What If They Were Different?

See how changing your thoughts from negative to positive can create a drastically different outcome? Those beliefs then create good feelings. I’m not asking you to move mountains here. To turn around your thoughts, simply notice your negative thoughts, and force yourself to change them into something positive. You’re 20 pounds overweight. I’m fat, lazy, and unattractive. I would love to lose weight by eating better and exercising. Eating healthier and exercising will give me more energy. I deserve to feel better. You lose some weight and feel better. It’s not necessarily difficult to be committed to a thought or belief. Some of us feel so committed that we fill out a marriage license and get hitched. We can’t see another way and really have never even looked.

The Only Way Out

Now, that’s commitment, wouldn’t you say? If it seems like being committed to a positive choice is difficult, remind yourself of a negative choice you’ve committed to. Take a belief you have that you think is a fact. What if it was possible to get out of debt? Try that with any belief you have that doesn’t make you feel good. Or that isn’t empowering. Beliefs like, All the good guys are either gay or taken. Or, I’m too fat to go to the gym. What if they were different? And here’s another perspective. Often women become committed to disempowering beliefs because we’ve made a big deal about something we didn’t need to. Most of the time it’s not. Own your life as it really is now. You can make smarter choices that lead to results that make you happy. Just know there are consequences in your choices.

Isn't That Peculiar

And dad was 100 percent right. They get addicted to their comfort zone. They don’t want to be away from it. When pulled away from their comfort zone, they break out into a sweat, throw fits, and just plain freak the hell out. As human beings, we are wired to want and need safety. Whether it was running for student body president, asking for a date, or applying for a job, all of those things require a bit of a stretch. You might look at other people and think they have had it easier than you. I don’t believe for one hot second that anyone you admire has had smooth sailing when it comes to his or her decisions and actions. They’ve been scared. They’ve had that nauseating gut feeling. It happens to everyone. What is something you want to do that is out of your comfort zone? What is the real reason you haven’t done it, if it’s really something you want? The list could go on and on.

Room At The Top

And if I had to guess, you have all of these fears. I hate to break it to you, but you’re not the only one who has a list of fears about going after what you want. Maybe you can find some comfort in the fact that we all do. Flipping fear the finger and finding the courage and confidence either while you’re doing it or even afterwards. So I invite you to air out your fear story. What are you afraid might happen? I want the whole enchilada story. Could this really be a true story? And even if in some crazy alternate Universe where fear stories actually come true, would it kill you? I had a client who wanted to quit her job to start her own business. She hated her job and was in love with what she really wanted to do. Or she could stay at her job. Awesome opportunity, right? It was all just too scary and too far out of her comfort zone. What if you run out of money? Do you really feel in your heart that this business will fail? And even if by some unforeseen chance that it does, would the world stop turning? Could you just start over? I’m happy to report that she gleefully took the package, left her job, and started her own dream business. But she did it anyway. Are you going to regret not doing this? In one year from now, will you wish you had started right now? Or when you’re eighty, are you going to regret not doing it? My thing was roller derby. And now I’m almost forty years old and roller derby has made a comeback. My inner critic says I’m too old. I’ll get hurt and probably look stupid. Did I gather all the courage I could before I went? I just went and figured out the courage later. Truth be told, I wanted to do it for about seven years before I finally decided it was time. And besides, isn’t it way more awesome to be the one who isn’t the ideal person for whatever your big thing is and to go out and do it anyway? Or the person with no photography or business background starting his or her own photography business? Aren’t they the most badass people anyway? The underdogs, the unexpected? Stepping out of your comfort zone doesn’t mean doing something major and crazy. Some people love jumping out of airplanes. Those aren’t necessarily the types of things I’m talking about. What if you painted your room the color you love? Or completely changed your hair to a new style you’ve been eyeing? There will always be excuses. There will always be fear stories. We are all masters at coming up with them. Hell, we should be able to add that skill to our resumes by now. What would it take for you to do this? Letting go of your dramatic fear story for just five minutes, maybe? And see what happens then. The thing is, many times the excuses come up because the things out of our comfort zone seem so scary and big. And they very well might be too. But if you look at the whole mountain, you’ll always be scared and maybe try to get out of climbing it.