12. Don’t Be Afraid of What People Think About You
This is a ‘biggie’ for many people.
If fear of people’s opinions is something you currently suffer from, you are only too aware of its debilitating effect on your ability to achieve what you want.
In fact, fear of others’ opinions has such a profound affect, that in many instances whole communities suffer as a consequence, but I don’t want to dwell on the consequences: you are probably aware of how ‘viral’ its effects are.
What then is the solution to being afraid of what other people might think about you?
Is it possible to give a sufficiently in-depth guide here, or am I only able to offer some pointers?
Certainly, it’s the latter, as I suspect if I could provide a succinct solution in less than 500 words that worked for everybody, many psychiatrists would be looking for a new career.
Before I continue, I would like to differentiate between being afraid and having a phobia…the latter is obviously far worse, and I won’t attempt to deal with it here. Also, as I’m not trained in psychiatry, I should give the obvious disclaimer here: please don’t take my thoughts as any kind of advice, or assume I am responsible for any subsequent actions that you might take consequent to reading this post.
OK, that out of the way, what steps have I taken in my personal life to eliminate fearing others’ opinions of me?
Firstly let me say that I am an open, empathetic personality-type, so I am aware of peoples’ thoughts and emotions.
There are no magic bullets, but I have practised the following:
- I don’t judge myself (that’s the biggest ‘biggie’ for many)
- I focus my mind to attempt to find the golden nuggets in people
- I try to affirm people where it seems appropriate for their encouragement
- I try to form opinions as slowly as I can, realising that my judgements will at best be a foggy representation of the other person’s complete personality, strengths and weaknesses
I’m not saying that I don’t ‘thin slice’ (see Malcom Gladwell’s excellent book entitled Blink if you want to know what that means), but in my initial impression, I always temper my opinion with the knowledge that people often transmit mixed messages.
If you look at the pattern of actions above, you’ll notice that much of what I have learned in not fearing others’ opinions of me, is actually related to how I view other people.
In other words, if you want to be free of being afraid of what other people think of you, start practising not judging others. It’s tremendously freeing.
Being unafraid of what others think of you obviously means that you are in a much stronger position to set new trends, to try out new things, to risk making mistakes, to do things in a completely different way to get completely different results….
The list goes on…
What is clear, is that if you have no fear, many things become possible.
As always – share your thoughts below.
11. The Best Way to Really Understand Something is to Teach it…
I’ll be really honest here for a second: I have a huge, unfair advantage over many people.
Why is that?
Well, the reason is this: I’ve been a high school teacher for 15 years. I know the power there is in teaching something to someone else.
There are probably two main camps to explain why it’s a big positive step teaching others.
Here’s the first and most obvious explanation: teaching others means you are forced to understand what you have learned at a much deeper level. Reason: you’ll be asked lots of awkward questions, and if you don’t know the answers, you’ll feel very uncomfortable.
But there’s also a second, more subtle explanation, which works at a deeper, more personal level: when you teach something to someone else, you gain two postive feedback loops if they really understand.
The first ‘loop’ is: you feel good. Giving something to someone else which helps them is a fundamental for any community or relationship. You feel good because you are valued (unless of course, the other person doesn’t show appreciation, which can happen. More often than not though, they do show appreciation, and lots of it, if you’ve explained well).
What about the second positive feedback ‘loop’? This is where it gets really fun! The second loop is this: your own understanding gains a new, deeper, more lasting level of comprehension. It’s as if your brain sets up its own self-mastery class inside that bit of your memory.
Another way to look at it, which is my favourite picture of how the brain works, is this:
Imagine you like hill walking. You discover a hitherto unknown pathway around a difficult climb, and you share it with other walkers nearby. So they start using this pathway, and before long, the ground underneath your feet becomes firm, and clear, as people tread down the loose soil and gravel, compacting it into what now becomes the obvious route to take for all.
So, if you want to gain mastery in a particular area, follow this simple three-step process:
- Learn the skills you need to learn
- Teach it to others
- Get them to give you feedback
You can iterate around these three steps more and more, as you train your mind in this way.
If you have any feedback to give, please do, as it might help you as well as other readers 
Dez.
10. When Successful People Learn Something New, They Immediately Apply It
As I write this post, I’m sitting in my car. I’ve just heard something that made me realise an opportunity that I never knew I had. This is a prime example of immediately applying what you learn.
I was listening to a brilliant seminar on productivity. I’d just parked my car. The speaker said something like this:
“Extremely productive people use different environments to accomplish different things”.
So, I applied what I’d learned, straight away.
Now I’ll be honest and admit that this isn’t always the case, and sometimes it’s just not feasible to do that at the particular point of learning. In that instance, you should write down what you have just learned, with a time limit by which point you will have actioned the new idea.
Why does this matter so much?
In my experience, there are two main reasons for habitually applying what you learn as soon as possible, and they are related to what Robert Kiyosaki classifies into two distinct types of knowledge.
The first type of knowledge is theoretical in nature. It doesn’t necessarily have an application in the now, but it might well influence the way you think. The other is practical – knowledge you can apply right now which can produce a significant impact on the outcome of your current activities.
It’s this second practical knowledge that we should pay closest attention to. This type of knowledge, if correctly applied, will set us on a new direction, or perhaps enable us to achieve results that have been out of reach up until the point of learning.
The crossing-point for us is when we actually apply what we have learned. In my experience, if I don’t apply such knowledge, it can have the reverse effect: my mind becomes stressed because there is a yearning to fulfil this new understanding, to try it out.
If I let the new knowledge sit there in my memory, it nags me, reminding me that the insight I’ve gained remains locked up inside my head. It demands application, screaming “Just do it!!”.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s not always possible to apply what you learn immediately, but it’s better to put yourself in an environment where you can have the time and space to follow through on that new knowledge subsequent to gaining it.
In other words, if you listen, read or watch something where you know there is a strong chance that you will learn something new, make sure that you have set aside enough time to be able to apply what you’ve learned straight away.
The impact of this on your mind is phenomenal if you make this into a habit. It builds positive feedback, gaining you mental energy to be stretched into new territory that was hitherto unreachable.
Try it, and feedback below!
9. Winners Forget How to Give Up
Some questions to think about:
- What makes a winner?
- Why do some people give up, and others persist?
- What key habits can you cultivate in order to achieve success?
1. What makes a winner?
For some people, winning is more to do with being in a competetive environment, and gaining recognition from others when they achieve a desired outcome. Others seek the satisfaction that comes from achieving a significant goal that they have set themselves, not being so concerned about external validation.
These are just two broad categories of winners. But what character traits do we find common to the above?
Firstly, winners have focus . They know where they are going, and what they want to achieve. Winners set goals, and exhibit discipline and determination in pursuit of the fulfillment of their vision. They understand that there will be inevitable challenges en route to their destination, but they don’t allow setbacks to de-rail them from what they set out to accomplish.
Secondly, winners understand how important it is to de-clutter their minds and lives from distractions, and unproductive activity. In order to be successful, they realize that they will need to give up certain things to create the space and time required to maximize the chance of success.
Lastly, winning requires energy, as well as space and time, and winners know that they will need to manage their mental and physical environments to hone their minds and bodies for maximum energy output.
Additionally, winning involves an awareness of the natural ebb and flow of energy during the day. Most winners set aside specific, regular times of the day when they focus heavily on working on major milestones, working on less demanding tasks at other times.
Why do some people give up, and others persist?
So why do some people give up, where others in similar cicumstances keep going? There are obviously many reasons, and although there is no formula to give us the answer, there are certain traits we can see in people who persist vs people who give up.
One of the most important factors is that people who persist have a very specific, driving push that makes it paramount that they should succeed, or win.
The obvious example is a lack of finances: an impending financial crisis focuses a person’s atttention and time, so that people will go to extraordinary lengths to reverse the downward trend of cashflow. Personal health is another example.
These negative pushes aren’t something that we face all the time however, so what other factors mean the difference between persistence and giving up?
As I mentioned above: having a specific driving push. An example is a friend of mine who wants to set up a retreat center for recovering drug addicts.
He has drawn up the plans, he has produced a detailed budget, and he has set a timeline for important milestones along the way. This systematic approach means that he can monitor his progress, and aim for small steps en route to his final destination.
He knows what it will take, in terms of time, energy and finances, and he is ready to pursue his vision until it’s complete. Until he has won.
Contrast this with someone who sets out to earn an extra income, perhaps through selling some products online. Perhaps they were attracted to the prospect by some effective marketing, which whet their appetite to try out the process.
But they don’t know the full extent of what’s required to win. They don’t understand how much time and energy is involved, or the finances, or the structures and skill-sets that need to be developed to maximise the chances of success.
At the first major setback, they are very likely to give up, and in fact, in the case of most businesses, they do.
Enthusiasm or desire alone do not in themselves make for winning.
What habits are required then, to win, so that winning becomes almost an inevitability, and the prospect of losing evaporates?
3. What key habits can you cultivate in order to achieve success?
Here is a non-exhaustive list of my top tips for winning:
- Vision: develop and cultivate a focused and clear vision of what you want to achieve
- Plan: be specific about what you want to get done and by when. Be aware of your natural ebb and flow of your daily mental and physical energy, and work with it realistically
- Develop skills: Make sure you set aside time to gain the new skills required to succeed
- Mastermind: regularly consult with others for ideas, problem-solving, and creative solutions to roadblocks
- Celebrate & Encourage: when you achieve important milestones along the route, reward yourself and celebrate with others. These provide you with emotional resilience to cope with the the setbacks and hard times that will otherwise grind you down
These are my top 5: if you have others, please do contribute below!
Dez.
8. Live your dreams inside your head long before they become fulfilled outside your head
Probably one of my favorite training videos, is where John Reese, Frank Kern, and Tony Robbins are talking about the path they had to success.
It was a typically rocky path for all three entrepreneurs: Tony started out as a janitor, John as a video store assistant, and Frank as a salesman selling cash registers to small businesses.
Not inspiring beginnings for all three men. So how did they break free from their circumstances to become the international success stories that so many of us now know them to be?
Whilst the details are unique to each man, one thing comes through very clearly from the video: they all lived something inside their head on such a day-in, day-out basis, that no matter what people threw at them, in either word or deed, they were able to lick their wounds and get up, carrying on the walk until they had reached their goals.
But, how did they develop such persistence, and why do so many people with as equal determination as they obviously have, fail, whereas they succeeded?
Two things: very rarely do entrepreneurs regard lack of success as a failure. It may be a painful and sometimes humbling learning experience, but it only becomes a failure if we give up.
So that begs the question (again): what’s the secret of success that Tony Robbins, Frank Kern & John Reese have, that so many others don’t have.
The answer is simple:
It’s CERTAINTY.
How could they be so certain, when they were living in tough circumstances?
They lived their dreams inside their heads long before they became fulfilled outside their heads.
They breathed, saw, heard, touched and smelled their dreams. Daily. Perhaps even hourly. And they continue to do so today.
People of passion and conviction always, always, always win over people who have lesser, more material motivations that drive them to push for success.
When you have a big dream inside you, something that you can almost live the moment your eyes are closed, that’s the moment you begin to find the true motivation to work at your dream until you see it, touch it, live it, outside your head.
Notice I didn’t say: "Live your dreams inside your head long before they become fulfilled in reality". The reason for this is because in some sense, the experience that the dreamer has is almost as real as the real experience itself.
Click here if you want to watch the videos where John, Frank & Tony share their thoughts. And see if it inspires you to drink from the fountain of certainty.