How to Conquer Your Fears—Part 2. Get Wired for Courage!

In the last blog, I wrote many of our fears are hard-wired, learned during childhood or adolescence, and can have very adverse effects on our health and well-being.

I asked, “So, how do we hard-wire courage?”

This is how you do it:

Select the fear that is most troubling or disabling.

The greater your desire for change, the greater the ease of rewiring.

Realize that hard-wiring can be difficult to undo, but possible! With the following strategies, you can undo even hard-wired thought patterns and emotional responses!

Here’s the good news: It is easy to create new wiring! You can wire new positive thoughts of courage and confidence into your psyche.

Then create a model of a new you in your imagination.

See this model looking, sounding, and feeling courageous. For example, if your fear is of financial failure, in your mind’s eye, imagine yourself looking at financial hardship as a challenge, and an opportunity for building resilience and growth. If your fear is of conflict, imagine meeting it head on with courage. If speaking out fills you with dread, see and hear yourself speaking with conviction and strength.

Allow new feelings of courage and personal power to well up within you when imagining yourself in these scenarios.

Link your new thought patterns to other positive emotions, such as optimism, confidence, and joy. Positive emotions increase the number, strength, and duration of your new brain cell networks.

Continue to focus on this model of a new you.

You will strengthen your brain cell network that underpin and support this new belief.

Mental rehearsal, meditation, or mindfulness cause the same rewiring in your brain as real-life experiences, so you can use one or all these practices to wire your brain to further focus on greater and greater courage. They are like “software” to program your mind for new beliefs and behaviors (see below).

Understand that progress is often two steps forward, followed by one back.

Realize that it is as easy to create negative wiring in your brain as it is to build positive brain cell networks. Counter to this, as you build new beliefs and behaviors, the brain cell networks responsible for your fears weaken. By not focusing on them, they may indeed become benign memories, a thing of the past, no longer controlling you.

Practice makes perfect!

You do not undo hard-wired negative thought patterns in one go. Practice continues wiring your brain for courage. Indeed, Get Wired for Courage!

All these strategies are based on proven neuroscience and positive psychology. They work!

In the last blog of this series, I will expand on the use of mental rehearsal, meditation, and mindfulness to hard-wire your brain for courage.

If you want to wire your brain for business life of your dreams—easily, inexpensively and in less than five weeks guaranteed—check out my FREE On-Demand Webinar "5 Keys to Wire Your Brain for Awesome Business Success!"

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