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9 Ways to Conquer the Fear of Change

February 4, 2010 by 50 Plus  
Filed under Beyond Crisis and Fear

Change can be a scary thing. When you make a change in your life, you bring yourself into the unknown. You travel from a safe place to one where you don’t know exactly what will happen.

The truth is, there is nothing you can do to stop change. This world is always changing – sometimes for good and sometimes not. The best thing you can do for yourself is to learn the best ways to adapt to change. You’ll soon learn that there’s no reason to fear!

Here is a list of strategies to conquer your fear of change:

1. Think Positive Thoughts. When you embark on a change in your life, think it through in a positive way. Instead of thinking about what could go wrong, picture it all going right.

2. Learning Life Lessons. Think about some of the past changes you’ve gone through in your life and include both the positive outcomes and the negative ones. Regardless of your past, it’s likely that you’ve learned an important life lesson. Yet, if you keep your life stagnant, you’ll lose out on the many important life lessons and experiences.

3. Write Your Thoughts Down. Writing down your innermost thoughts can provide a similar release as confiding with a close friend. Change can be scary, but if you provide yourself with a way to conquer the fear, you can find the courage underneath.

4. Try Hypnosis. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis techniques have been known to help when we need to alter our thinking. Hypnosis can help you relax by feeding you transformative thoughts.

5. Positive Motivation. If you want to get over your fear of change, you have to actually want the change. If you do, you’ll do whatever it takes to get motivated. You can do this by reciting affirmations, writing directions down for yourself, or asking a trusted friend or family member for help.

6. Stay in the Present. Staying in the present moment can help you conquer any fear. It’s far too easy for your mind to get caught up with regrets about the past or worries about the future. In moments of self-doubt, focus only on whatever you’re doing at the moment. This moment is all you have, so you might as well enjoy it!

7. Break Down the Change. If you’re planning a big change in your life, perhaps it will help to break down the change into a series of smaller steps. Doing so will help you to feel less overwhelmed if you can easily transition into a change instead of feeling shocked and scared.

8. The Right Time. Remember that it’s always the right time to change. Don’t make excuses for yourself. Believe that you can do it and go for it!

9. The Back Up Plan. When you embark on a path of change, it may be the unknown that scares you most. If possible, carefully plan through your change. Think about all the possible scenarios and outcomes – positive or negative – then make a plan. When you have a plan, you’ll ease your fears of the unknown and feel at least a little more comfortable with the change.

Change for the Better

Change is going to find you one way or another, so you might as well learn how to go with the flow and learn how to let go. Sure, this is easier said than done, however, learning how to better adapt to change can improve all aspects of your life!

Defeating Disappointment – Strategies to Overcome Any Obstacle and Succeed

January 27, 2010 by 50 Plus  
Filed under Beyond Crisis and Fear, Recent Posts

We’ve all been there. We think we’re well on our way towards a specific goal — whether it’s a new career or a new lease on life — when all of a sudden disaster strikes! We have a setback. Perhaps you didn’t capture the heart of your crush, the promotion fell through, or somehow your perfect plan just didn’t work out.

Disappointment is only human. However, knowing how to accept, manage, and strategize beyond disappointment is the real key to success!

Here are some excellent tips to enable you to stay on track, remain motivated, and defeat your disappointments so that you can overcome them and reap your success:

1. Accept reality. Disappointment is a necessary part of life. In order to experience success, every person must face setbacks or disappointment sometime in their life. The reality of life gives us the polarity of setbacks and successes to better appreciate our wins. Such setbacks also encourage us to strive harder to achieve our goals.


* Overcoming challenges brings us the wisdom to reach even higher goals.

2. Accept relativity. Facing up to the fact that life will always bring trials to overcome will help you beat disappointment in your current mission. Hindsight will inevitably show you that no setback is as big as you thought it was at the time.


* Realizing that life could have handed you a much larger disappointment helps you put the setback in perspective.

3. Do not dwell. When you are hit with a challenge to obtaining your goal, it can be very easy to sink into disappointment. If you find yourself having a pity party, pull yourself up with some positive thinking. Above all else, do not dwell on the last snafu in your struggle to succeed. Dwelling on your disappointment will not change the fact that it happened.


* Spending your time feeling sorry for yourself will delay your success as well as permeate your life with unnecessary pessimism and futility.

4. Create realistic expectations. Like many people today, you may be harboring an unrealistic expectation of yourself. Perhaps you had this inspiring idea to change your life in some grand way. Naturally, you want to achieve your goal now and without anything less than stellar performance! However, realistically, you must recognize that achieving your goals may take some time. You can always adjust your expectations higher and higher as you conquer new goals!


* Having unreal expectations of yourself will only set you up for failure, as you cannot reach impossible heights.

5. Learn from your mistakes. When a setback occurs, the first thing you’d like to do might be to toss in the towel on the whole enterprise! However, a much wiser person bent on success will acknowledge the disappointment as a learning experience.


* If you examine how and why the unwanted situation occurred, then you may be able to restructure your strategy for even bigger and better things than you had originally planned!

6. Stay positive. Lastly, you can surely find your success and win your prize by obliterating disappointment with positive thoughts. Know that you will obtain your goal! Pessimistic thoughts can swallow you whole if you let them, forcing you to delay or give up your dreams altogether.


* Following your positive thoughts with decisive, confident and positive action will propel you to new heights.

Even though disappointment may creep into your life when you least expect it, you can take it in stride by following these techniques. Setbacks don’t define your life; it’s how you react to them that will determine your success. When you face disappointment, learn from the situation, deal with it positively, and confidently move forward toward your goal. Success is yours!

Transforming Grief Into Joy

January 25, 2010 by  
Filed under Beyond Crisis and Fear

Grief is one the hardest things to overcome. The truth is, after a period of loss or grief, a part of us changes and we’re never completely the same. But what we can do is learn how to handle it for the better so we can learn and grow.

Living in perpetual grief is no way to live our lives and surely this is no way our loved one would want us to live. The question is this: is it possible to transform your grief into joy so your grief doesn’t overtake you?

Yes! Here are a few strategies you can use to help turn your grief into joy:

1. Remember that your loved one is in your heart. Although they may be physically gone, they’re still close by. You’re still able to speak to them, feel close to them, and have them in your life.

* Any time you feel the need to feel closer to your loved one, go into a quiet room and close your eyes, then say a prayer or speak to them within your heart.


* This simple strategy can be done at anytime and you can recall all the joys and happiness from you past to cheer you up.

2. Don’t stop talking about them. If you love and miss this person so much, chances are there are others out there who feel exactly the same way. Don’t stop talking about your loved one just because they have physically passed away.

* Talk about the memories, the good times, the bad times, the funny times, and the sad times. Just don’t stop talking and sharing with others about this person.

* If something reminds you of this person, tell others. 


* Celebrate the amazing life they had and always keep their memories alive.

3. Create their legacy. When someone we love passes on, we don’t want people to forget the impact this person made when they were here. A simple idea is to do something in memory of this person that will live on forever.


* For example, you can plant a tree, donate to their favorite charity, or create a scholarship in their name.

4. Know that they would want you to be happy. The person you cared for so deeply would want you to be happy and deep down inside you know this too.

* They would want you to go out and live your life to the fullest. Doing this doesn’t mean you’re forgetting them, because they’ll always be with you in your heart.

* It’s time to leave an impact on someone else just like your loved one impacted you.

The loss of a loved one is never easy. We all take time to grieve our loss, but there’s a time that we must move on. We need to forge on, but we can still carry our loved one in our heart and memories.

We must go out and make them proud of us, and they’ll continue to be right by our side as we move forward again.

Reasons Why We Lose Our Peace

January 24, 2010 by  
Filed under Beyond Crisis and Fear

Inner peace is something we all hope for, but like anything else it takes some work to achieve. Peace is waiting within all of us, but unfortunately we often lose our inner peace and let destructive emotions take over.

If we know what to look for, we can stop these negative emotions in their path and keep peace as a part of our daily lives.

Here are some of the reasons why we lose our peace:

* We Expect Perfection. Sometimes we do this without realizing it, but we always seem to be striving for perfection to an unnatural degree. You need to allow yourself to make mistakes and move forward, instead of kicking yourself for making a mistake you think you could have avoided.

* Being Afraid. When we allow fear into our lives, it disturbs the peace. We need to conquer our fears – or accept them for what they are – in order to restore a peaceful balance.

* Anger and Resentment. Some people don’t realize that strongly negative emotions like anger and resentment are detrimental to your health and well-being. If these emotions arise, it’s important to take a few deep breaths and release them.

* Being Too Busy. In this fast paced world, it’s easy to take on too much. If we start to feel too stressed out, we lose our interior freedom. Sometimes busyness and stress are unavoidable, which is why it’s important to take frequent breaks.

* Accept Challenges. Accept challenges and accept your situation. Once you surrender and deal with the situation you’re given, you’ll no longer have to deal with the negative emotions that might be fighting with you. If you can accept the worst-case scenario, then there’s nothing to worry about!

* Regrets. Regrets can cloud your current thinking with thoughts of the past that are unchangeable. When we regret the past, we lose the opportunity for peace in the present moment.

Everything Happens For a Reason

You have to remember that everything happens for a reason and everyone has a purpose. Think about everything in your life that you’re happy about and things that make you proud, and allow that to bring you joy. Remember that peace usually accompanies positive emotions.

You might regret a decision or a certain thing that happened to you. However, those negative things had to happen in order for you to be given the life that you have now. The positive things would not be there without the negative ones too. You can find peace again by remembering that everything balances out.

Meditation

If you’ve lost your peace and negative emotions are the culprit, try meditation. You can discover many things about yourself and achieve inner peace by using this simple practice.

The heart of meditation is accepting things as they are. Meditate on the fact that you need to accept all emotions in order to become free.

Achieving Inner Peace

Inner peace doesn’t have to be achieved by any set rule. The most important thing to remember is to find something that works for you personally.

Set a certain amount of time each day that you can dedicate to maintaining peace. It could be meditation, listening to your favorite music, or taking a bath. Whatever it is, when you take these simple steps, you’ll achieve an unshakeable freedom within you!

Mastering Anger Management

January 23, 2010 by  
Filed under Beyond Crisis and Fear

In order to master anger management, you need to gain control over your emotions. You’ll need to get into a mindset that allows you to think before you act or speak.

If you don’t learn to control your anger, you may destroy the relationships around you and cause physical and emotional harm to everyone, including yourself.

About Anger

Anger serves an important purpose. Anger is an emotion that tells us that something is wrong. It may even help us to get out of dangerous situations, but sometimes the threats are just perceived and anger is not an appropriate emotion.

Anger itself is not the main problem here though. It may help you to try to feel less angry in some situations, but for the most part your goal should be to learn how to express yourself in a healthier way.

Here are some strategies that will help you to keep a cool head:

1. Don’t React. Think about the situations that have gotten you into trouble in the past. You likely immediately reacted to the problem at hand with angry emotions. Whenever you’re presented with a stressful situation, it’s important withhold rash reactions. Think about what’s really going on, and then decide how you really feel about everything.

2. Take Cool Down Time. You’re not always in a situation where you can take as long as you want without a reaction. If you’re feeling extremely angry, make sure you take a few moments of cool down time. Before you react, try counting to ten in order to give yourself at least a moment to get into the right mindset.

3. Don’t Worry About Others. Sometimes you feel terrible about other people’s opinions of you. When you get caught up in making everyone else happy, you end up forgetting about yourself. This is how your emotions can take control, but you can only ignore yourself for so long.

4. Start Exercising. A daily exercise routine can help you to release energy and emotions. If anger arises, you can also go out for a walk or play some sports as an outlet for that anger.

5. Don’t Hold Grudges. A grudge only hurts you in the long run. Learn the art of forgiving and forgetting. This will bring peace to you and the person you’re holding a grudge against.

6. Practice Relaxation. Anger arises more often if you’re tense and stressed. Study different relaxation techniques that will help you to unwind.

Some of these techniques include:

* Yoga
* Meditation
* Taking a Bath
* Deep Breathing
* Listening to Music
* Journaling

7. Learn Healthy Anger Expression. The trick is not to completely ignore your anger, but to express it in a healthy manner. After you have taken some cool down time, consider your words and communicate why you’re feeling angry in a calm fashion.

Suppressing Your Anger

You may think that you have mastered your anger, but you might actually be suppressing your anger, which could end up making everything worse.

When you suppress your anger it ends up buried deep inside and will come out in undesirable ways. You could start to feel overly stressed, you could get headaches, or you may even start to have problems with high blood pressure. Your mental health may begin to suffer as well. Suppressing anger has been known to lead to life-long problems with depression.

You should remember that if you’ve been feeling especially out of control, seek the help of a health professional.

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