Stress Management Part One
Stress Management Part One THE CHOICE TO KNOW YOUR VALUE You have a choice of whether or not you blow up or bliss out, whether you let your stress control you and weaken you or use it to become more powerful and happy. It is up to you to decide if you want to seek value outside of yourself and continuously feel disappointed and lacking, or work toward knowing your own value from within. It is up to you to decide if you want to be stuck waiting for happiness to come or choose to be happy because, ultimately, using stress to your advantage, you can be. Know that stress itself is natural and necessary in that it motivates you to take action when some sort of threat to your state of balance is present. The problem is that when stress triggers negative emotions, the negative emotions can overwhelm you and short-circuit your brain and your higherintellectual reasoning, causing you to fall into behaviours that are often hurtful to others or to yourself. The deeper your hurts, the stronger your negative emotions, and the bigger the negative reaction will be. Trying to stop the reaction is often close to impossible, like trying to stop a shiverwhen it is cold outside. What if you were to start looking at stress differently? What if you were to realize that any time you are feeling stressed or distressed, which is stress associated with a negative emotion, you are actually receiving a warning signal that you are running on empty and you need to refuel? If you were to start approaching distress differently, by reacting less strongly or not at all for that matter, you would give yourself the opportunity to heal any part of you that feels broken. The less broken you then feel, the more whole you become. The more whole you are, the less triggered and distressed you will be. You have more balance within yourself and your life. You feel good, and inevitably, you are a lot happier. A happier and more whole you is a more successful you. In Search of Happy Though most people claim they want to be healthy, the truth is, everyone just wants to be happy. Everyone wants to feel good. The problem is that most people believe that happiness comes from outside factors. Why does this happen? Because inherently, people do not possess a core belief that they are enough and have the ability to create happy with or without the things they seek. They constantly look outside of themselves for happiness—looking for more wealth, a perfect partner, a perfect family, and so forth—not realizing that nothing will ever be enough and no one and nothing can be exactly what they need them to be. The harder they seek, the more disappointed they become, and the harder it seems to achieve happiness. Think about your own life. Perhaps you are married and you are constantly angry with your spouse for not understanding you or for simply not taking out the trash. Perhaps you are single and you believe that if only you had a partner, you would be happy. Or maybe you think you will be happier if you had more money, a different president, a new boss, or a world where everyone was pleasant and courteous. Whatever it is you seek, you don’t have it now, which makes you feel lacking andwill exist forever feeling you are not enough. Fast forward to everyday life, and someone cuts you off in traffic, is rude to you on the phone, is taking too long in the checkout line, or just isn’t listening to you when you are talking, or … boom! You lose it. Surprised? Is it surprising that you blow up when life throws you a curveball when you are already feeling out of balance and unhappy? Freedom Is Bliss The key is to find what you are seeking within yourself, rather than outside of yourself, and to fix the “not enough” syndrome. The more whole and balanced you are, the less triggered you will be, and the more likely you will find your bliss. Do you remember a time when you felt bliss? All you need to do is think back to a time when you felt free, without worries, on top of the world, happy, at peace. Maybe you were on vacation. Or maybe you were five years old playing in the mud. Or perhaps it was the moment you fell in love. Bliss. You have felt it before. You know you have. And since you have felt it before, it is definitely possible to feel it again. The path to attaining bliss is freedom. I am not referring to the freedom that comes in the form of no responsibility to others or to yourself, but the freedom that comes from not being attached—to things, to people, to your emotions, or to your suffering. This kind of freedom involves letting go of the things, beliefs, or ideas you think determine your value and your happiness. It’s the sort of freedom you get when you feel good because you choose to, not because you are waiting for something or someone else to make it so. When you are not attached to your expectations, negative stories, or beliefs about how life is supposed to be, you get freedom. With this freedom, you gethappiness. Happiness lies in your ability to focus on feeling good and feeling bliss in ways that you create yourself. This is not to say that the aim is for you to deny or squelch other feelings; rather, the goal is for you to learn to be unattached to negative feelings and suffering, to be less controlled by themso that you can heal and feel free. When you feel free, negative people and situations simply don’t bother you as much. This article, which has been divided into three parts, will teach specific tools to help you hone in on the cause
Increasing Your Resiliency
Increasing Your Resiliency Resilience is the ability an object has to return to its original form after being bent, stretched, or compressed. That’s the dictionary’s definition. In people, it’s the ability to readily recover from illness, depression, or adversity. In our lives, resilience specifically means being able to withstand setbacks, broken hearts and broken dreams, financial crisis, loss of loved ones, loss of enterprise, and loss of health. How would you ever handle it if you lost everything you had today? What would your next step be?How long would you be depressed and upset and angry? What would it take for you to pull yourself up and start all over again? How resilient are you? Could you handle it? Could you learn from all of your disappointments and start all over again? What would it take? Number one, it would take a lot of self-discipline. It would take a lot of positive self-talk to muster up the energy to begin again. It would take a lot of concentration to block out the noise and the clutter of all the negative voices trying to get through—your negative voices as well as the negativevoices of others around you. It would take a lot of discipline to balance the fear and anxiety with the knowledge that, if you did it once, you can do it all over again. It would also take a lot of self-reliance. Whether or not your losses had anything to do with you, your future success has everything to do with you. It would take a lot of self-reliance to avoid the entanglements of blame. What’s happened has happened. You would need to get on with your life and begin again. It would take a lot of faith. It would take a lot of faith and trust in God to move ahead. If you lost everything tomorrow, and you were gathering all the courage to try again, it would take a lot of self-appreciation. You need to know in your heart and mind that you have the skills, the talent, and the strength to do it one more time. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity, no matter how large or how small. Say you lose one of your biggest clients. This client accounts for over twenty-five percent of your gross revenues. Losing this client is going to hurt, financially and emotionally. The first thing you need to do is figure out why you lost this business. What role did you play? In what way are youresponsible? You can’t just rant and rave, yelling and screaming at everyone in the office. Even if it was the wrongdoing of someone else, you can’t behave like this because it’s not professional. You’ll lose the respect of your coworkers. And respect is hard to regain once you’ve lost it, whether it’s the respect of trusted colleagues or your valuable support people. You have to approach the situation rationally and figure out how to bounce back from your loss. You have to evaluate the situation and then begin a plan to recapture the lost business. Consider how you can increase your market share with other businesses. Maybe you can network with associates to bring in a similar client… or a larger one. You can’t sit back and dwell on what’s happened. You’ve got to get back into the marketplace and recapture what’s been taken from you. Perhaps your loss is a personal loss. Maybe you’ve recently been faced with the death of a loved one, a divorce, or the loss of a very special friendship. If your loss is a deeply personal one, you should approach the situation a little differently. You must be patient with yourself and giveyourself time to grieve, mourn, and regroup. The stages we go through in loss, be it death of a loved one, death of a relationship, or death of an enterprise, are beautifully defined in Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ book On Death and Dying. Whether the death is a literal one or a figurative one, the stages are the same: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And only by going through these stages and reaching acceptance can we rebound and begin again. It’s said that children are more resilient than adults. Why? Maybe it’s because they don’t evaluate their current situation based on past experiences. They approach losses in a fresh, new way each time. In their minds, they deal with loss much better than adults. Children who grow up in the unfortunate circumstances of poverty, abuse, or neglect and later become successful are known as dandelion children. If they can succeed and prosper amidst terrible conditions, they can grow anywhere. It’s important to be more like a dandelion child, to be able to grow and prosper and succeed despite our current conditions and losses… to be resilient. Cultivating a resilient character turns what others would call failure into success. A resilient person won’t give up. A resilient person will, in spite of all obstacles and set-backs, keep doing it until everything is back on track. In their book The Resilient Self, Steven and Sybil Wolin have studied resilience and have found seven key characteristics that comprise it. Number one: resilience requires insight. You need to develop the ability to ask yourself tough questions and be honest with your answers. If you had something to do with your loss, be honest and accept responsibility for it. Number two: resilience is independent. As a resilient person, you can count on yourself to bounce back into life. Number three: although resilience is independent, it’s also tied to others. The more people you are responsible for, the greater your motivation to begin again. Number four: resilience calls for initiative. You need to develop the ability to take charge of the situation or problem. You need to stand up and do whatever is necessary to recover. Number five: resilience has an element of creativity. With resilience, you are able to look at a situation and creatively determine the best
Goal Setting
Goal Setting SEVERAL SELF-MADE MILLIONAIRES, all of whom started with nothing and worked their way up, were having dinner at the home of one of their group. The conversation went back and forth about the various reasons for success and why it was that the people around this table had achieved so much when the average person achieves so little. Finally, the most successful of thegroup spoke up and asked, “What is success?” When they turned to him for his answer, he said, “Success is goals, and all else is commentary.” Turning Points Throughout your life, you will have a series of turning points. These are moments, insights, or experiences that can take a few seconds or a few months. But after one of these turning points, your life is never the same again. Sometimes you recognize one of these turning points when it takes place. In most cases, you only recognize that it was a turning point in retrospect. As you look back on your life, you often remember small things that happened to which you paid little attention, but the consequences of these events changed you in some way and had an influence on the person you are today. One of the major turning points in my life, and in the lives of most successful people, was my discovery of goals. If you want to be successful, you have to have goals. The Key to Riches It is not uncommon today for people to complain and even demonstrate in the streets about “the 1 percent versus the 99 percent” in our society in terms of income. But they’ve got it wrong. In reality, it should be “the 3 percent versus the 97 percent.” Only about 3 percent of people have clear, specific, written goals and plans that they work on each day. The other 97 percent have hopes, dreams, wishes, and fantasies, but not goals. And the great tragedy is that they don’t know the difference. Earn and Acquire Ten Times as Much As a result of reading many studies into those people with and without goals, I have found that the top 3 percent earn and acquire, over time, on average, ten times as much as the bottom 97 percent put together. Why is this? There are many reasons. A mantra of wealthy people is “Don’t lose money.” In terms of success, we could say that the corollary is “Don’t lose time.” The fact is that when you have clear, specific goals and clear plans to achieve those goals and you work on them every day, you save an enormous amount of time. You accomplish more in a few months or years than many people accomplish in a lifetime. By setting goals, you program your mental GPS, which then functions like a guided missile to move you directly toward the target you have aimed at, taking feedback from your target and making “course corrections” until you achieve your goal. As Thomas Carlyle wrote, “The person without goals makes no progress on even the smoothest road. The person with clear goals makes rapid progress on even the roughest road.” You have heard the saying “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Develop the Big Three Perhaps the very best way for you to develop the “big three” of superior thinking—clarity, focus, and concentration—is for you to develop clear goals for every part of your life. Fully 95 percent of success is developing clarity in the first place. You must become completely clear about who you are—your strengths, your weaknesses, your special talents and abilities—and what you want to do with your life. Then you must focus single-mindedly on one thing at a time,without diversion or distraction. According to both Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the ability to focus on one thing at a time is more responsible for success in our fast-moving, turbulent times than any other mental ability. Finally, once you have decided who you are and what you want and have decided upon your point of focus, you must develop the discipline to concentrate single-mindedly on one thing at a time and stay with it until it is 100 percent complete. Goals enable you to develop the qualities of clarity, focus, and concentration much faster than anything else you could do or decide for your life. Goals are the best antidote to “fuzzy thinking,” which is probably more responsible for frustration and failure than any other factor. Minimize Distractions Because of rapid change and constant electronic interruptions—e-mail, texts, telephone calls, and social media—more and more people are developing a form of attention deficit disorder that makes it almost impossible for them to think clearly or to stay “on task.” They check their smartphones every time, are slaves to social media, and are continually chasing the “shiny objects” of immediate stimulus. Those who do not have goals are doomed forever to work for those who do. In life, you can either work to achieve your own goals or work to achieve the goals of someone else. Of course, the best of all is when you help your company to achieve its goals by achieving your own goals. The Impact of Change Perhaps the most important factor affecting your life today is the speed of change. In all of human history, we have never experienced the rate of change that we are enduring today—except for next month and next year and for the rest of our lives. Three main factors are accelerating the rate of change and causing us to feel out of control. Our very best plans are often invalidated, sometimes overnight, by a change in one of these three critical areas. 1) INFORMATION EXPLOSION The first factor driving change is the information and knowledge explosion. Information and new ideas are expanding, growing, increasing faster and faster. One new piece of knowledge, one new idea or insight, can upset or overturn an entire industry, causing failure and bankruptcy. More smart
Self Discipline
Self Discipline “We must unweave every strand of our cable of habits, slowly and methodically, until the cable that once held us in place becomes nothing more than scattered strands of wire.” “How do you get a miracle going? It’s all a matter of discipline. And it begins with one simple step: doing what you can do.” “Once you have seen and felt your ideal future, you will be ready and able to pay any price to get there.” The Bridge Between Thought and Accomplishment If there is one magic word that stands out above all the rest, it is self-discipline. Self-discipline is the bridge between thought and accomplishment, between inspiration and achievement, between necessity and productivity. Remember, all good things are located upstream from us. The passing of time takes us adrift, and drifting only brings us the negative, the disappointment, and the failure. Failure is not a cataclysmic event. It is not generally the result of one major incident, but rather of a long list of accumulated little failings. The danger is looking at an undisciplined day and concluding that no great harm has been done. But add up these days to make a year—and then add up those years to make a lifetime—and it will become apparent how repeating today’s small failures can easily turn your life into a major disaster. Self-discipline is like a set of magic keys that can unlock all the doors of wealth, happiness, culture, high self-esteem, pride, joy, accomplishment, satisfaction, and success. The first key to self-discipline is awareness of the need for and value of self-discipline, especially the discipline to make the necessary changes. What will it take? What must I do and what must I become to get all I want from life? The second key is willingness. More than that, it is the eagerness to maintain your new discipline deliberately, wisely, and consistently. The third key to self-discipline is the commitment to master the circumstances of your daily life—to see and harness the opportunities to make something of the good as well as that which comes in the guise of misfortune. Self-discipline does many things, but most important of all is what it does for your mind-set—it makes you feel better about yourself. Even the smallest discipline can have an incredible effect on your attitude. And the good feeling you get—that surging feeling of self-worth that comes from starting a new discipline—is almost as good as the feeling that comes from the accomplishment the discipline brings. A new discipline immediately alters your life direction. You don’t change destinations immediately—that is yet to come—but you can change direction immediately, and direction is very important. Self-discipline cooperates with nature. Everything strives. It is a common life function. How tall will a tree grow? As tall as it can. Everything strives to become all it can possibly be. And that is what self-discipline is all about… striving to fulfill our natural potential, to become all that we canbe. The human will in action—driven by inspiration, enticed by desire, tempered by reason, guided by intelligence—can bring you to that high and lofty place called the good life. Self-discipline attracts opportunity, which is always attracted to ambition and skill in action. Self-discipline taps the unlimited power of commitment. Self-discipline: those unique steps of intelligent thought and activity that put a lid on temper and a faucet on courtesy; that develop the positive and control the negative; that encourage success and deter failure; that shape lifestyle and control frustration; that enhance health and curb sickness;that promote happiness and manage sadness. Self-discipline: the continuing process that brings all the good things. Remember, anyone can start the process. It’s not, “If I could, I would;” rather, it’s “If I would, I could. If I will, I can.” So start the process. Begin a new habit, no matter how small it is. Size isn’t important; whether or not you start and whether or not you continue are all that matter. A Spiral of Achievement What’s at the core of achieving success? It is not learning how to set goals. It is not learning how to better manage your time. It is not mastering the attributes of leadership. Every day in a thousand different ways, we are trying to improve ourselves by learning how to do things. We spend a lifetime gathering knowledge—in classrooms, in textbooks, in experiences.And if knowledge is power, if knowledge is the forerunner to success, why do we fall short of our objectives? Why, in spite of all our knowledge and collected experiences, do we find ourselves aimlessly wandering? Settling for a life of existence rather than a life of substance? There may be many answers to this question. Your answer may be different from that of everyone else you know. While there may be many answers to this question, the ultimate answer may be the absence of discipline in applying our knowledge. The key word is self-discipline. It doesn’t really matter how smart you are if you don’t use your knowledge. It doesn’t really matter that you graduated with a first class honours if you’re stuck in a low-paying job. It doesn’t really matter that you attend every seminar that comes to town if you don’t apply what you’ve learned. We spend our lives gathering: gathering knowledge, gathering skills, gathering experiences. But we must also apply the knowledge, skills, and experiences we gather in the realms of life and business. We must learn to use what we’ve learned. And once we’ve applied our knowledge, we must study the results of that process and refine our approach. Finally, by trying and observing and refining and trying again, our knowledge will inevitably produce worthy, admirable results. And with the joy and results of our efforts, we continue to fuel our ambition with the positive reinforcement of continued progress. Pretty soon, we’ll find that we’re swept into a spiral of achievement, a vertical rise to success. And the ecstasy of that total experience makes for a
Listening Skills
Listening Skills UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING At the most basic level, listening well lets you take in the most information possible in a conversation. You’ll have more to go on when deciding what to say next, and your interactions will flow better. If you don’t listen well, you’ll miss some of the information the other person is sharing. More importantly, listening well makes other people feel respected, understood, and like you care what they have to say. If you’re not a great listener, you can come across as uninterested, spacey, or self-absorbed. People may hang out with you casually, but feel they can’t have a more serious, substantial conversation with you. Listening is more than parking yourself in front of someone and letting them make sounds at you. People don’t need to feel that all of their conversation partners are fascinated by everything they say, but they do want a sense that the other person cares at least somewhat. Even if you just want to tell a corny joke to a coworker, it doesn’t feel good when they’re obviously tuned out. Being able to pay attention to people and take in what they’re saying, and not coming off as disengaged, are bare-minimum considerations when having a conversation. When people talk of “listening skills,” they’re often referring to active listening. When you engage in active listening, you listen in a more purposeful, focused, empathetic way; you really try to understand wheresomeone is coming from, show your interest, and read between the lines of what’s being said. You’d particularly need to use active listening if you were talking to someone about their problems, having a more philosophical discussion, or trying to see the other person’s perspective during an argument. This skill helps you connect with people, make others feel accepted and supported, and resolve disagreements more easily. While listening skills are extremely important to learn, you should have realistic expectations about the effect improving them will have on your social life. Some self-help sources oversell the significance of these skills and claim that good listeners are rare and that people appreciate nothingmore than someone who truly listens to them. That’s an exaggeration. Listening skills are really useful, but good listeners aren’t that scarce, and being able to listen to people doesn’t guarantee everyone will like you or that you’ll easily be able to get through any conversation. IDENTIFYING FACETS OF BASIC LISTENING SKILLS More goes into listening than just hearing what the other person is saying. Your ears, mind, and body are all engaged when you listen well. Consider the following aspects that create a good listening experience, for you and the person you’re talking to: Intent It sounds obvious, but one of the keys to listening properly is to want to do it. When people are poor listeners, they usually aren’t that way on purpose. They unconsciously come into the conversation with another agenda or their own issues, which overrides their listening potential. For example, they may be too focused on what they want to talk about and trying to impress everyone. When you interact with people, make a deliberate decision to try to listen well. That involves giving the other person space to say what they want to say, even if you’re not entranced byevery last word or they’re struggling to make their point; seriously considering what they’re saying, not just technically hearing it but not giving it a second thought; putting yourself in the other person’s shoes and taking on their perspective; being as nonjudgmental as possible; avoiding any of the specific poor listening behaviors. Adjust the intensity of your listening depending on the context. If a friend is telling you about a funny video his brother just sent him, you don’t need to try to commune with his innermost being or worry about being open and accepting. Simply let him talk and don’t interrupt. Giving someone room to speak doesn’t mean you to have to put all of your own conversation needs on the back burner. If someone’s telling you an anecdote, you should listen respectfully, but if you have a story of your own you’d like to share, it’s fine to bring it up at an appropriate time. If they say something you disagree with, you can tell them you see things differently, after you’ve respectfully heard them out. The good listener role also doesn’t obligate you to stick in there with a long-winded monopolizer or someone who’s inappropriately sharing the details of their recent trip to the doctor. Engaged body language This makes your listening clear. When you display engaged body language, you: Make good eye contact with the speaker. Face your body toward them. Tilt your head slightly to the side If you’re sitting, lean slightly forward. Turn away from any distractions. Have an appropriate expression on your face, depending on what they’re telling you and what they hope to convey; for example, concerned and understanding as they go over a problem, or interested and amused as they tell you about their eccentric neighbor. Nod and make little “uh huh” or “Mmm hmm” noises to show you’re taking everything in and to encourage them to continue (mix up the noises you make and how often you make them, or you’ll seem robotic). Having a mind-set of wanting to listen is still the most important aspect of listening. Even if you nail all the nonverbals, people can usually tell if you’re just going through the motions. Do each of these with a light touch. The idea is to appear interested, not act like a caricature of a therapist. Again, adjust this basic template based on the circumstances. If you’re lounging on a couch and watching reality TV with your roommate while they casually tell you about something weird that happened at school, you don’t need to full-on face and lean into them. You could show you’re listening by turning your head toward them, making occasional eye contact, and saying “uh huh” and
Positive Thinking
Positive Thinking Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to everybody else. —HENRY WARD BEECHER ARISTOTLE, perhaps the greatest philosopher of all time, studied the human condition more extensively than any other man in history. He concluded that the ultimate goal of human life and endeavour was happiness. He said that every act a person takes is aimed at achieving a greater state of happiness, however the individual defines it. You want to get a good job. Why? To earn more money. Why? To be able to provide for your family and enjoy a good lifestyle. Why? To achieve personal and financial security. Why? So you can be happy. The True Measure The true measure of how successful you are in life is how happy you are—most of the time. If you are wealthy, famous, or powerful but you are not happy, you have failed in your primary responsibility to yourself as a human being. Every human act is aimed at achieving a greater state of happiness, however the individual defines it. This does not mean that every act leads to happiness. Many people make a complete mess of their lives attempting to achieve happiness and often end up unhappier and more dissatisfied thanthey would have been if they had done nothing. The positive emotions of love, joy, peace, excitement, success, and the feeling that you are fulfilling your complete potential are what everyone aims at almost all the time. What Successful People Do Successful people practice positive thinking most of the time. As a result, they are happier, more genial, more popular and derive more real pleasure from life than the average person. The opposite of positive thinking is negative thinking. Negative thinkers tend to be hostile and suspicious. They are distrustful of others, and they expect negative things to happen to them most of the time. They have negative personalities and are highly critical of both themselves and the people around them. No matter what happens, they are seldom satisfied for any period of time. Life to them is a series of problems and difficulties over which they feel they have little control and about which there is nothing they can do. When I began asking the question, “Why are some people more successful and happy than others,” I started studying the contrast and difference between positive emotions and negative emotions. What I found changed my life forever. The Great Discovery What I discovered is that everyone wants to be happy, however he defines it. The main obstacle between each person and the happiness that he desires is negative emotions. Negative emotions lie at the root of virtually all problems in human life. If there was some way that you could eliminate negative emotions, you could wipe out most of the problems of mankind. There is a way to do this. Nature abhors a vacuum. If you eliminate negative emotions, your mind automatically fills with positive emotions. When you eliminate negative emotions, you become a fully functioning person. When you eliminate negative emotions, you become capable of fulfilling your full potential. The main job of life, then, is to eliminate negative emotions. One Thought at a Time Your mind can only hold one thought at a time—positive or negative. But if you don’t deliberately hold a positive thought or emotion, a negative thought or emotion will tend to fill your mind, at least at the beginning. Negative thoughts tend to be easy and automatic, the default setting of the brain for most people. Thinking positively actually requires effort and determination until it becomes a habitual response to life and circumstances. Fortunately, you can become a purely positive thinker through learning and practice. The starting point of eliminating negative emotions is to understand where they come from in the first place. The good news is that no child is born with any fears or negative emotions. All fears and negative emotions must be taught to the growing child in his or her formative years. And because negative emotions are learned, they can be unlearned. Because negative emotions are habitual ways of responding and reacting to people and situations, they can be replaced with constructive habits of responding and reacting. This is very much a matter of choice. Abraham Lincoln said, “Most people are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” The New born Child Children are born with two wonderful characteristics, fearlessness and spontaneity. The new born child is completely fearless. The growing child will touch, try, or taste anything, however dangerous. Parents have to spend the first few years of the child’s life preventing the child from killing himself or herself. The child is also born spontaneous. He or she laughs, cries, pees, poops, and expresses himself or herself without limit or constraint, twenty-four hours a day. A child has no concern about the reactions and responses of others. He or she simply does not care. Fears of Failure and Criticism At a young age, because of mistakes that parents make, children begin to develop the two main fears of adult life, the fear of failure and the fear of criticism. When parents, in an attempt to restrain or constrain the child’s behaviour, tell the child, “No! Stop that! Don’t do that! Get away from there!” and, even worse, physically punish the child for fearlessly exploring his or her world, the child soon develops the belief that he or she is small and incompetent. Soon the child refrains from reaching out and trying new things. He or she starts to say “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t” when confronted with anything new or different. This feeling of “I can’t” soon turns into the fear of failure. As adults, it becomes a preoccupation with loss or poverty. Adults fear the loss of money and time, the loss of security and approval, the