Hi Dr. Paul here again. Have you been wondering how to start taking action in
life? I've got some ideas that I'd love to share with you today. The biggest
barriers that I know off to success and actually taking action or making steps.
"Fear", right? You know that fear shuts you down sometimes. "Self-doubt". I'm just not
believing that you can do it and number three what I call "the victim mentality?
to understand that let's set up a little dichotomy here. I put the victim
paradigm as a way of seeing the world that get keeps us trapped and one of the
things about a victim paradigm is that we settle in on "I can't".
Which goes back to the self-doubt and the fear too, right? I can't. I can't,
what's the next step after I can't? There is no next step. Unless you just curl up
in the corner right and give up because you're not going to do anything after I
can't. Well, what's on the other side of that? What is the opposite instead of a
victim paradigm? What if we can have an agent or a hero paradigm? "I can't" then
becomes "I can", right? But it's not that simple because we don't know how
sometimes. So, instead of just I can't, let's lose use a question over here, that turns
the brain on. How can I? That's a helpful question. You don't have to have the
answer yet but if you ask how can I, it's like this whole choice of victim or
agent puts a big toggle switch on your brain
and it's either on or it's off. When you say, I can't, which position is the
switch in? Off! No where to go from there. What if you say, "how can I?" We turn
that brain on so that we can start looking at different possibilities. Fear,
self-doubt and the victim mentality, particularly the phrase, "I can't", that's
what's getting in our way. Okay, what are the remedies then. Let's follow up on the
fear, maybe first. Fear is a response that your brain has to threat. Whether it's a
real threat or a perceived threat. Your brain is designed to react to threat
through what we call the fight-or-flight response.
Fight-or-flight response is just your body's way including your brain, your
brain is part of your body. Did you realize that? People ask me, "is it my
brain or my body?" Well, your brain is your body. It's an organ in your head. I make a
distinction between brain and mind. Now, that's a good distinction to make and
your brain isn't your mind. Your brain is part of your body. Your mind is you and
you're inside of there. The brain is an organ that is designed
to take care of a lot of different things in your body including keeping
you safe. And when fear kicks in, it triggers a fight-or-flight response that
originates in our brain but goes through our whole body because there's chemicals
that get secreted into your bloodstream that prepare your body to do one of
those two things. Either fight or get the heck out of there. So to really take
action, we have to get past the paralysis of our fight-or-flight response and get
that brain engaged in thinking mode. It's a different part of your brain that
handles this. There are a lot of ways to do that. I think just understanding that
your brain has these different modes and then noticing, "am I in fight-or-flight
mode? Well, if I feel like fighting or running away or freezing, which is
another version of that. If I'm paralyzed by fear, probably it's not the right part
my brain that I need to solve this problem. Get that part of your brain
activated again by doing some of the things that you've learned here on the
channel. But realizing that you have these different modes of brain
functioning turn your brain on. That's the first remedy, okay? No the second
barrier that I mentioned was self-doubt. And I thought a little bit about, "okay,
well what's a good remedy for self-doubt?" And one of the obvious things that
occurs to me is other people are doing this.
My wife Vicky refers sometimes to trusting the tried-and-true.
Trusting the tried-and-true what she means is, "hey, other people have tried
stuff that I don't have to experiment with. If they've tried it and proven it
to be true, then I can trust that. Trust the tried-and-true.
So what this leads us to as part of our remedy for the self-doubt, take a look
around and start noticing other people who are
handling or dealing with or working on the same kinds of things that you've
been telling yourself you want to do. Align with those people, learn from them,
get on the path that they're on. Hook up with the people who are going that away.
If you want to go to a particular destination, let's say that we want to go
to California. Well, which way is California? Depends on where you're
starting doesn't it? And I don't know where you are right now while you're
watching this video. Maybe you're already in California. Well, pick a specific
destination within the state then and you can still use the analogy. Which way
do you go? Well, it depends on where you're starting but there are likely
other people going that away. When we align with people who are going toward
what it is that we say that we want, we share something in common and we can
draw on their resources and their knowledge and their
experience to help us in our quest. Most of the things, when people say they want
to get a new start in life or get something started up, it's usually a goal
that they have and they don't have a lot of personal experience with it. Well as
you get on the road, that direction you're going to encounter other people
going that away and that's what I'm talking about. Associate with people who
are already going that away, toward what it is that you want to do. That's so
encouraging to me because people are actually doing the thing that I hope to
do sometime. A quick personal example of this, several years ago I really wanted
to develop a professional speaking platform.
I've always done speeches and given presentations as part of my career. But I
wanted to be the guy at the front of the room at the conference. You know giving
me inspiring keynote and everybody's like, "oh, this changes my life. I wanted to
be that guy." Well I'd never been that guy before but what I did is I associated
with people who were going that away. I joined the National Speakers Association
where people who professionally present are on that path going the same place
that I thought that I wanted to go, right? Interesting thing happened as I did so. I
started to see how they were doing it. I started to see that they were not some
you know, untouchable icon up there on the stage. They're just people! And
they're people who have histories and families and ideas and feelings and as I
interacted with them, I started to learn you know what? I'm not so different from
them. That's an important factor. Self-doubt has us thinking that we're a
special case, we're really not. We're just people like they are. Find people who are
doing what you want to do and associate with them. Sound easy? Let's go on to
number 3. Remember when I said the the third barrier is this victim
mentality, this I can't? Well, it's not true. I'd read an email
once where the the tagline at the bottom was those who say something is
impossible, should get out of the way of those of us who are doing it and I love
that it's a little spunky isn't it? But it implies something. Are we capable of
doing this way? Yes, we are. It amazes me what people are actually capable of
doing and when I don't see myself as a special case, I realize, "huh,
why not me?" That is an agent paradigm part of that victim paradigm that keeps
us tracked? Why me? Why me? Usually in a whiny voice, right? Why not me?
Why not me? Am I not just as capable and qualified to experience this as anybody
else? Sure you may not have the experience yet, but how are you going to get
it? By doing it. So in this third step to counteract the victim mentality take
courageous action. Now notice that courage implies fear. Yeah it's defined by it
actually. It's not courage. If you're not feeling a little fear. Dr. Susan Jeffers
wrote a book called "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway". I love that title. It may even
be better than the whole book. But she identified some really important points
in that book too. Among which are this. There's a common belief at the root of
every fear and that belief is, "I can't handle it" Yeah, I agree with Dr. Jeffers
on that. I think that's the fear that gets in our way the most. As we take
courageous action and we bypass that subconscious resistance to taking action
that says, "I don't know if I can handle it" Yes you can.
Many people have handled it before you you're not a special case. Can you do
this? Yeah and you'll do it by taking courageous
action which means that you already have the fear. But you do it anyway. Hey, a big
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