SURVIVING the Circle of Love (and smashing your fears to teeny tiny bits)

Morning,

So nice of you to swing on by today and drop by my site!   And how has the day been treating you so far?

Me, well, last night a miracle did occur….I actually (I hope you’re sitting down for this) slept. 

Yes yes, now hold your disbelief, I’m well-aware I’m known in the social networking world as the entrepreneur whose idea of parallel processing is writing 21 blogs at the same time whose motto is, why sleep when  you can write?   And yes, true, yesterday WAS adult karate sparring (the wondrous activity that always keeps up until 1am as for some reason, my body just doesn’t want to descend into common-sense sleep mode).

Yesterday, however, was different.  Instead of sparring, we spent the entire hour doing "conditioning."  Now, I’m not talking about "conditioning" as it relates to your hair after shampooing, or "conditioning" as in "Jeepers Mom, it’s going to be Band Camp soon, I had better condition my body to handle the 8.3 forced march that takes place every 47 minutes!".

No sirree, this conditioning had us facing off against partners and performing blocks with our forearms.  The more you feel it, the better your body learns to take it, and my partner and I did rather well. 

(Side note here – I already had artistically delightful bruises on my forearms from prior martial arts training over the weekend; I am incredibly blessed with superior senseis in all my activities.  ‘Course, that particular bruise segued neatly into "think piling pain on top of pain, wheee wheeee happy happy joy joy!" ….I assume you get a slight idea as to the utter bliss this exercise was, right?  Riiiiiight…..).

Update – my daughter was so amused by the bruise she drew a smiley face on it. 

But next,  ah, next was the Circle of Love!  This not-to-be-missed exercise had us standing in a circle and then round-kicking the people to the left and to the right of us.  While I could think of ways this activity could be improved (more power!), it was really freakin’ unbelievably cool quite pleasant to realize I could take hits and demand more more more.

Which of course, brings me to the point of this post!

The Circle of Love has many superb applications that can be related to your daily blogging and business endeavors.

Think about it.  If you stay in your comfort zone while conducting business online, you’ll never grow, you’ll never take a new chance, you’ll never be open to the short-term agonies of failure only to leap-frog over it to dynamic success.

The CoL teaches participants to "take the hit" in an environment in which we all trust one another.  It’s not going to kill us or even cause much discomfort….BUT the EMOTIONAL shock of catching a kick in your belly or slamming your forearm against an unmoveable chunk of concrete the sensei who is running it is something that builds your inner strength and character as well.  Yes indeed, dare I say it – it’s….it’s……it’s character building! 

But I digress again. 

So!  Let’s bring this post back to the most important person in the world – YOU.

Have YOU manned up the courage to break through your comfort boundaries?

• Have you been considering a new idea about which to write…but are afraid of the reactions?
• Are you thinking about approaching an A-list blogger….but are terrified of being told NO?
• Are you debating about taking the plunge and writing a ebook on your star niche topic…but worry "will people buy?"

Hmmmmm?

If so, permit me to inquire:

How do you KNOW the results will be too painful to bear….unless you muster up the courage to give it a shot?

Well?

You will NEVER EVER EVER know in a million bazillion gazillion years that of which you are capable…until you take that first step to actually SEE.

And that step has to come from within YOU.  Nobody else can do it for you!

You know, I’ve been participating in martial arts now for over 2 years, making up for the time I lost from never enjoying it in my teens and twenties.  It’s a matter of personal pride to me that I, the all-powerful extremely zany handicapped mom of 4 can take what’s dished out, stand there and demand more, when participants 1/3 my age declare…."enough!  Enough already!".

I think that self-confidence came from constantly putting myself in the position of "See Barbara!  See Barbara Get Smooshed!  See Barbara Stagger Up!  See Barbara!  See Barbara Get Smooshed!" and repeating it again and again…until the time between the "get smooshed" parts and "stagger up" parts grew and grew and grew. The super-coolio thing about this, however, is that self-confidence now carries on over to my business world as well.

Face your fears often enough… (or even once!) and you might see….you can teach yourself to steamroller over them and leap towards ever higher success in your future.

Wouldn’t you agree?

Want some resources to help you overcome fear?  Check out:

• Fear and worry kill self-confidence
• Face your fears
• Face your fears II
• Facing and crushing your fears
• Facing your fears III
• Facing your fears IV
• Facing Fears
• Facing our biggest fears
• Forget Everything and Run
• Lessons in Facing your Fears
• Overcome Your Fears to Achieve Your Professional Goals
• What’s your motivation…your Fears or Goals?

I’d like to close this article by a quote from Barbara Sher, a superb career guide:

“What will determine the course of your life more than any other one thing is whether or not you are willing to tolerate necessary discomfort.”

So very very very true.  If you get a chance, do visit her boards – they’re mind-opening to the extreme.

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling

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Tagged as: confidence

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-- Barbara Ling