Anxious

Stress. It’s all too common in today’s society. Sometimes stressful situations are thrust upon us and sometimes we put ourselves into stressful situations.

What do you do to help calm yourself down and motivate yourself when you are facing tough times? When you just have to plow through and get though to the other side?

There are many situations that we face where phrases or sayings help motivate us to take that first step into the unknown.

You know those stressful situations that everyone seems to go through as rite-of-passages?  Situations such as:

  • The job interview where you desperately need the job.
  • When you have butterflies in your stomach right before you ask out that pretty girl/handsome guy. Or worse, before meeting up with a blind date.
  • Right before you walk into a room full of strangers. (Who you just know are going to be funnier, cooler and much better-looking than you)
  • When you get up to give an important speech in front of a bunch of VIPs (or ANY speech in front of ANY one)
  • When you go into salary negotiations or when you are ready to ask for a raise.
  • When you go into the boss’s office and hand in your 2-week notice. (The butterflies are fighting with exhilaration here)
  • Right before you go into the doctor’s or dentist’s office
  • For some writers, right before you hit the ‘Publish” or ‘Send’ button on your first article.
  • In any scary, stressful or first-time situation you find yourself.

Motivational sayings and phrases have power. They have the power to push you through your fears and calm yourself down in times of stress.

Inspired by this post at MetaFilter, here are some common motivational phrases from people who face similar stressful situations. They tell themselves:

  • “Ok. Deep breath. Shoulders back, head up. You can do this. Go!”
  • “Don’t panic. You can do this!”
  • “Don’t fuck this up.”
  • “They can’t eat me.”
  • “I’m not afraid to die.”
  • “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone-it! people like me!”
  • “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.”
  • “What’s the worst that can happen?”
  • “Will this matter in 5 minutes, 5 days or 5 years?”
  • “Help me Jesus.”
  • “Time to put on your big girl pants.”
  • “I am a river… I flow.”
  • “Never give up, never surrender!”
  • “C’mon, you can do *anything* for an hour.”
  • “Millions of people do this every day. I can do this, too.”
  • “What’s the worst that can happen?”
  • “Let’s just get it over with. 3-2-1 GO!”
  • “It’s gonna be alright.”
  • “Proceed and be bold.”
  • “Go ahead and kill me, but I doubt you will succeed where so many others have failed.”
  • “No one cares about you.”

I had a pretty stressful morning at work the other day. You know the ones I’m talking about -  the one where it’s Monday morning and you had a hard enough time motivating yourself to get up to go to work and then something happens and you wonder why you just don’t walk out the door? The temptation is SO strong, but you know that while the momentary thrill of quitting on the spot would be SO wonderful, but you just have to tough it out because you have long-term plans and like to eat.

In those kind of situations, my go-to phrase is always “This, too shall pass”. I’m old enough and have had enough experiences in my life to realize that nothing lasts forever. This phrase helps me to put stressful situations into perspective. I repeat this phrase to myself and the feelings of wanting to walk out the door slowly dissipate. I can then manage to get through another day.

It would be so easy to give in to the voice of our fears when we are facing difficult or stressful situations.  The problem with giving in though is that if you give in and admit defeat, you start to let other fears creep into your life and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

In your own mind you are telling yourself that you are not strong enough to beat the fear back and you give in to it. You don’t ask the girl/guy out. You don’t ask for the job or the raise. In fact, you don’t even ask for the job. You have fears about giving that speech or going to the doctors and when you give into the fears, your life becomes just a little smaller.

Other fears start to surface and soon enough, you are fearful of any stressful situation and your confidence becomes nil.

That’s why it’s so important to have a couple of phrases that will push through your fear in stressful situations in order to motivate yourself and strengthen your confidence muscles.

If you don’t have a motivational phrase that works for you, use any of the one’s here or find one that really works for you. Have a couple for various situations.

Another one of my favourite motivational phrases, when I’m really scared to do something even when I know that I have to do it because it will most likely help me, is “I CAN DO THIS!” (Yes, I shout it out. You have to say it with passion and conviction. Clenching your fists also helps). I vividly remembering using this phrase the first time I walked into a nightclub where they were teaching salsa dancing. I wanted to learn how to salsa dance and no one would take classes with me. I also had to use it the first time I showed up at the nightclub to dance on a Friday night alone. Talk about a scary and stressful situation!

Depending on the situation, I’ll also say to myself  “I’ll handle it“. This one is really useful when you are lacking confidence and are scared of the outcome of taking an action. Knowing that I’ll handle, to the best of my ability, any result that happens usually calms me down enough to take the necessary step in spite of my fears.

This is a great one, too (if you have a good memory):

The Bene Gesserit (from Dune) Litany against fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

How do you motivate yourself? What phrases or sayings do you use to motivate yourself to push through your fears in stressful situations? Share with us by leaving a comment. Thanks!

Related Posts:

1. An Important Exercise To Help You Create The Life You Want
2. The Secret Stress Buster No One Dares Tell You About – Guest Post
3. From Homeless To The Infopreneur – Guest Post
4. Warning: Following These 5 Tips May Get You Out Of Your Rut
5. How To Stop Thinking And Start Doing – Guest Post

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Algonquin Park

I’ve been thinking more and more about what it means to be happy and think I’ve come up with 5 keys that are pretty universal to being happy.

“Don’t worry, be happy.” – Bobby McFerrin

1. Know that you deserve to be happy

“Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.” ~ Horace

You have to believe that you deserve happiness as a birthright and that any struggles that you are going through are momentary distractions. Of course, we can’t go around with the attitude that every day will  be JoyJoy day or walk around with a stupid grin on our faces. But, I do believe that happiness is a natural state for humans.

If you are having a problem believing that you deserve to be happy, I suggest writing as one of your goals in your goals book “I am happy and I deserve to be happy”. Writing this sentence down, even when you don’t believe it today, will focus your mind on being happy and away from unhappiness.

You can also do what I did and write down a list of things that make you happy so that you can refer back to the list when you think that you don’t deserve happiness in your life. Here’s my 100 Things That Make Me Happy. What’s on your list?

Let today be first day of the rest of your life has a happy person.

2. Take personal responsibility for all your choices in life

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.” ~ Denis Waitley

Happiness is a choice. Everyone can choose to be happy or to choose to increase their happiness level. How long will you keep blaming others for choices you’ve made in your life? Anyone over the age of 18 is an adult and doesn’t have the right to blame their parents or their circumstances anymore.  You don’t need to waste the rest of your life or your energy being a victim. Take personal responsibility for everything in your life and trust yourself to choose those things that will result in your happiness.

Tal Ben-Shahar wrote in his book, Happier, that people often think something or someone in the future will allow them to be happy. Or they blame circumstances of their past. Ben-Shahar says that people must live in the now and “rather than allowing ourselves to remain enslaved by our past or future we must learn to make the most of what is presently in front of us and all around us.”

When you stop blaming others and take responsibility for all the decisions in your life, you free yourself so that you can be on your true path in life. One with happiness.

3. Increase your social connections

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ~ Maya Angelou

Studies have shown that people who have close personal connections with other people feel happier with their lives. There’s something to be said for being able to be with people who make you feel good about yourself and your choices in life. Being surrounded by people who support you alleviates your stress levels and makes you feel like you can share your uniqueness with others.

Surround yourself with people who are positive influences in your life. Eliminate (or at least limit) the amount of negative people in your life. They’ll only suck the life and happiness right out of you. Be with those  who uplift you. If you are feeling lonely, try to increase your friendship circle so that you have close friends that you can count on when you need a boost.

4. Don’t compare yourself or your life to anyone else’s

“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” – Judy Garland

It’s very hard not to compare ourselves with others. People are consciously or unconsciously blowing their own horns all the time in an effort to be validated. I see the biggest egos on Twitter – tweets that people write in 140 characters or less how wonderful their lives are or what a wonderful adventure their live is. It must be wonderful to have such wonderful lives (rolls eyes). But, of course people are not going to write about the mundaneness of their lives. Who wants to read that? So, they blow up the most minute thing or event in their day. It’s all a mirage.

You will lose when you compare yourself to others. There will always be someone else who is getting more of <insert your comparison factor here>. No matter what you do, you can’t win every match. It will start to affect your actions in life because you are thinking how you can ‘win’ against someone else’s life choices.

It can be a vicious cycle and will only lead to unhappiness. In order to be happy, stop playing the game.

When you stop comparing yourself to others and start living your own life, your happiness and satisfaction of your choices will increase. You will realize that you are good enough as you are.

5. Expect good things to happen to you

“The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.” – James Oppenheim

Happy people are optimists and optimists are happy people. When we expect good things to happen in our lives, guess what happens? Good things happen because we are in a state of mindful expectation of those good things. Your optimistic beliefs will govern your actions. When you are feeling optimistic about your life and of other people in it, don’t you think it would result in happiness? Walk around with a scowl all day long, be in a bad mood while pushing people away because you think they’ll just hurt or disappoint you, and see if you can be happy. I bet you can’t attract happiness with that attitude.

Happy people want to be around other happy people. When you have the expectation that most people are good and that life can be great, you’ll be on the lookout for good things to enter your life. Your consciousness and attractiveness will then lead to choices that will result in feelings of happiness.

Expecting good things to happen to you becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you expect good things to happen, the more good things happen to you. Don’t you think that will result in more happiness to you?

What are your thoughts? Are you ready to adopt some of these keys so that you will have more happiness in your life?

Related Posts:

1. 50 Inspirational Quotes
2. Stop Lying To Yourself
3. Do You Need To Let Go And Forgive?
4. Are You Being Your True Authentic Self
5. What Are You Waiting For?

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World Wide Web
It’s been a while since I had one of my Friday’s Links articles and I thought it was about time that I shared some great articles that are definitely share-worthy.

First up is Glen Allsopp from ViperChill who wrote a pretty in-depth article called Living Self-Employed Online: The Manual They Forgot To Give You. In this very extensive article, Glen provides 13 lessons from 18 months of self-employment. Glen has been a master at his marketing and niche website craft for several years now and provides so much fantastic information on blogging. I  have learned a lot from his articles and if you haven’t discovered his site by now, you owe it to yourself to check out his writings. I always learn something new every time he deems to write an article, which is usually one per week. He’s a very busy guy and is one of the people who is definitely walking his talk online.

Next is Henri’s article from Wake Up Cloud who wrote on a similar theme to Glen in his article Debunking Myths: 13 Untruths About Being Successful Online Destroyed. Henri has been making a living on the internet for a few years now and certainly has a way with words. I really appreciated this article because it shows you what some of the myths that Henri and others have debunked to make a living online. Henri is also someone who is definitely walking the talk, too.

I loved this quote from Raam Dev at his site, Raamdev.com:

So ask yourself, what have you failed at recently? If the answer is nothing, then you’re probably not pushing yourself hard enough. If you haven’t made any mistakes or learned any big lessons lately, then you’re probably playing it too safe.

This quote was from Raam’s article called Fear of Failure as a Barometer for Success. I love articles like these that make me think about how I’m living my life and what I can do to take some risks in my own life. I have taken some big risks is my life lately, but the fear of failure is always there lurking in the corner of my mind. We shouldn’t be coasting through life being scared of failure. Without failure, we wouldn’t have a chance for success.

Speaking of fear, Tim Brownson (actually Tim informed me that it was John Strelecky who wrote the article) from A Daring Adventure wrote a very powerful article called It Should Never Come To This about the choices we have in life. It may seem like we don’t have choices and that our present circumstances will always be the same, but that’s a fallacy. We all have choices, if we can only see them. While the article is definitely not one of Tim’s more uplifting ones, it’s very thought-provoking and motivational. I feel such sympathy for people who are left after their loved one’s have taken their own lives.

And now for something completely different, Jean over at Virgin Blogger Notes had a special guest post from Arvind Devalia who wrote 12 Reasons Why Bloggers Make The Best Lovers. I had to laugh at the reasons and I’m sure that you will find them pretty humourous (and true), too! I thought that this was pretty cheeky:

And if you are single and looking for a lover, surely it’s high time you hooked up with a blogger?

Of course it’s all true. Oh, by the way, in case you don’t know, I’m single :-)

Go check the articles out for this week and let me know what you think of them by leaving a comment. Thanks!

Related Posts:

1. 4 Best And Worst Things About Being An Entrepreneur – Guest Post
2. The Secret Stress Buster No One Dares Tell You About – Guest Post
3. From Homeless To The Infopreneur – Guest Post
4. Succeeding Means Loving Yourself – Guest Post
5. How To Stop Thinking And Start Doing – Guest Post

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribing to my feed to have all the future articles delivered to your feed reader. Thanks!

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