Welcome to an archive of my 2017 course introducing what was once called Curious Experiments – where I taught students to use curiosity as their guide, think like a scientist, and choose their first experiment, set the duration, observe, and begin again after adjusting the variables. This piece is from the script for video one of my 2017 mini-course, Get Started, Get Going. Please enjoy, and I hope this finds those who need it most.
We all struggle with feeling confident, making big decisions, and fearing what might happen if we fail. We all experience doubt, shame, and resistance. Learning to trust yourself is essential.
Stop struggling in emotional quicksand. Let go of resisting and trying to control everything. Accept what is with love and compassion. Lean in. Work with what ya got!
The Get Started, Get Going! mini-course was created to help you develop the emotional habits and courageousness needed to take chances and make big decisions. If the exercises in this course are done repeatedly, your perspectives on life and approach to taking chances will transform.
Making decisions with confidence and clarity will save you time and energy and help you develop trust in your own abilities.
Developing the Experimental Mindset
You and I both know that making big decisions can come with a landslide of doubt and negative self-talk. On top of our own emotional challenges related to moving forward into the unknown, we may also have to deal with not-so-supportive external forces in our lives.
To make big choices, and take on new challenges with excitement, energy, and confidence, we need to plant our roots in mindful thinking and understand how an experimental mindset changes how we manage time and make decisions.
When we learn to be our own best support system, we can build momentum and flow through consistent action and mindful support systems. Integrating the beliefs and practices we’re about to discuss into your daily life will help you feel more peaceful, powerful, and optimistic.
Let’s step into healthy habits and mindsets together with these seven steps meant to take you from doubt and uncertainty to feeling at ease making courageous decisions and feeling excited about possibilities!
1. Establish supportive habits & an experimental mindset.
Give yourself unconditional love.
Behind every hesitation, procrastination, or mental flogging we give ourselves, there’s this aching feeling that we’re not enough. You’re not alone in this. Whether you achieve the big task or not, whether your relationship is going great or not, you gotta love you. No one else can tell you what you deserve – you’ve got to believe it, feel it, know it. You deserve LOVE – and you can’t demand it from outside of you. You are your own best source of unconditional love – love that depends on no achievement.
To some of us, loving ourselves sounds easy. Others of us feel shame even hearing the phrase – “love yourself,” and dish out more punishment for being perfectly loving. It’s a lifetime process that requires daily nurturing.
My mantra for remembering this in tough times is: Be Gentle – You’re already right where you need to be.
Ditch perfectionism.
Perfectionism can be deeply rooted in our belief that nothing we do will ever be good enough. Ditching this belief takes a commitment to shipping your work, as Seth Godin says.
Committing to the practice of taking consistent action can turn nagging perfectionism into fading background noise. Focus on quality and care, not perfection. Do your best, which is likely pretty amazing, but know when good enough is good enough. Release those fears of being vulnerable, and put yourself out there.
Hang out with others who get things done. They know that you learn more from doing than from thinking about doing. You’ll also notice – they’ve got insecurities too, but they’ve embraced taking action anyway.
Embrace uncertainty.
One things for sure, nothing is certain and everything changes. Life is a trial-and-error thing, an experiment. We’re meant to learn from our mistakes. This can be nerve-wracking for our inner over-controller.
I’m going to ask you to go swimming in the uncertainty and overwhelm for a second:
Let yourself be pulled under by the tide.
Your muscles start to tense, your thoughts start to race with choices, instead of
resisting, lean into it.
Let it happen and then suddenly… let go of trying to control everything.
Release your fears into the water.
Like you’re swimming with all your effort and suddenly you roll over and just float.
You’re in an ocean of possibilities – not trying to fight the tide, just going with the flow.
Trust that what you need will come to you, if you just keep making one choice at a time – not getting stuck in the past, or caught up in the future.
Do one thing at a time, let go of control over what might happen,
and respond to what is happening with curiosity.
Experience the audio version of this visualization and blog post here:
Be rested, calm and free of unnecessary chemicals.
Years ago, I was a party girl. It started in high school and went through various phases of intensity throughout my adolescence and young adult life. I partied all summer and put myself through college while working full-time the other seasons. I bet you can guess which part of the year I struggled to make intuitive and loving decisions.
Even today, while I’m mellow and take much better care of me – I still find myself struggling to manage caffeine intake, anxiety, and getting enough sleep. I know when those times come – I need to do the things on my to-do lists that require less intense decision-making and effort. I also do things to bring about more balance in my system. Daily meditation, drinking lots of water, and replacing caffeine with herbal teas tends to the do the trick on all accounts.
Take care of your physical self. Your frontal cortex is responsible for decision making, and lack of sleep, introduction of certain chemicals and stress all cause activity in that area to move to your amygdala, where you’re functioning in fight or flight mode. Decisions made in that mode will be more defensive or reactionary. It’s no wonder it feels tough getting through the day when you’re stressed out or tired.
2. Accept decision-making as a power, not something to fear.
Momentum = Flow State
Automating processes and habits makes it possible to get into a state of flow. Everything comes more easily when we move from one thing to the next without too much hesitation or worry – we build momentum – like in the formula by Isaac Newton an object in motion stays in motion. When we’re in a state of flow, we notice more synchronicity and connection, ideas come to us like little explosions, and bold decision-making becomes second nature.
Confidence = Trust in Yourself
I often use my Osho Zen Tarot cards for deep inspiration. I’m going to use them here to unfold the essential role trust plays in confidence.
Our minds are meant to be tools, but they often become our Master. The mind is typically full of a non-stop stream of thoughts, fears, judgment, and feelings. The pressure can easily become overwhelming and confusing making it seem impossible to feel confident.
Letting go of believing your busy mind is actually in control of what happens outside you is a free fall into Trust. Your feelings of anxiety, doubt, and unworthiness can just be let go of. You have the option of not believing those thoughts and instead trusting in yourself – trusting that you can respond to, and grow from, anything that happens in life. Whatever will be, will be.
Even the life we have now is a temporary gift. We have nothing to control or grasp onto. We have only love to give. Let go of control and believing your thoughts are reality. Trust that in each moment we can choose how we respond. We can care for ourselves regardless of what happens outside of us, and all that happens is an opportunity to expand our lovingness and connection.
Experiment + Learn = Curiosity > Fear
Thinking of life as an experiment where our only objective is to become more aware, or learn and grow will make our curiosity stronger than our fear. This is a really big perspective shift for some of us. We can let go of much of the pressure we put on ourselves if we look at things with the open eyes and heart of a child – eager to learn and excited to experience.
We often see things as either wins or losses – we judge our performance and let it mean something about who we are. A failure to get the result we expect could feel like a big loss, but with a little twist of how we see things, we could see failure as a triumph. We TRIED, we learned something about how we work. We gain knowledge and wisdom from experience – regardless of the outcome.
TAKE ACTION:
You’re Building a Relationship with Yourself
When we repeatedly bring awareness to our feelings and self-talk, we begin to heal the most important relationship we have – relationship to self.
As we learn to tend to our emotional habits with compassion, what we think is possible becomes expansive. Knowing and trusting ourselves deeply amplifies intuition and makes confident decision-making easier.
We make thousands of decisions each day. Bringing awareness to what we already do can give us confidence immediately. Think about the decisions you already make each day. When to wake up, what to eat, what to say and do – you’re already a PRO at this. Now I want you to apply your skills daily to BOLD decisions.
Do something you’ve been wanting to do. Call someone you’ve been wanting to call. Decide on a new haircut. Try thinking or acting in a new way today. Adopt an attitude you want to wear and wear it confidently. These types of decisions truly build confidence and are a way of taking action and living powerfully in the world.
You’re Creating a New Version of Yourself, Right Now
We’re always learning, and either building walls or tearing them down. For this course, we’ll explore both the destruction and building phases of our habitual lives. We’ll ask ourselves, “Does this serve me still, like it did then?” – both honoring our own wisdom and evaluating the variables of our life, choosing how we adjust this beautiful experiment we have going.
Gentle Reminder: No matter what you do, or who you are, if you choose to do everything from a place of love, it’s going to go a lot better for you and everyone else. You can create from a space that isn’t love, but it feels totally different. How you do one thing is how you do everything.
Time to Reflect:
I suggest writing out responses to these inquiries in your favorite notebook or journal (digital or paper).
In preparation for our next lesson, we’re going to reflect on our own motivations, what drives us and gives us meaning.
Preview of Lesson 2: Life’s Purpose
Humans love feeling a sense of purpose. Some of us are more existential than others, and connecting meaning to existence is a passion and necessity.
Reflect on the questions below. If you’re a person who desires deeper meaning in day-to-day life, these questions can help you find it in places you may not have explored.
What do you value?
What are your special skills?
What are you passionate about?
What topics do you find yourself talking about over and over again? What’s most
important to you?
What events have most transformed your sense of who you are?
How can you incorporate your values and passions into your daily life?