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The Courage to Live Consciously

Security is mostly a superstition. It need to adjust the items on your list to
does not exist in nature, make them practical for you to actually
nor do the children of men as a whole experience. And if you ever feel the next
experience it. step is too big, then break it down into
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long additional gradients. If you can lift 290
run than outright exposure. pounds but not 300, then try 295 or even
Life is either a daring adventure, or 291. Take this process as gradually as
nothing. you need to, such that the next step is a
To keep our faces toward change and mild challenge for you but one you feel
behave like free spirits fairly confident you can complete. And
in the presence of fate is strength feel free to repeat a past step multiple
undefeatable. times if you find it helpful to prepare
- Helen KellerIn our day-to-day lives, you for the next step. Pace yourself.By
the virtue of courage doesn't receive following this progressive training
much attention. Courage is a quality process, you'll accomplish two things.
reserved for soldiers, firefighters, and You'll cease reinforcing the fear
activists. Security is what matters most avoidance response that you exhibited in
today. Perhaps you were taught to avoid the past. And you'll condition yourself
being too bold or too brave. It's too to act more courageously in future
dangerous. Don't take unnecessary risks. situations. So your feelings of fear will
Don't draw attention to yourself in diminish at the same time that your
public. Follow family traditions. Don't expression of courage grows.
talk to strangers. Keep an eye out for Neurologically you'll be weakening the
suspicious people. Stay safe.But a side limbic control over your actions while
effect of overemphasizing the importance strengthening the neocortical control,
of personal security in your life is that gradually moving from unconscious
it can cause you to live reactively. mouse-like to conscious human-like
Instead of setting your own goals, making behavior.The second approach to building
plans to achieve them, and going after courage is to acquire additional
them with gusto, you play it safe. Keep knowledge and skill within the domain of
working at the stable job, even though it your fear. Confronting fears head-on can
doesn't fulfill you. Remain in the be helpful, but if your fear is largely
unsatisfying relationship, even though due to ignorance and lack of skill, then
you feel dead inside compared to the you can usually reduce or eliminate the
passion you once had. Who are you to fear with information and training. For
think that you can buck the system? example, if you're afraid to quit your
Accept your lot in life, and make the job and start your own business, even
best of it. Go with the flow, and don't though you'd absolutely love to be in
rock the boat. Your only hope is that the business for yourself, then start reading
currents of life will pull you in a books and taking classes on how to start
favorable direction.No doubt there exist your own business. Spend an afternoon at
real dangers in life you must avoid. But your local library researching the
there's a huge gulf between recklessness subject, or do the research online. Join
and courage. I'm not referring to the the local Chamber of Commerce and any
heroic courage required to risk your life relevant trade organizations in your
to save someone from a burning building. field. Attend conferences. Build
By courage I mean the ability to face connections. Enlist the help of a mentor.
down those imaginary fears and reclaim Build your skill to the point where you
the far more powerful life that you've start to feel confident that you could
denied yourself. Fear of failure. Fear of actually succeed, and this knowledge will
rejection. Fear of going broke. Fear of help you act more boldly and courageously
being alone. Fear of humiliation. Fear of when you're ready. This method is
public speaking. Fear of being ostracized especially effective when a large part of
by family and friends. Fear of physical your fear is due to the unknown. Often
discomfort. Fear of regret. Fear of just reading a book or two on the subject
success.How many of these fears are will be enough to dispel the fear where
holding you back? How would you live if you're able to take action.These two
you had no fear at all? You'd still have methods are my personal favorites, but
your intelligence and common sense to there are many additional ways to
safely navigate around any real dangers, condition yourself to overcome fear,
but without feeling the emotion of fear, including neuro-linguistic programming,
would you be more willing to take risks, implosion therapy, systematic
especially when the worst case wouldn't desensitization, and self-confrontation.
actually hurt you at all? Would you speak You can research them via an online
up more often, talk to more strangers, search engine if you wish to learn such
ask for more sales, dive headlong into methods and increase the number of
those ambitious projects you've been fear-busting tools in your arsenal. Most
dreaming about? What if you even learned of these can be easily self-administered
to enjoy the things you currently fear? (implosion therapy is the notable
What kind of difference would that make exception).The exact process you use to
in your life?Have you previously build courage isn't important. What's
convinced yourself that you aren't really important is that you consciously do it.
afraid of anything... that there are Just as your muscles will atrophy if you
always good and logical reasons why you don't regularly stress them, your courage
don't do certain things? It would be rude will atrophy if you don't consistently
to introduce yourself to a stranger. You challenge yourself to face down your
shouldn't attempt public speaking because fears. In the absence of this kind of
you don't have anything to say. Asking conscious conditioning, you'll
for a raise would be improper because automatically become weak in both body
you're supposed to wait until the next and mind. If you aren't regularly
formal review. They're just exercising your courage, then you are
rationalizations though - think about how strengthening your fear by default; there
your life would change if you could is no middle ground. Just as your muscles
confidently and courageously do these automatically atrophy from lack of use,
things with no fear at all.What Is so your courage will automatically decay
Courage?Courage is not the absence of in the absence of conscious
fear, but rather the judgment that conditioning.Now this may sound overly
something else is more important than gloomy, so here's a positive way to look
fear. at it. Heavy weights can be a physical
- Ambrose RedmoonCourage is resistance burden, but they are helpful tools to
to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of build strong muscles. You would not look
fear. at a 45-pound dumbbell and say, "Why must
- Mark TwainCourage is being scared to you be so heavy?" It is what it is.
death, but saddling up anyway. Heaviness is your thought, not an
- John WayneI like the definitions of intrinsic property of the dumbbell
courage above, which all suggest that itself. Similarly, do not look at the
courage is the ability to get yourself to things you fear and say, "Why must you be
take action in spite of fear. The word so scary?" Fear is your reaction, not a
courage derives from the Latin cor, which property of the object of your
means "heart." But true courage is more a anxiety.Fear is not your enemy. It is a
matter of intellect than of feeling. It compass pointing you to the areas where
requires using the uniquely human part of you need to grow. So when you encounter a
your brain (the neocortex) to wrest new fear within yourself, celebrate it as
control away from the emotional limbic an opportunity for growth, just as you
brain you share in common with other would celebrate reaching a new personal
mammals. Your limbic brain signals best with strength training.Catch a
danger, but your neocortex reasons that Glimpse of Your Own GreatnessEveryone has
the danger isn't real, so you simply feel talent. What is rare is the courage to
the fear and take action anyway. The more follow the talent to the dark place where
you learn to act in spite of fear, the it leads.
more human you become. The more you - Erica JongThe highest courage is to
follow the fear, the more you live like a dare to appear to be what one is.
lower mammal. So the question, "Are you a - John Lancaster SpaldingWhatever you
man or a mouse?" is consistent with human do, you need courage. Whatever course you
neurology.Courageous people are still decide upon, there is always someone to
afraid, but they don't let the fear tell you that you are wrong. There are
paralyze them. People who lack courage always difficulties arising that tempt
will give into fear more often than not, you to believe your critics are right. To
which actually has the long-term effect map out a course of action and follow it
of strengthening the fear. When you avoid to an end requires some of the same
facing a fear and then feel relieved that courage that a soldier needs. Peace has
you escaped it, this acts as a its victories, but it takes brave men and
psychological reward that reinforces the women to win them.
mouse-like avoidance behavior, making you - Ralph Waldo EmersonSo what do you do
even more likely to avoid facing the fear with your newly developed courage? Where
in the future. So the more you avoid will it lead you? The answer is that it
asking someone out on a date, the more will permit you to lead a far more
paralyzed you'll feel about taking such fulfilling and meaningful life. You will
actions in the future. You are literally truly begin living as a daring human
conditioning yourself to become more being instead of a timid mouse. You will
timid and mouse-like.Such avoidance uncover and develop your greatest
behavior causes stagnation in the long talents. You will begin living far more
run. As you get older, you reinforce your consciously and deliberately than you
fear reactions to the point where it's ever have before. Instead of reacting to
hard to even imagine yourself standing up events, you will proactively manufacture
to your fears. You begin taking your your own events.Courage is something you
fears for granted; they become real to can only truly experience alone. It is a
you. You cocoon yourself into a life that private victory, not a public one.
insulates you from all these fears: a Summoning the courage to listen to your
stable but unhappy marriage, a job that innermost desires is not a group activity
doesn't require you to take risks, an and does not result from building a
income that keeps you comfortable. Then consensus with others. Kahlil Gibran
you rationalize your behavior: You have a writes in The Prophet, "The vision of one
family to support and can't take risks, man lends not its wings to another man."
you're too old to shift careers, you The purpose of your existence is yours
can't lose weight because you have "fat" alone to discover. No one on earth has
genes. Five years... ten years... twenty lived through the exact same experiences
years pass, and you realize that your you have, and no one thinks the exact
life hasn't changed all that much. You've same thoughts you do.On the one hand,
settled down. All that's really left now this is a lonely realization. Whether you
is to live out the remainder of your live alone or enjoy the deepest intimacy
years as contently as possible and then with a loving partner, deep down you must
settle yourself into the ground, where still face the reality that your life is
you'll finally achieve total safety and yours alone to live. You can choose to
security.But there's something else going temporarily yield control of your life to
on behind the scenes, isn't there? That others, whether it be to a company, a
tiny voice in the back of your mind spouse, or simply to the pressures of
recalls that this isn't the kind of life daily living, but you can never give away
you wanted to live. It wants more, much your personal responsibility for the
more. It wants you to become far results. Whether you assume direct and
wealthier, to have an outstanding conscious control over your life or
relationship, to get your body in peak merely react to events as they happen to
physical condition, to learn new skills, you, you and you alone must bear the
to travel the world, to have lots of consequences.If you commit to following
wonderful friends, to help people in the path of courage, you will ultimately
need, to make a meaningful difference. be forced to confront what is perhaps the
That voice tells you that settling into a greatest fear of all - that you are far
job where you sell widgets the rest of more powerful and capable than you
your life just won't cut it. That voice initially realized, that your ultimate
frowns at you when you catch a glance of potential is far greater than anything
your oversized belly in the mirror or get you've experienced in your past, and that
winded going up a flight of stairs. It with this power comes tremendous
beams disappointment when it sees what's responsibility. You may not be able to
become of your family. It tells you that solve all the woes of this planet, but if
the reason you have trouble motivating you ever do commit yourself 100% to the
yourself is that you aren't doing what fulfillment of your true potential, you
you really ought to be doing with your can significantly impact the lives of
life... because you're afraid. And if you many people, and that impact will ripple
refuse to listen, it will always be through the future for generations to
there, nagging you about your mediocre come.What is the difference between you
results until you die, full of regrets and one of those legendary historical
for what might have been.So how do you figures who did have such an impact? You
respond to this ornery voice that won't both had many of the same fears. You both
shut up? What do you do when confronted were born with talents in some areas and
by that gut feeling that something just weaknesses in others. The only thing
isn't right in your life? What's your stopping you is fear, and the only thing
favorite way to silence it? Maybe drown that will get you past it is courage.
it out by watching TV, listening to the What you do with your life isn't up to
radio, working long hours at an your parents, your boss, or your spouse.
unfulfilling job, or consuming alcohol It's up to you and you alone.Catching a
and caffeine and sugar.But whenever you glimpse of your own greatness can be one
do this, you lower your level of of the most unsettling experiences
consciousness. You sink closer towards an imaginable. And even more disturbing is
instinctive animal and move away from the awareness of the tremendous
becoming a fully conscious human being. challenges that await you if you accept
You react to life instead of proactively it. Living consciously is not an easy
going after your goals. You fall into a path, but it is a uniquely human
state of learned helplessness, where you experience, and it requires making the
begin to believe that your goals are no committed decision to permanently let go
longer possible or practical for you. You of that mouse within you. Going after
become more and more like a mouse, even your greatest and most ambitious dreams
trying to convince yourself that life as and experiencing failure and
a mouse might not be so bad after all, disappointment, running butt up against
since everyone around you seems to be OK your most humbling human limitations
with it. You surround yourself with your instead of living with a comfortable
fellow mice, and on the rare occasions padding of potential - these fears are
that you encounter a fully conscious common to us all.The first few times you
human being, it scares the hell out of encounter such fears, you may quickly
you to remember how much of your own retreat back to the illusory security of
courage has been lost.Raise Your life as a mouse. But if you keep
ConsciousnessLife shrinks or expands in exercising your courage, you will
proportion to one's courage. eventually mature to the point where you
- Anais NinCourage is the price that can openly accept the challenges and
Life exacts for granting peace. responsibilities of life as a fully
- Amelia EarhartYou gain strength, conscious human being. Continuing to live
courage and confidence by every as a mouse will simply hold no more
experience in which you really stop to interest for you. You will acknowledge
look fear in the face. You are able to within the deepest recesses of your
say to yourself, "I have lived through being, I have awakened to this incredible
this horror. I can take the next thing potential within me, and I accept what
that comes along." You must do the thing that will require of me. Whatever it
you think you cannot do. costs me, whatever I must sacrifice to
- Eleanor RooseveltThe way out of this follow this path, bring it on. I'm ready.
vicious cycle is to summon your courage Even though you will still experience
and confront that inner voice. Find a fear, you will recognize it for the
place where you can be alone with pen and illusion it is, and you will know how to
paper (or computer and keyboard). Listen use your human courage to face it down,
to that voice, and face up to what it's such that fear will no longer have the
telling you, no matter how difficult it power to stop you.Embrace the Daring
is to hear. (The voice is just an AdventureBefore you embark on any path
abstraction - you may not hear words at ask the question, does this path have a
all; instead you may see what you should heart? If the answer is no, you will know
be doing or simply feel it emotionally. it and then you must choose another path.
But I'll continue to refer to the voice The trouble is that nobody asks the
for the sake of example.) This voice may question. And when a man finally realizes
tell you that your marriage has been dead that he has taken a path without a heart
for ten years, and you're refusing to the path is ready to kill him.
face it because you're afraid of divorce. - Carlos CastanedaThe deeper that sorrow
It may tell you that you're afraid that carves into your being, the more joy you
if you start your own business, you'll can contain. Is not the cup that holds
probably fail, and that's why you're your wine the very cup that was burned in
staying at a job that doesn't challenge the potter's oven? And is not the lute
you to grow. It may tell you that you've that soothes your spirit, the very wood
given up trying to lose weight because that was hollowed with knives?
you've failed at it so many times, and - Kahlil GibranInaction breeds doubt and
you're addicted to food. It may tell you fear. Action breeds confidence and
that the friends you're hanging out with courage. If you want to conquer fear, do
now are incongruent with the person you not sit home and think about it. Go out
want to be, and that you need to leave and get busy.
that reference group behind and build a - Dale CarnegieAs you develop a sense of
new one. It may tell you that you always your true purpose in life, you may begin
wanted to be an actor or writer, but you to feel an uneasy disconnect between your
settled for a sales job because it seemed current life situation and the one you
more safe and secure. It may tell you envision moving towards. These two worlds
that you always wanted to help people in may seem so different to you that you
need, but you aren't doing so in the way cannot mentally conceive of how to build
you should. It may tell you that you're a bridge between them. How can you
wasting your talents.See if you can balance the practical reality of taking
reduce that voice to just a single word care of your third-dimensional
or two. What is it telling you to do? obligations like earning money to pay
Leave. Quit. Speak. Write. Dance. Act. your bills and taxes, pleasing your boss,
Exercise. Sell. Switch. Move on. Let go. raising your family, and maintaining
Ask. Learn. Forgive. Whatever you get social relationships with people who
from this, write it down. Perhaps you can't even relate to what you're
even have different words for each area experiencing vs. the new vision of
of your life.Now you have to take the yourself you desperately want to move
difficult step of consciously towards. A whole host of new fears may
acknowledging that this is what you crop up related to this seemingly
really want. It's OK if you don't think impossible shift. How will you support
it's possible for you. It's OK if you yourself? What will become of your
don't see how you could ever have it. But relationships? Are you just deluding
don't deny that you want it. You lower yourself?The best advice I can give you
your consciousness when you do that. When here is to forget about trying to build a
you look at your overweight body, admit bridge. Focus instead on independently
that you really want to be fit and beginning the process of manifesting the
healthy. When you light up that next new vision of yourself from scratch, as
cigarette, don't deny that you want to be if it were a totally separate thread in
a nonsmoker. When you meet the potential your life. If this creates a temporary
mate of your dreams, don't deny that incongruence in your life, just do it
you'd love to be in a relationship with anyway. For example, suppose you
that person. When you meet a person who currently work as a divorce attorney, but
seems to be at total peace with herself, your courage tells you that you must
don't deny that you crave that level of eventually abandon such adversarial work.
inner peace too. Get yourself out of You envision yourself passionately
denial. Move instead to a place where you teaching couples how to heal their broken
admit, "I really do want this, but I just relationships. But you can't even fathom
don't feel I currently have the ability yourself as a trial lawyer trying to
to get it." It's perfectly OK to want speak about healthy relationships, and on
something that you don't think you can top of that problem, you can't see any
have. And you're almost certainly wrong way to make a decent living in this new
in concluding that you can't have it. But career, at least not quickly. There's
first, stop lying to yourself and just too big a disconnect between this
pretending you don't really want it.Move new vision and practical reality. So
From Fear to Action, Even if You Expect instead of trying to bridge this gap,
to FailWhen a resolute young fellow steps just begin building your new vision
up to the great bully, the world, and completely from scratch in whatever time
takes him boldly by the beard, he is you have, even if it's only an hour or
often surprised to find it comes off in two each week. Keep doing your regular
his hand, and that it was only tied on to work as an attorney, but in your spare
scare away the timid adventurers. time, start posting anonymously on
- Ralph Waldo EmersonMost of our relationship message boards to give
obstacles would melt away if, instead of couples advice on how to heal their
cowering before them, we should make up relationships. Use the oratory skills you
our minds to walk boldly through them. developed as an attorney to begin
- Orison Swett MardenCourage and speaking to small groups about healing
perseverance have a magical talisman, relationships. Perhaps create a new web
before which difficulties disappear and site, and start writing and posting
obstacles vanish into air. articles about your new passion. You
- John Quincy AdamsNow that you've don't have to hide the fact that you're
acknowledged some things you've been an attorney, but don't worry about
afraid to face, how do you feel? You bridging these two worlds. Live in
probably still feel paralyzed against paradox. Just start developing the new
taking action. That's OK. While diving you, and allow the old one to continue in
right in and confronting a fear head-on parallel for a while.What will happen is
can be very effective, that may require that you'll develop skill in your new
more courage than you feel you can summon undertaking, and you'll eventually be
right now.The most important point I want able to support yourself from it, even if
you to learn from this article is that you can't see how to do so right away.
real courage is a mental skill, not an You may not be able to see a way to
emotional one. Neurologically it means support yourself in your new vision right
using the thinking neocortex part of your now, and that's fine. Just begin it
brain to override the emotional limbic anyway, doing it for free, without any
impulses. In other words, you use your concern of how to turn it into a new
human intelligence, logic, and full-time career. Patiently wait for
independent will to overcome the clarity; you will eventually find a way
limitations you've inherited as an to make it work. Then when the time is
emotional mammal.Now this may make right, you'll be able to peacefully let
logical sense, but it's far easier said go of the old career and focus all your
than done. You may logically know you're energy on the new one. At some point
in no real danger if you get up on a you'll be able to commit fully to your
stage and speak in front of 1000 people, new self. Your passion for your new work
but your fear kicks in anyway, and the will eventually overwhelm your fear of
imaginary threat prevents you from letting go of your old source of
volunteering for anything like this. Or stability. So instead of trying to
you may know you're in a dead end job, transform your old career into your new
but you can't seem to bring yourself to one, just start the process of building
say the words, "I quit."Courage, however, </