into 40 things and at the end day they were so disappointed with the no results.  

Imagine a life of the same quality…no decision = no result = ongoing disappointment!

Decision making is extremely empowering.  You call the shots, you decide that those other options are not GOOD enough and close them down.

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Day 2 When Doors Bang in Your Face

Day 2 of Closing Doors – Invent 

When you are working on a goal, your plan and taking massive action and then all of sudden *SLAM* you hit a brick wall and doors are banging in your face from all sides.  You have choices: you can continue to bang solely on doors or you can find if there is a window to break through, a trap door to go under, a chimney to climb up…  

The following is an extract from Milton Eriksons (Hypnotherapist)  book ‘My Voice Will Go You’  

“I asked a student, ‘How do you get from this room to that room?’  He answered, ‘First you stand up then take a step…’

I stopped him and said, name all the possible ways you can get from this room into that room.’ 

He said. ‘You can go by running, by walking: you can go by jumping; you can go by hopping, by somersaulting.  You can go out that door, go outside the house, come in another door and into that room.  Or you could climb out a window if you want to…’ 

I said, ‘If you want to get into that room from this room, I would go out of that door, take a taxi to the airport, buy a ticket to Chicago, New York, London, Rome, Athens, Hong Kong, Honolulu, San Francisco, Edinburgh, Dallas, Grand Canyon, come back by limousine and go in the back yard and then through the back gate into the back door and into that room.’ 

In 2011 Close the Door on ‘NOT Seeing BIG, BIGGER, BIGGEST Pictures’…if there is one way, there will be a THOUSAND Ways to breakthrough!  

— Dawn

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Fear, Lions, Tigers, Bears and Ice Cream

I used to be fearful of the dark, or so I thought!  

Around the age 13-14, I could be found scuttling from lamppost to tree: my heart would pound, I’d be sweating, my brain conjuring up images of all the nasty things that could happen, oh they were dark, dark, dark times.

I would launch out my skin (bizarre play on words there) at the slightest rustle, movement or scratchy noise.  I’d crisscross streets and walked in the middle of roads to avoid open gates! Oh, brr, I’m getting the shivers even now.

How powerful our brains are: I’m having an experience: an emotional and physical  response to something that happened years ago, it’s only a memory, it’s not happening this moment, but my brain (dammit) remembers!

We lived at the ‘top’ of the ‘scheme’ (that’s a posh Scottish name for housing estate)…lamp posts were few and far between, and to tell you the truth they weren’t that bright.  (Aside: why do we have orange streetlights, is there a reason for that, would white not be better, answers on a postcard please to…)

This fear went on for years, then in one night it ceased. What happened?

Fast forward to 1995, I traipsed across the pond to the States (Boston) to become a dogsbody, sorry camp counsellor for children (I’m joking, it was great, loved it, wouldn’t do it again though, wait, for a million pounds you say…)

Just before the children arrived we ‘Brits’ had to be inducted and part of ‘duct-ing’ was an Adventure/Skills/Beat the Lions, Tigers and Bears 3 day Boot camp affair.  It was (apparently) to be a gruelling, tough, wilderness adventure, no contact with the outside world, remote, an emotional and physically taxing experience  – mmm, we thought it was at first, until we heard the distant, then nearer, then very close clear crispy chimes from an ice cream van, then we realised we were actually on a rather nice 5* campsite!  They thought they had fooled us by taking us in the back entrance.

The ‘Commander’ assigned to our ice cream loving group was non other than a living, breathing, talking, and walking Action Man who thought he was leading up an SAS mission!

The first night on ‘campout’ we had a spot of improvisational theatre, acting out the Blair Witch Wimp Project at his request: just like the father in Hansel in Gretel (minus the sweets to find our way back) he led us into the woods, dumped us, and then told us we had to return one at a time (20 minute intervals apart) back to ‘base camp’.

Now, as this was my first night with a group of strangers there was no way I had disclosed my ‘hidden fears’, we were still at the social/group ‘norming’ stage, you know, niceties, pleasantries and talk of the very small variety!

Here’s what happened…

I walked back to ‘base camp’, in the pitch black, alone. Instant belief change.

I know! Weird eh?  How?  This is the technique I used, ready? You don’t need a pen…

Before I give it to you: as I set off and took those first steps into pitch blackness my thoughts were all over the place:

‘you’ll get mugged’, ‘no you won’t walk’, ‘someone will steal you’, ‘who’s going to steal you’, ‘you’re ‘gonna cry soon’, ‘just say you can’t do it’, ‘no, don’t do that someone will laugh’, ‘just run’, ‘don’t do that, you’ll fall, noone will find you for days’

that sort of thing.

Have you ever noticed that? The conflicting voices or thoughts that wake up when at the point of breaking through a fear are heightened!   It’s a horrible ‘mental space’ to be in.  I call it the Uncertain Memento or the Indecisive Minute.  Do I? Don’t I? Will I? Won’t I?

Right the technique.  Ready?

When you’re thoughts are overwhelming you: when they are conflicting, noisy, full of advice and YOU can’t think straight or decide which thought to go with…stop, breathe and say to yourself  ‘shut the f*ck up’!

That’s a technique? Yep! Then…

Manage your own thoughts.  How?

Okay, back to the walk in the woods, when you stop the thought (using abovementioned technique) you have created space in your head to really listen, you relax, and (with practice) you can hold onto that calm, peaceful state.  You control what you think, always.  You’re smart, you’ve more than enough mental capacity to create states that are good for you.

An example: public speaking, that fear is renowned and yet the ‘nervous’ speaker makes it a thousand times worse by saying or even thinking:

  • I’m ‘nervous’
  • I’m going to dry up
  • I’m shaky, sweating
  • I can’t speak in front of people

Then on top of those are the other thought streams…

  • It’ll be fine
  • Ill be okay
  • I can do this

Talk about mismatch! By the time they get onto the podium they genuinely are confused, rattled, incoherent, lost and spaced out, then the talk/speech is the same!  All their own doing.  Their subconscious has no idea how it should be instructing them to behave, too many conflicting messages.

Stop, breathe (breathing is good you know!), deep breathe in, and slow breathe out.  Pause your thoughts.  Focus on the internal dialogue not the fear itself.  There is nothing in life we cannot overcome; there is NO fear bigger than you.  None.

Maybe like what I did, you have convinced yourself that YOUR fear (because it’s YOURS and noone else’s) is so very real.  It’s not.  The only thing that is real is your thoughts and your emotional and physical reaction to those thoughts. 

Okay, suppose you have a ‘fear of flying’, what is the truth?  Are you frightened of flying or is the truth you are frightened of crashing: the wings falling off, sticking your head between your knees as you make an emergency landing into some shark invested waters?  In order to overcome fear, we have to be genuine and honest to ourselves, and acknowledge the truth.

And my last note about fear, lampposts and wilderness walks.  Here’s what I DID learn that night…

Up until my GI Jane moment, I was living someone else’s fear: my mums.

Who to this day still says ‘you walked in the DARK, WHAT alone?’ (with verbal emphasis on the capitalisations) and the clanger ‘you don’t know WHAT can happen in the dark’.  Her fears, not mine, I’ll put in the therapy bill at some point, my Dad’s had his, only fair.

The truth for me was, I was never actually frightened of the dark, I was fearful of what could happen in the dark.  This was based on ‘fake evidence’ I had gathered through my formative years that turned into beliefs: parents telling me to ‘be careful’, media, my peers as we told ‘horror’ stories in the dark.

In order to breakthrough and let go of a fear, you don’t need to know where they came from. 

If you’ve collected so called ‘truths’ that are stopping you, start questioning them.  Who gave you them?  Did they give you them in good faith?  Are they true?  Are you’re thoughts your own or hand me downs?

You may have needed the hand me down beliefs at one time in life, but not as an independent adult.  Time to give them back, return them to their rightful owner!

Have you overcome a huge fear? 

How did you do it? 

Feel free to leave a comment below

 

Courage is Not The Absence of Fear

Courage isn’t the absence of fear.

It’s the strength to be whom and what you are, in spite of the fear! Here are tips to develop courage and release the fears that block you:

1. Acknowledge the fear. Don’t make excuses and name it something else. You can’t defeat or move through your fear if you don’t acknowledge it’s existence. You can fault somebody else, you can call it inconceivable or you can simply admit that you’re afraid. Once you acknowledge that fear is in operation, you can start to alter it.

For example: have you ever said ‘I hate speaking in public’? Is the true fear something else? Such as ‘I hate being judged?’…just a thought.

2. Acquire understanding from the fear. What are you founding the fear on? Choose to see a richer truth. We feel fear when we trust the lies that our ego is telling us. We believe what we have swallowed as truth either consciously or unconsciously.

For example: fear interviews? Have you had one ‘negative’ experience? Is one time enough evidence to form a truth? 

3. Dedicate to courage. Announce the deeper truth. Persistently reprogram yourself for success and brave actions. Remember that eminent love and great accomplishments demand great risk.

Reprogramming is not ‘instant’ – sorry but it’s not, others will try and sell it! Because they pray on out fears. It’s got to become habit. 

4. Confront the fear. Sense the fear and do it anyhow. Respect your courage. Take action.

5. Respect yourself every time you face a fear. Particularly the little ones. When you have admitted its only fear keeping you back, you can proceed through it.

To conquer fear: every now and then, take that first step, nothing can change from standing still.

Assertiveness – The Rights

As I’m putting the final touches to the December Assertiveness Training Course, I’m reminded of the assertiveness rights.  As far as I’m aware they orginally came from Manuel J Smiths book ‘When I Say No I Feel Guilt’.

Here you go:

 You have the RIGHT

…to be treated with respect and as an equal human being

…to grow, develop and change not just today but every day

…not to get involved in my problems if you choose

…to be an individual

…to live your life as you choose, without approval or judgement

…not to feel guilty when you’re being honest about how you feel ...to take full responsibility, accountability for the consequences of your own behaviour and actions

…to choose who is in your life and the relationships you form with them

…to express your own feelings and opinions

…to live many roles in your life, in each you’re independent, you can make your own choices and choose how you want to behave

…to say NO and mean it (and say YES and mean it), if you then decide to change your mind, you have this right also

…to express your needs, wants and wishes and state what you want (howeverI know you have the right not to say yes.) 

…to lead a happy, successful, safe life 

…to privacy and dignity 

…to state and choose when to be alone 

…to make your own choices  and make mistakes and never fear the consequences 

…to seek help and support 

…to live without fear, violence, bullying and other abusive behaviours 

…to ‘be human’ and all that entails

Books on Assertiveness 

A Woman In Your Own Right Anne Dickson Quartet ISBN 0-7043-3420-8

When I Say No I Feel Guilty Manuel J Smith Bantam Books ISBN 0-553-02268-7

Assert Yourself Gael Lindenfield Thorson ISBN 0-7225-2652-0

Self Esteem Gael Lindenfield Thorson ISBN 0-7225-3017-X

Games People Play Eric Berne Penguin ISBN 0-14-002768-8

What Do You Say After You Say Hello? Eric Berne Corgi ISBN 0-532-09806-X

I’m Ok, You’re Ok Thomas A Harris Arrow ISBN 0-09-955241 -8

Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway Susan Jeffers Century ISBN 0-7126-2555-0

You can buy these books here,