PrincessSarah

The Beauty of E-Learning to the Disabled

January 3, 2024 by PrincessSarah

This should be (and is) a little embarrassing for me to admit. But having been a professional of over 25 years, it wasn’t until relatively recently that I figured out all the trainings I’m required to completing each year at my full-time job were available for me to listen to as well as read. E-learning content that I can listen to has helped take the proverbial edge off my often pressure-filled workdays because it gives my vision and my brain a much-needed break, without compromising my need to learn. This is the beauty of e-learning to the disabled.

My Early Years – Learning Tenacity, but Working Hard, Not Smart

I’m someone who had horrible trouble learning how to read as a child, and the trauma of the loss of my right eye as an infant only compounded the fear and insecurity I carried around inside. I walked with my chin to my chest everywhere I went in my early years, not even swinging my arms as I walked. I felt invisible (and perhaps wanted to be) because I felt so unlovely and unsightly. My amazing and resilient Caribbean parents were committed to giving me a normal life. So the solution for my hardships with reading was simply to drill me at home with reading aloud (which was important to be able to do well back then) and sign me up for a reading competition where I’m told I placed in the top three. (I always say I think I might have suppressed this experience because I have absolutely no recollection of it at all…..trauma has a way of protecting the brain.)

I think this might be why I’m used to just plowing through things the hard way until I’m done. My early schools never did diagnose the dyslexia I grew to be sure I had only after three college and graduate degrees. All I knew was that I had to set aside inordinate amounts of time to complete reading assignments. (Despite countless speed-reading courses, I still read slowly when left to my own devices.) As I read, I found taking notes in the margin of my books not only helped me retain information, but it also helped me relax when I returned to the page, because I knew all I needed to do was read my hand-written interpretation of the text instead of wading through the often-dense paragraphs.

Learning to Cope in Adulthood

As an adult, I’ve developed many coping mechanisms that work to varying degrees. That said, it still took me way too long to realize that the trainings I was required to complete at work were available for me to listen to. WHO KNEW?! I thought. Why on earth would anything be in my life to actually make it easier?!

But if you’re not a big lover of reading, you learn in some other way. (It takes a while to figure out that you’re not an idiot – I’m just being transparent? This was certainly the case for me.) I’ve had to figure out that I am a kinetic, auditory, and visual learner. During the 14 years I studied piano, I realized that it wasn’t until my hands remembered where to go that I began to sound like I had been practicing at all. Sight-reading music was just as miserable an experience as reading English aloud. (I had to figure out the two were engaging the same part of my brain (which evidently didn’t like to be engaged).)

In college, despite several hours of practice each week, I would sound as if I wasn’t practicing at all. Each week, I would appear for my lesson where my professor would incredulously ask whether I had been practicing because I sounded so awful. It wasn’t until the sheet music became internalized and began to flow through my hands, without my vision or my mind being engaged to read it that I began to sound like a pianist. Suddenly, after nearly 3 months of tirelessly pounding the music into myself, something would shift, and I would go from sounding “drunk” to sounding like I had the many years of training that I indeed had.

I learned that I was an auditory and visual learning through my love for documentaries as a young person. Somehow the images and the sound of the spoken words stuck with me so much more than when I had to read them to myself. I never realized that I found all the reading I had to do literally exhausting. As I said, perhaps I was used to being exhausted and was willing to pay that price in order to get wherever it was I was trying to go.

Waking up to Working Smart, Not Hard – E-learning to the disabled

Now, I’m learning the fine art of working smart not hard. I finally gave myself a break and invested in Audible in recent years and have been so grateful I did. Meanwhile, listening to the audio versions of the trainings I have to complete for my full-time job has been a tremendous help. So much so that I wonder what my academic life would have been like if some well-designed e-learning to the disabled might have been made available to me all those years ago in England. How much would I have been able to better absorb and comprehend my work? Instead of having to worry about getting the words read, now all I would have had to do is ensure I fully grasped the concepts and could articulate them in an exam.

There’s no doubt that I’ve learned great resilience and tenacity from the hardships and failures I experienced during my academic career. But a part of me has to wonder whether there would have been at least a little less anxiety and a whole lot less self-doubt riddling every part of my young mind if some e-learning content had been made readily available to me, especially e-learning to the disabled.

As I’ve said, this only recently occurred to me. So I thought I would share it with all the awesome e-learning designers I’m connected with. Thank you for what you do. Be encouraged. You bring great, great value to all the younger versions of me out there, and indeed to all the adult professionals who, like me, are grateful to get a break in the form of an engaging and educational training video once in a while.

On Deciding to Be Beautiful [Part 1]

January 31, 2023 by PrincessSarah

On Deciding to Be Beautiful: Letters from My Younger Self

Today I changed my life. I changed my life because, for the first time, I am deciding to be beautiful.
I decided. What powerful words. I have often been asked how I accomplished certain things or how I manage certain disciplines that people perceive as being hard or challenging. People ask “how did you do it?” – they want a formula perhaps. But, no, it’s deeper than that. We want to know what it takes to harness the will-power we believe must be required in order to perform this task or accomplish this goal that to us seems so unachievable.

So very often, after a reflective pause, my answer begins with the simple, quiet, humble, yet declarative statement, I decided.

The Value of Deciding

When you decide to do something, I think you’re at least 70% there. There’s something on the inside that shifts when you decide you are going to do something. I believe something dies, and I think that ‘something’ is resistance. It gets tied up and tossed out when we simply decide to do a thing. When we decide, somehow all the chatter shuts down and our resources are suddenly marshalled to focus on something entirely different and new – the HOW.

The question is no longer whether we are going to do something. That debate is over. The negative committee in our head is adjourned and dismissed. Now only positive voices can be heard, offering insight, creativity, and ideas to facilitate the daily tasks necessary to complete the desired result.

The Battlefield of the Mind: Choosing the Voice of Truth

Well, today, I decided something I’ve never decided before. It wasn’t an activity, a goal, or destination. Today I am simply deciding to be beautiful, and I was set free from a lifetime of bondage to the torment and debate about whether or not I am.

If you asked me whether I’m beautiful, I would immediately answer in the affirmative. In part because I know (intellectually at least) that it’s the truth, but more so because I know I must. If you asked me if I believe I’m beautiful, there would be a moment of silence while I try to articulate a feeling that goes more often than it comes, depending on countless variables. When forced, I will admit that I hesitate because deep (or perhaps not that deep) down inside, I don’t believe I’m beautiful at all.

Within my hesitation, there echoes a lifelong internal debate triggered by the loss of my right eye long before I could speak, walk, or perceive my own value. The debate continues between the voice that empowers me with truth about my beauty and the voice that believes a lie and resonates far more with it.

My internal climate has always been tuned to the voice that tells me I’m not beautiful. So it’s easy to connect with feelings and thoughts that resonate with that – after all every internal ecosystem defaults according to its settings.

But because I know the words I contemplate and speak contain the power of both life and death, I intentionally and willingly engage in the struggle to force my thoughts and my spoken words to line up with what I know to be true but have trouble seeing when I look in the mirror sometimes. Yes, it’s a lot of work. But the battlefield truly is the mind, so I know it’s worth the fight. I also know I wouldn’t be where I am had I not signed up for this fight in the first place. Surrender is not an option. So I engage every day, and somedays, it’s a real slug-fest.

The Decision: The Ultimate Tie-Breaker

The big news is that today I decided the debate between the voice of truth and the voice of lies is no longer a worthy expenditure of my time or effort when it came to my beauty (at the very least). Today, I shut the debate down by simply deciding TO BE beautiful. Is there a difference? If I already know I’m beautiful (at least intellectually), what sense does it make, and what difference does it make to decide to be beautiful?? But for me there’s a chasm between these two things. Somehow for me, thinking you are beautiful and the decision to be beautiful are completely different.

To say of myself, I am beautiful might seem empowering, but it has taken a great deal more energy and work for me to embrace. After all, ‘beautiful’ is just a superficial description. It’s not a state of being. Instead it’s an adjective with which I have to figure out whether or not I can (or am willing to) agree, depending on the day. Whether or not I believe this description, it’s still just an opinion which somehow carries less weight, perhaps because it’s subject to change.

But to be beautiful is my decision – it’s a choice to take on a state of being. I seize it and therefore it’s mine, it’s my entitlement, it’s my right. It’s something I can own, instead of having it be some elusive thing that escapes me or that belongs to people who meet certain criteria that I might not. It is literally something I can choose for myself.

I can identify myself with it and own as mine. Because being beautiful is something I have chosen and decided to be, it’s no longer something that might evaporate while I’m asleep, leaving me abandoned to fend for myself in the morning. I don’t have to figure out what I have to do in order to be beautiful. I don’t have to be a certain way, dress a certain way, style my hair a certain way or even wear any make up at all. None of these things matter in the face of something I have chosen simply to be. There can be nothing more empowering than that.

Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work

December 31, 2022 by PrincessSarah

I think it’s fair to say that most people are committing themselves to specific New Year’s resolutions as we prepare to ring in 2023. But I would like to propose that New Year’s resolutions don’t work because they actually undermine our success and productivity in most cases.

Here are five reasons New Year’ resolutions don’t work and why they’re worth avoiding altogether.

1. New Year’s Resolutions only lock in the behavior we want to avoid.

Most New Year’s resolutions are borne out of 11 months of beating ourselves up. We might think guilt and condemnation are good motivators, but they actually serve to cement the very habits we are trying to escape. They create an internal law or edict telling us we should do a certain thing or refrain from a certain thing. Most New Year’s resolutions don’t work because our enactment of a “law” literally triggers in us the opposite response – the very behavior of which we are most ashamed.

What we often fail to realize is that not beating ourselves up is one of the primary steps towards the progress we’re after. To reach that place of no longer beating ourselves up, sometimes we have to blow through January 1, focusing instead on identifying and rectifying our negative self-talk and the triggers that cause the bad habit.

2. Most New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work Because We Make Them Before We’re Ready

It’s an unfortunate reality, but any true and lasting change starts internally. It’s not forced by an intellectual choice. It’s initiated by an internal softening that sparks a change of heart, which eventually manifests itself in changed behavior.

I bit my nails terribly well into adulthood. As a miserable child and young person, it was many years before I realized I needed to just stop resolving every year to stop biting my nails. I had to come to terms with the fact that there was nothing I could do about it because the gnawing internal fear was so all consuming that it necessarily manifested in my gnawing at my fingertips until they bled.

It was horrible! But nothing I tried could make me stop. Something had to change on the inside. So I just had to do the internal work, allowing myself the space, grace, and time to heal and grow, instead of trying so hard to reach my destination before the process was complete. It’s a frustrating reality. But most New Year’s resolutions won’t work because we’re simply not ready to make the necessary adjustment.

3. People Mistake the Excitement of the New Year for the Discipline They’ll Need When the Fireworks Fizzle

Most of the time, when we make New Years resolutions, it’s because we quietly think there’s some magic about the New Year that will make up for our lack of commitment and discipline. There I said it. But isn’t it true? Gym owners know that a fraction of the new members who sign up on January 1 will still be showing up on March 1 (ok, February 1).

One of my closest friends fell prey to this many years ago. There was nothing I could do to convince her that, she would not go to the gym simply because she had spent the money on a new membership. So she made her donation to the gym and admitted with dismay months later that she had surprised herself.

I’m not criticizing, people….!. As the year draws to a close, we reflect on our lives and naturally tend to make decisions and commitments for the new year, presuming we’ll have the energy and drive to follow through. We think that feeling we have at 12:00am January 1 will persist, and that life won’t come against our plan.

But there’s an insurance commercial in the U.S. with the slogan “Life Comes at You Fast,” which observes that life brings unexpected twists and turns. New Year’s resolutions often won’t work because most people err by making changes without resolving to follow through even when life punches us in the mouth.

It was Mike Tyson who said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” All I’m suggesting is that New Year’s resolutions don’t work because they are steeped in the romance of the changing calendar year (or perhaps the guilt that we’re running out of time). Under these circumstances, we generally forget to implement the ground work necessary to succeed in the new commitment.

4. We Forget that EVERY DAY is New Years Day!!

Let’s face it, New Year’s Day really is JUST another day on the calendar. It is yet another day that will never happen again in history, which makes it no more special than the rest. This is a beautiful thing, because it literally means that every single day we’re alive has the potential to be New Year’s Day when we decide to make a change for the better.

One meaning of the word “repent” is “to turn.” So it literally means we are turning away from something and towards something else. We can change directions at any time of the year. There’s no magic or secret sauce available to us on January 1 that’s not available to us the rest of the year.

For me, it just helps to always remember that, as long as there is air in my lungs, I am never too lost to turn around.

5. New Year’s Resolutions Create Unnecessary Pressure to Make Big Changes

Perhaps its human nature to want to reach our destination even though we just left home. We don’t gain weight in one day. Yet still we look for diet plans that help us lose weight yesterday. We just want to get there already.

New Year’s resolutions don’t work because they cause us to announce to ourselves and others that we will accomplish some Herculean feat that might have eluded us until now. We feel good announcing it. Just talking about it puts pressure on us while somehow building confidence that we might actually do it this time.

I have found it more helpful to commit to small changes, maintaining them consistently, and then building on them – it always works. When I’ve chosen this path, instead of beating myself up for not accomplishing all of what I’d like to see today, I find I make much more progress. Instead, of lurching back and forth on a miserable merry-go-round of healthy and unhealthy change, I have found I’m better served by building small new habits into my life which, over time, inevitably render the old, less healthy habits obsolete.

For example, I used to eat macaroni and cheese every day of my life. I’m talking about without fail. If they made it a food group, I would have been pleased. I could make it from scratch, or I could eat Food Lion’s generic mac’n’cheese from a box. It didn’t matter to me. I also never drank any water. Eventually, though, something caused me to realize that my consumption of cheese (real or fake) was complicating asthma symptoms when I exerted myself physically. I was a young adult in seemingly great shape. So my body at least appeared to be forgiving me for never hydrating or eating vegetables….. that is until I wanted to breathe sometimes.

When I did an experiment and cut all dairy products for a few weeks, I was shocked that I no longer found myself reaching for my inhaler. To be clear, I wasn’t trying to quit using my inhaler. So if you need yours, please DO NOT trash it on my account. All I know is that after that I knew change was in order. But pasta with as many different cheeses as I have hair on my head (there’s a lot) was the love of my life. (I still make the best mac’n’cheese I know, I might add.)

Did I stop eating it altogether? I think you know the answer. Not only did I not stop eating mac’n’cheese daily, I didn’t change anything about my other unhealthy daily habits either. All I required of myself was one bowl of broccoli every day. No sauce, no salt, and definitely no cheese. (sniff..)

Eventually, I started building in a glass of water here and there. Now, drinking 20 ounces of water is the first thing I do in the morning, and I do my best not to drink my calories. Also, hard as it may be to believe, I never seek out mac’n’cheese because I have found foods that nourish me, that I actually like, and make me feel good. (Basically I learned how to cook.) I used to think it wasn’t possible. But it was.

This way, life isn’t a constant race to the next cheat meal. I’m thriving and it feels good. I believe all resolutions can be good for us when handled wisely. I am just of the belief that the New Year isn’t the best time to make them. I hope this inspires us to live well not only in January, but through the rest of 2023.

Happy New Year!

Narrated Virtual Tours, A Good Idea?

August 24, 2022 by PrincessSarah

Have you ever wondered how you could make your virtual tours more memorable, so as to give you a competitive edge? Professional voice over narration can beautifully complement your video content, converting a simple, silent (or non-professionally narrated) movie to a powerful story about a property that’s waiting for your viewer to buy it.

Your domestic and international clientele can’t always come to see your high-end properties. Did you know that some of your best leads can be obtained with a compelling and professionally narrated virtual tours? Are you comfortable with the idea that some of your most viable prospects are remote buyers who hope (or expect) to see a polished, professionally narrated video of your best real estate inventory before they travel to see it in person?

8 Reasons Why Narrated Virtual Tours (NVTs) are a good idea:

1. Expand Your Reach

Virtual tours allow real estate professionals to increase the number of potential buyers exponentially. Gone are those days when real estate business was only locally transacted.

Technology has changed everything. Doing business in real estate hasn’t been shielded from the revolution of technology. The playing field for brokers has undoubtedly broadened and, with it, so has the opportunity.

The most successful realtors and real estate professionals make savvy choices to market properties to a broader audience and with less effort. And it’s those investing in narrated virtual tours who are finding those precious inches that separate them from the competition. These creative thinkers have a growth mindset (not a fixed one). It gives them a willingness to try something new to satisfy their clientele and get the job done even in a volatile market.

2. Increase Your Chance of Selling.

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), when done correctly, virtual tours dramatically increase a property’s chance of being sold. NAR’s research revealed that virtual property tours help buyers decide to purchase faster. It is said that 40% of buyers reporting that virtual tours were “very useful” when looking to purchase a home.

When buyers can take virtual tours of houses they are interested in, they are more likely to make an offer on the house, and faster. (Realty Times, 2020)

Notably, the article from Realty Times uses the words “when done correctly,” which alludes to a number of things, including the quality of the imagery used to create the virtual tour. I would like to suggest that, in order to be “done correctly,” a virtual tour should also be narrated.

Right or wrong, the 21^st century has ushered in a flood of distractions to which even the most intelligent and highly functioning individuals are unwittingly addicted. We spend most of our on-line time consuming content that is accompanied by some sort of narrative.

Truth be told, most people don’t take time to read much any more. We either want to be spoon fed to keep from having to read, or we want to be fed enough information so that we can then decide whether a deeper dive (that would require some reading) is warranted.

This is not a phenomenon that is limited to the younger crowd. As the pace of modern life has increased, our attention span has declined. So the average real estate buyer probably lost their patience for the ‘silent movie virtual tour’ many years ago. And who could blame them when silent movie virtual tours require the viewer to stop to read about the property, before or after having taken the time to watch the virtual tour?

When a potential buyer can see an attractive narrated tour, it moves the decision-making process along more efficiently and can help facilitate a much faster sale.

3. Narrated Virtual Tours Sell Your Property for More.

A University of Iowa study of thousands of real estate transactions in southern California found that virtual home tours are a big factor in selling houses at prices 2-3% higher than similar homes without online tours. July 2020 article: “Trying to sell a house? UI study finds virtual tours will bring more $$$” (Radio Iowa, 2020).

Who knew?!

4. Attract High-End Sellers.

The same UI article also noted that virtual tours make realtors look more professional and therefore more attractive to high-end property owners. These sellers prefer to work with agents who use virtual tours because they showcase properties better and shield sellers from a parade of potential buyers trapsing through a property, which is something more affluent sellers feel is an invasion of their privacy and a compromise of security.

5. Create a Feeling of Possession and Ownership.

We know that people make decisions based primarily on how something made them feel. Narrated virtual tours target the buyer’s imagination, giving them a sense of how they can use a house and how they would feel. In other words, a narrated virtual tour helps potential buyers feel more connected to a property because without it. Buyers are left to figure out exactly how they could use the space on their own. When provided with practical ideas of how the space can be used, viewers can more readily see themselves using it.

Sellers are better equipped to make a decision to buy, long before they even set foot on the property for a physical tour. This is because the seller agent creates an expectation in the sellers’ mind through an imaginative and practical narrated virtual tour.

6. NVTs Make Agents Be Remembered.

People remember nearly 65% of the visual content three days later compared to written or spoken content (Jeff Bullas, 15 Visual Content Marketing Statistics That’ll Blow Your Mind, 2018).

Real estate professional are in a battle not only to capture the attention, but to retain it even after the content is seen. Like any well-read story, a compelling narration puts buyers inside the property being sold in a powerful way that isn’t easily forgotten in the flood of images and information viewers see every day. Again, the distinguishing edge is the voice that invites viewers to see themselves inside the story of a given property.

7. Narrated Virtual Tours Help You Save Time.

Narrated virtual tours are 24/7 open houses. It saves and multiplies realtors’ time because it frees them for other tasks because potential buyers are able to view and consider a property without having to physically visit it.

The great thing about narrated virtual tours is that it saves the viewer time because, as mentioned earlier, it can spare them additional reading by providing them with helpful information.

Buyers are willing to do their due diligence. But after a long day at work, many appreciate a virtual tour complete with a well-thought-out narrative to quickly educate them on the property. This gives them the gift of precious time.

8. Increase Traffic to your Website.

The ‘bounce rate’ represents the number of visitors who leave a website after seeing just one page. A website that only maintains visitors’ attention for a moment will have a high bounce rate. Who cares? A high bounce rate adversely affects search engine rankings and online exposure, which can’t be good. People watching narrated videos will stay longer on a given website than those clicking few a slide show or a silent virtual tour.

Not only will they stay longer, they will be more likely to share what they saw, which increases the website’s online authority through backlinks.

[Infographic] Narrated Virtual Tour in Your Real Estate Property

August 11, 2022 by PrincessSarah

Adapting a narrated virtual tour in your real estate property helps you sell it in no time. Below is the infographic based on the researched that I made for the narrated virtual tour.

9 reasons why you should adapt a narrated virtual tour — Here are the reasons why you should adapt a narrated virtual tour in your real estate property.

Make sure to choose the best voice over for your narrated virtual tours to see the best result!

On Your Inferiority Complex & Fear

July 1, 2022 by PrincessSarah

Letters to my younger, academically-challenged, and chronically insecure self.

On Unfriending Inferiority and Fear

You will often find that your deepest hardship and pain will fuel your greatest gifting. At times, you will want to curl up in a ball and disappear. You may even wonder what life would be like if you were strong enough to believe that ‘what it takes’ lives inside of you. When you realize that you are strong and that you do have ‘it,’ things will get a little easier. This letter is to help you on your way to that place.

It has been said that “in every adversity there is the seed to an equivalent advantage” (quote) and this is definitely true. Your struggles to read and understand things others find “intuitive” will feel like an infirmity worsened only by the sense that there is no one in the universe struggling the way you are. As an antidote for this sense of inferiority, I offer five points of encouragement:

Never Compare Yourself

You must vehemently resist the urge to compare yourself to others. Absolutely everyone falls victim to this tendency sometimes, with the result of either feeling better about themselves or feeling worse.

At one extreme, comparing yourself to others in self-congratulation is a sinister trap. It will deceive you into thinking you’ve arrived at the summit when you’ve only made it to the rest-stop halfway up the mountain. People caught in this trap don’t push themselves to develop or improve, satisfied in thinking they’re doing better than most.

Comparisonitis Cuts Both Ways

At the other end of the Comparisonitis Spectrum is the trap that causes people to believe they are losers or failures. You are most vulnerable to this. This evil will cause you to compare your worst feeling or opinion of yourself, with others’ best performance. Remember that exactly the same war that’s going on inside your head is happening inside everyone else’s.

Left unchecked, a constant drip of self-criticism will poison your view of yourself and stunt your growth. Combat this by repeating the vision and promises that have been spoken over your life and that resonate with your purpose. This will build your faith and confidence and renew your mind. Failure to do this will cause you to see those around you as giants and yourself a grasshopper. You will find yourself looking around in dismay, forlorn and intimidated as the people around you seem to advance in life with ease. Those who do advance have only succeeded in shutting down the noise in their head. This isn’t easy. But you must make it your priority.

Know Your Worth

To escape the tendency to be intimidated by others’ “genius”, you must know and value your own. As Albert Einstein put it, “Everyone is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

Know that many well-respected CEOs, successful entrepreneurs, and effective community leaders have overcome challenges far greater than yours. They aren’t bothered by the fact that we can’t all be good at everything. Their success was borne of a blend of resilience and creativity that helped them work through great academic and professional failure. The pain of their childhood only fueled their success.

Hard as it may be to believe, there are things you do with ease that many others might find hard.

Yes, You are a Genius Too!

Are you the person who tends to pick up on things others tend not to see? Do you have an innate ability to assess a situation, diffusing tension and misunderstanding through your humor and emotional intelligence? Are you the one who goes the extra mile to ensure the people who are often overlooked and under-appreciated are seen and applauded? Are you a great listener? Do you understand people’s pain? Are you a great mentor and counselor?

These are valuable qualities. Never forget that, even if you find yourself surrounded by people who don’t appreciate them.

Understand that, while humility has great value, self-deprecation (putting yourself down) has absolutely no place in your thought-life or the words that come out of your mouth. It is possible to be humble and confident at the same time. You must work hard to be both.

Honor those around you and serve them fervently. But make a point to know your gifts and talents and always celebrate them without apology.

Fear is Not Your Friend

Fear will often masquerade as wisdom to hinder you. When you think you are choosing wisdom, it will often be fear that sits at the table to counsel. You must develop the ability to discern the difference. Wisdom is your friend. Fear is not.

To build strength and do hard things with ease, you are going to have to take calculated risk. You must respond to fear quickly. When you do that, you will starve it of its primary sources of nutrition: time and excuses, both of which fuel great unproductivity in most people’s lives. You must seize the opportunity of a lifetime within the lifetime of the opportunity. If you pause at all, do so only to contemplate how you would feel at the end of your life when thoughts about your failure to act flood your mind. Let the only fear to which you respond be the fear of that regret.

Of course, this absolutely does NOT apply to situations involving physical safety. In those circumstances, it’s usually best to run away from the (head)light at the end of the tunnel, instead of towards it.

Just remember that courage is not the absence of fear, it is the ability to continue a course of action in spite of it. Whatever you know to do, hurry up and do it, because the torment you experience will only increase with the time you waste agonizing over it. In short, although fear will be a familiar companion in your life (you are not alone in this) never let anxiety tell you what to do.

Fear opens doors to the negative

You will hear it said that “fear is faith for the things you don’t want,” because it opens doors to the negative, attracting it to you. As Job of the Old Testament once said, “The very thing I feared the most has come upon me.” This is definitely true.

When it comes to choices relating to your purpose and destiny, if anything, the thing you fear is to be food for you. Let it be your fuel and your guide. Think of it as a scarecrow that has been strategically placed in the middle of a field to scare away the birds. The only purpose of the scarecrow is to protect the harvest. In many circumstances, i there weren’t so much at stake, and the voice of fear wouldn’t be so loud. Always seek wise counsel regarding your purpose. But having done so, when you sense fear, run towards it with the expectation of a soon-to-be-harnessed promise.

You will be afraid that people will laugh at you. Let them laugh. They are quietly wondering what their lives might be like if they had your courage. It is a sad reality that most people never fulfill their destiny because fear is more real to them than reality.

Fear closes doors to opportunity

The ability to respond affirmatively to fear is like a muscle that develops when you force yourself outside of your comfort zone. Do this as often as possible.

You will hear it said that people often unwittingly reduce their lives based on the things they are afraid of. For example, someone with a fear of flying might go to great lengths to ensure they never have to board a plane to travel. As a consequence, they live their life never feeling fear. But that is simply because they have reduced their life to accommodate it. They may think they are living “free” from fear, but that’s only because their entire existence is based on the subconscious goal of leaning away from the things they fear instead of leaning in to engage them.

This is an easy trap that many respectable and even highly accomplished people fall into. The live safe lives completely void of courage because they couldn’t face themselves if they failed or found something hard. But now you know. Just as fear opens doors to the negative in your life, it also closes doors of opportunity that you would have wanted to stay open had you known what was on the other side.