I was recently asked to guest write a blog post for a new friend of mine, KC Good Guide of Secret Experiences. I liked her questions and thought I would share that blog here. Please check out KC’s site, as well!

Her questions were: Can you short-circuit fear? Can you stop it in its tracks before it takes over your thinking? If so, how?

My short answer to this question is “Yes”. But like almost every other thing in our lives, we need to learn HOW to do that! Many times, we feel like our emotions are our emotions and there is nothing we can do about them; we just “have” them and sometimes they “have” us! I would ask you to consider letting go of that belief, or at least be open to the possibility that it may not be completely true.

Try this. Set aside some time and smile for about 10-20 seconds. After about 20 seconds, smile bigger, (show some teeth), for about another 10 seconds. After that, start giggling for about 10 seconds. Once you have giggled for 10 seconds, I want you to laugh out loud as hard as you can, (good belly laughs), for a WHOLE MINUTE! It may feel a little awkward or silly at first, but after about 10-20 seconds, your inhibitions will drop and you will be good to go for the rest of the minute.

Now notice how you feel. Do you feel happier? Do you feel tired? Are your cheeks and stomach muscles a little fatigued? Do you feel GOOD?

Wait until the next day, (the idea here is to get your emotions back to a more natural/neutral state), and try this. Frown for about 20-30 seconds. Let your posture slouch and your shoulders drop. Let your head hang down. Begin to gently sob. Really feel it in your belly. Next, begin to sob harder. Become vocal with your sobs, open your mouth. Begin to sob loudly in an agonized way. Do this for a full minute! Really get into the sadness and feel the emotion.

Now notice how you feel. Do you feel sad? Does the emotion feel real and genuine? Did you actually cry? It’s good if you did! That means you were really working it! (If you feel really bad and don’t feel like you are coming out of it, use yesterday’s laughing/happy exercise to change your mood).

Wait until the next day. Again, the idea here is to neutralize your emotions and come from a more natural state. This time, we are going to work on anger. I want you to clench your fists as tightly as you can and scowl. Tense up your arms and your chest. Tense up your neck and clench your teeth. Begin to growl slightly. Feel the anger building up within you. Stand if you feel you have to. Growl louder and begin to scream. Yell and scream and stomp around for an entire minute.

Now notice how you feel. Do you feel genuine anger? Is your breathing fast and heavy? Are you noticing that your fists are still clenched and that your jaw is still tight? Consciously begin to relax these areas of your body.

So what is the point of all of this? The point is that you can consciously and deliberately change your moods. You might be thinking that this is great for happiness, sadness or anger, but it won’t work with fear because fear is an automatic response. True, while fear is an automatic response, many times, so is laughter, tears and anger. Remember, I want you to begin to look at these things differently and notice that you have a choice in them. You can CHOOSE how you feel! Yes, sometimes, it is much more difficult than others, but if you begin to become aware of this and begin to practice, you will find it easier and you will become more and more efficient and effective with it. The first step is to really acknowledge and believe that you can intentionally have an impact of your emotions.

Here is what I would recommend if you want to “short circuit” or by pass your fear in a given situation, (and keep in mind, this will take some practice). The very first thing I would do is to do a safety check. Are you in any immediate danger? Are you being physically harmed? If you are, first and foremost, do whatever it takes to ensure your personal safety and well-being. That is always first and foremost.

Everything from here on will be based on the assumption that you are in no immediate or physical danger. Notice that you are feeling fear. You might even want to say it out loud, “I am experiencing fear right now”. The key step to managing your fear is to get curious about it, (I wrote a similar blog in regards to anger and you can read it here). When you are curious, it is difficult to experience any other emotion. Here are some questions you might ask yourself to help manage your fear:

• What is causing my fear?
• Where do I feel the fear in my body?
• How can I let that go?
• What is it exactly about this situation that is causing my fear?
• How is my fear serving me?
• How is my fear not serving me?
• What is fear costing me in my life? In this situation?
• Do I like living in fear?
• Do I have to live in fear?
• What other emotion would I rather be experiencing right now?
• What is my fear trying to teach me? What am I supposed to learn here?
• How can I be calm in this very moment?
• What do I know to be true about myself?
• What do I know to be true about my safety?
• How can I learn to trust myself?

The nice thing about this whole exercise is that the very same way you created happiness, sadness and anger, you can use this to recreate a fearful moment in your life, (make sure you are feeling the fear in your body), and then begin to ask yourself some of the questions above. Or come up with your own questions! As long as the questions come from a place of curiosity, they should do the trick! You will be teaching and training yourself to manage your fear in a productive way. It may also make fearful experiences of your past be less painful if you are able to step into them again, (while in complete safety), and begin to examine it as I had demonstrated above.

And go easy on yourself! If it doesn’t work the first time, don’t give up! You are actually rewiring your brain and trying to learn a new thought process while UNlearning an old one! This will take some time, but the rewards will be great!

Take care and I will talk to you again soon!

Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
The Possibilities Coach
Tom@epcoachtom.com
www.epcoachtom.com

Nope, sorry, I am not quoting 80’s pop music. I am not even sure who sang that. (Frankie Goes To Hollywood?) Whether I am right or wrong, I should NOT remember Frankie Goes To Hollywood! Today, I am going to suggest that you relax.
 
What?!? RELAX?!? ME?!?! But I have like a ba-jillion things to do, I am behind on bills, my job is shakey, the economy is still in the crapper, I can’t afford to stay where I am at, I can’t afford to move, everything at the dollar store has gone up to $3.50, the dog bit my foot, it is raining, I lost my collection of “Earnest” dvds and I feel like even Elmo is out to get me! How can I relax?!?
 
Good point. These things can all be stressful. What better reason to find a way to and focus on relaxing? Trust me, you will be able to handle all of those life catastrophes much better if you are a little calmer and more relaxed. One thing I notice when I am stressed is that my chest gets tight and I am not breathing very deeply. I consciously stop, take a deep breath, feel my chest expand and then exhale. Sometimes, I have to do this 2 or 3 times in a row.
 
One thing this does is it increases the oxygen supply to your blood and in turn, the rest of your body. It does give you a calming effect. Does it make all of those things go away? No, of course not, but it does allow you to face and address them more effectively. It allows you to address them how YOU WANT to address them, not how you would address them when you are freaking out.
 
So next time you are stressed, take a deep breath; even consider taking up meditation. Yes, I am suggesting that you might want to consider meditating. One thing for sure is that it doesn’t hurt!
 
I will talk to you again tomorrow!
 
Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
Endless Possibilities Coaching and Speaking, LLC
www.EPCoachTom.com
Coaching for Musicians, Actors, Comics and Models
Tom@EPCoachTom.com

Okay, today I am going to start off by butchering a famous quote. If you know the correct quote, good for you! You should get this even more! Here goes: “The only life not worth living is the unexamined life”. (I know. That’s not right, but you get the idea).
 
To continue from yesterday, I was talking about when our fear shifts from a protection mechanism to something that keeps us from moving forward and achieving the things we really want to achieve in our lives. That seems to happen and we don’t even know it. I think that is because we leave fear unexamined.
 
What if we were trained ourselves to recognize and examine our fears? But how can we do that? I think the first step is creating an awareness. Like I said, we don’t even realize that it is happening, so how can we create an awareness. So if I were to devise a process just off the cuff like this, I would say the first step would be to look to the past. Try to recognize times in your past when your fear was a protection mechanism and when it was holding you back. This may take some time, but hey, you have the rest of your life to do this! (Don’t take that as my approval to put off this process until later, do it now!) The next step would be to recognize it when it is happening in the moment. Don’t feel bad if you still follow the same old pattern. We are working on creating awareness. Once you really get the wareness, notice the situation and think about other ways you want to handle things or what you might want to do. Once you have a good awareness, you will be able to be more deliberate about your choices and not let fear rule you!
 
Have a great day! I will talk to you again tomorrow!
 
Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
Endless Possibilities Coaching and Speaking, LLC
www.EPCoachTom.com
Coaching for Musicians, Actors, Comics and Models
Tom@EPCoachTom.com

I think, today, I will talk a little bit about changes. I would also like to encourage you to start a dialogue in the comments section so we can get some cool ideas on changes. The past 3 years have had plenty of changes for me, so I figured this might be a good topic.
 
Some people don’t seem to mind change, while others claim that they hate changes. I know in my previous jobs, I have expressed a dislike for changes. I find it interesting because I was reading something recently, (I know! ME?!? READING?? Hard to imagine, huh), and it was saying that we are constantly in a state of change. We are always in the midst of change. If that is true, wouldn’t it be to our advantage to learn to embrace and even love change? What if we were able to see change as an advantage? I think that many times, we see it as a disadvantage or at the very least, the unknown.
 
I think part of it is that the potential for change invites uncertainty and a general lack of clarity. Interestingly, whenever it comes to the unknown, we tend to focus on fear. We could choose to focus on many different outcomes and possibilities, either positive or negative, but we tend to default towards fear. While I am not a huge fan of fear, it certainly has its’ purpose and can be useful. Its’ origins are usually a protection mechanism. Our ancestors learned to fear larger, predatory animals. If they never had this fear instilled in them, none of us might be around today. It gets dangerous when we allow the fear to move beyond protecting us from danger to preventing us from taking a chance where we could be a huge success. Granted, there is also the chance to fail, but it keeps us from huge successes.
 
Hmmmm,  I like where this is going. Maybe I will continue here tomorrow!
 
Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
Endless Possibilities Coaching and Speaking, LLC
www.EPCoachTom.com
Coaching for Musicians, Actors, Comics and Models
Tom@EPCoachTom.com

Wow! Here it is, less than a half hour before midnight on day nine of the Ultimate Blog Challenge and again, I feel like I have nothing to blog about, but I really don’t want to miss a day of posting. Then it occurred to me, perhaps perseverance is a great topic to blog about today.
 
I feel like I have no topic. I feel like I have nothing, yet I want to stay in the Challenge, (I won’t get kicked out of the challenge for missing days, but I just want to stay on top of it). So today, I am pushing through. Today, I am staying focused on my goal of one post per day for the month. Will I miss any? Possibly, but I really hope not. This post is all about not letting that happen. It is about sticking to it even though I feel like I have nothing to blog about and time is quickly running out. It would be easy to throw in the towel for several reasons. But, like coaching, it is all about what I really want. Do I want to let it go or am I willing to do whatever it takes to make happen what I want to happen.
 
I feel I should mention, too, that regardless of whether I make my goal or miss it, one thing that is vitally important is that I do not judge myself. People tend to judge themselves negatively and far too harshly. My new personal goal is being kind to myself, (among other goals)!
 
So how can you push through? How can you keep yourself from self-judgment? How can you be kind to yourself? Have you even considered any of this? Just think about it. Try it on for a few days!
 
I will talk to you again tomorrow!
 
Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
Endless Possibilities Coaching and Speaking, LLC
www.EPCoachTom.com
Coaching for Musicians, Actors, Comics and Models
Tom@EPCoachTom.com

Coming off of my seven day lull, I find that I am still “lulling”. I wonder if it is because I have had such a busy day. I spent about ten hours today doing sound for a non-profit to which I belong. It wasn’t hard work, but I was required to be “on” pretty much the entire time.
 
This may sound a little ridiculous, but I did have a little win today. I have been doing sound for this non-profit for probably a year or more now. It is not as much as it sounds; one Saturday a month, usually only 3-4 hours. The past few months, we have been having guest speakers via the internet; think Skype, but not Skype.
 
The challenge is that I have a soundboard, microphones and loudspeakers in the room, but then the person on the other computer cannot hear all of that and the people in the room cannot hear the person on the computer. Having different connectors was not the problem. That is nothing adapters can’t fix. Taking the computer headphone jack and running it into a board line. Easy enough, but I was challenged getting the sound in the room into the computer. The outs on the board were already being used for the loudspeakers.
 
Long story, short, I played around with the gear a little bit today and I got it to work. I was afraid that the configuration could easily create a feedback loop in the system, but that did not happen. It actually worked perfectly. We could not have hoped for it to work any better than it did! I felt REALLY GOOD when that happened!
 
Yes, like I said, it was a small win, but it got me to thinking about all the wins that people have and do not enjoy them because they are “ not that big of a deal”. At the same time, people will take their smallest mistakes and torment themselves over it needlessly for days or longer. Little wins = no recognition. Little mistake = self-abuse. Is this you? Is this someone you know? I ask you to make a vow to celebrate your little wins; especially your little wins! Just make the vow! If you break it, no big deal, just COMMIT TO IT AGAIN!
 
Take care and I will talk to you tomorrow!
 
Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
Endless Possibilities Coaching and Speaking, LLC
www.EPCoachTom.com
Coaching for Musicians, Actors, Comics and Models
Tom@EPCoachTom.com

Hey everyone! If you followed me through my last Ultimate Blog Challenge, you know that on some of the days, I was just challenged in finding something to blog about. I felt I needed to blog about something “important”, that “had value”, that “added to people’s lives” and was not “superficial” or “frivolous”. I really pushed myself. I felt that every post had to be deep and had to have great meaning and sometimes, I just couldn’t do it. That is where I am today. Seven days into the challenge and I am not certain what to blog about. The change is that I am not going to beat myself up about it.
 
That just gave me a great idea. Maybe this blog is supposed to be about self-acceptance. Being okay with yourself right where you are, just as you are. It is about noticing that I don’t have anything pressing or insightful to share and just noticing that that is exactly how I am supposed to be right now. Actually, it is about noticing my own perfection exactly as I am. If I were meant to be deep and insightful right now, and if you were meant to get a deep and insightful message from me right now, I would have it and it would happen. The fact that it is not there is proof enough that it is not supposed to be. If it were supposed to be, it would be. It is as simple as that.
 
Isn’t life less stressful when you notice and accept that everything is exactly as it should be? Isn’t it easier noticing that you are perfect exactly as you are? How does that empower you to be your very best and give today everything that you have to give? And look at that! Another blog down! Hopefully, I won’t lull again for another seven days, but whenever it happens, it will be exactly the right time!
 
I will talk to you again tomorrow!
 
Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
Endless Possibilities Coaching and Speaking, LLC
www.EPCoachTom.com
Coaching for Musicians, Actors, Comics and Models
Tom@EPCoachTom.com

I don’t think I will be making a lot of headlines if I tell you that there is a great deal of fear out there today in our society. There is fear in the economy. There is fear in the job market. There is fear in our homes and families. It is part of our everyday life. It is in the headlines of our newspapers, (does anyone read/get newspapers anymore?) it is in the stories in our news programming. It is everywhere. Where there is fear, there is suffering. Fear and suffering pretty much go hand in hand. They are not the same, but there is a close relationship there.
 
I was on Facebook today and one of my friends had an interesting quote listed. It said, “The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.” – Helen Keller. How profound is that? She was speaking about a balance. How balanced are the messages we receive? Probably not very. And when I think about overcoming, it is not a big shift from suffering. Actually, the only shift that needs to happen from suffering to move toward overcoming is action. Inaction allows the suffering to continue. Action makes the change. And it does not have to be huge action. It does not have to be groundbreaking action. It just requires action. And notice that the word is “overcoming”. It is an action word. It is a “present tense” word. It is not a done deal. The job is not finished. It is about an ongoing process, (as is suffering). Suffering leaves you a victim and overcoming gives you a sense of control.
 
I wonder how fast our economy and our culture and our national attitude would change if we shifted our focus from suffering to overcoming? What if those who were suffering were bombarded with messages of people overcoming; of people bettering themselves and their positions? What if success and overcoming were our predominant mentality? How much more empowered would we be as a people? As a nation? Will you shift your focus? How can you do that? How can you maintain that shift?
 
I hope you liked that! I will talk to you again tomorrow!
 
Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
Endless Possibilities Coaching and Speaking, LLC
www.EPCoachTom.com
Coaching for Musicians, Actors, Comics and Models
Tom@EPCoachTom.com

I was in a business building workshop recently conducted by Mark LeBlanc of Small Business Success. We were asked what was going to drive us forward for the next 12 months. The word I put down was Passion. One reason I am blogging about it is to make it more real for me and to really sink it in. I feel like passion is one thing I have been neglecting to connect with in my life. I also think this lack of passion shows up in every area of my life. Every area of my life would benefit from more passion. And the only driver of that passion is me.
 
I feel my business is not at the level that I want it to be at due to a lack of passion. I feel I have not created the life for myself that I want due to a lack of passion. I feel like I can change every aspect of my life by introducing more passion into it.
 
I have mentioned that “playing a bigger game” is a theme that has come up a number of times in my life the past 8 months or so. I don’t feel anyone can really play a bigger game without any passion. Passion is an energy that you have inside yourself and you channel it into what you do. It is something that people can feel and they react to it. And remember what Einstein said? (I think it was Einstein, anyway). Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transferred. So when I have passionate energy and channel it into an activity, there is the potential for more than when I have no passion and don’t put any energy into it. You have heard of things taking off as if they had a life of their own? This probably started with a person putting passionate energy into an activity.
 
So where is your passion? Maybe passion is not the right word for you. What IS your word? How will it drive you for the next 12 months? How will you stay connected to it?
 
That’s it for today! Don’t be surprised if I revisit this topic sometime soon! I will talk to you again tomorrow!
 
Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
Endless Possibilities Coaching and Speaking, LLC
www.EPCoachTom.com
Coaching for Musicians, Actors, Comics and Models
Tom@EPCoachTom.com

I am going to talk today a little bit about trust. What does trust really mean to you? How far does it go? What determines how far it goes for you? Where do you draw the limit? How do you define it? How do you know when you have it? How do you know when it is gone?
 
No, I am not just going to bombard you with powerful coaching questions today. I invite you to really think about it because it has been something that I have been thinking about lately. In December of 2008, I got laid off at my corporate job. I am not alone, this happened to many people nationwide. Raise your hand if it happened to you, too.
 
At the time, I didn’t know where I was going to go. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t know how I was going to generate any income. I did not know how I was going to pay my bills. I did not know how I was going to make it through the next few months, not to mention the next few years.
 
One thing that happened is that I decided what I wanted and, even though I did not know how I would do it, I trusted that I would get what I wanted and I would be alright. How did I know to do that? I don’t really know. I just did it and it worked, so I continued doing it. I have not really tried to explain it or even figure out what was going on. I just continued to trust that everything would work out and, so far, it has.
 
Now I am in a pretty precarious position financially and I feel challenged in my ability to trust. Actually, I feel compelled to “do something” about it. I think this is what happens when people get in their own way. They stop trusting and decide that they need to “do something about it”. They are no longer trusting and invariably, this is when things start to go wrong.
 
I am trying to be deliberate and not reactive. I am trying to be intentional and not ignorant. I am finding that I am learning to trust all over again, but this time, I am finding more fear and more of my own getting in my own way.
 
Do you get in your own way or do you trust things to work out? What keeps you from trusting? How can you grow your ability to trust? Does trusting make your life more stressful or less stressful? Which one feels better? Do you worry more or less when you trust? What do you think that is about?
 
That’s it for today, Kids! (250 words really go by fast!) I will talk to you again tomorrow!
 
Tom Maher, CPCC, ACC
Endless Possibilities Coaching and Speaking, LLC
www.EPCoachTom.com
Coaching for Musicians, Actors, Comics and Models
Tom@EPCoachTom.com