Many of you know that the topic of moving through fear is one have often visited on this blog and that I sometimes broach as a speaker. I think it’s imperative to learn to conquer our fears so we can live our lives fully and accomplish our goals. I rarely publish an interview on this blog, but I felt compelled to do so after reading a free ebook, called The Flinch, by Julien Smith, which is also about moving through fear—or overcoming fear. The Flinch also is about asking people to change, compelling them to change. In that way, Julien is a change agent. So, I was thrilled to get a chance to interview him and to share that interview with you.

Julien is a New York Times bestselling author of two books, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust and The Flinch. He is a consultant and speaker who has been involved in online communities for over fifteen years, from early BBSs and flash mobs to social web as we know it today. He also was one of the first Twitter users and one of the first people to podcast in 2004 (which is impressive to me since I’ve just struggled to get my first podcast up). He has worked with numerous media publications, such as Sirius Satellite Radio, GQ, CBS, Cosmopolitan, and more.

The following interview is part of a three part interview. You can read the other parts here and here. In this part, Julien talks about our bad habit of “flinching” when we expect to experience pain and how to train ourselves to consciously build the strength to get past our fear–to stop flinching.

I just finished reading your newest book, The Flinch, which, I loved. For those who have not read it, could you just briefly explain the concept?

Sure. I guess in a way The Flinch, in a nutshell, is about our pathological lack of courage as individuals. Many of the things we shy away from are, in fact, not painful, not damaging, not bad in any way, but we just sort of shy away from them out of habit. So, really it’s a book about how to break out of bad habits and break into good ones.

That’s something most people need to do. Fear stops people from doing what they want, from writing and publishing a book, trying something new, getting into or out of a new relationships or jobs, creating the life they desire and succeeding. Can you talk about that a bit?

You start to notice as you speak to a lot of people who are trying to make change in their life that there are two kinds of people. One is a general optimist who knows at the end of everything they’ll end up fine. The other kind doesn’t explicitly say so but often feels like they have a lot of anxiety around life, let’s say quitting a job or something like that. The feeling is, ‘I’ll be broke and then I’ll die,’ or something like that. That’s the kind of sentiment that they have around change, even though they’ve never verbalized it that way. What I tried to create in The Flinch is a feeling, through a number of exercises, that you can do painful things and survive and be better as a result of them. I think that’s a series of habits that you need to develop.
Any time they feel something is difficult, many people just quit. I know I just quit often. That was a terrible habit of mine until I broke it.

That’s a pretty common habit for most people. You suggest that people should get in the ring, like a fighter.

Exactly. The reason for the title of the book, The Flinch, is because I spent a lot of time around athletes and self-defense professionals and officers and so on.  I noticed that the people who understand these things the most are the people who feel it in a visceral way. Some of the best reactions from people about the book have been from swimmers, for example. Swimmers are like, ‘I feel exactly like this every single time I’m about to do an open-water swim.’ And you have, of course, boxers and people who do Muay Thai. Athletes naturally understand this.

I think most people find it really hard to create change. Why do we not change even when we say we want to? Is it a fear of change?

Let’s talk in a more specific manner to try and sort of make this more concrete for people. They get this impression, ‘Oh, why is it so hard for me.’ We have no faith in our ability to reconstruct, and we have no faith in our own ability to make things better for ourselves. Some of the simplest things that you can do are to put yourself in situations where there really are no sort of negative social or psychological or physical consequences for what you do, but you feel this anxiety—what I call the flinch.

 

So try exercises in meeting strangers; you know, strangers are something very new in our lives. A hundred years ago there were no cities, or very few…Ninety-nine percent of the people we see every day are strangers, right? So this is new and in a way a sort of anxiety creating thing. We don’t feel that we have the ability to walk up to these people, but the reality is that there are no social consequences for walking up to a stranger at all.

 

I would say that one of the best things you can do is find hard things and do them over and over again. Before you can find them, you have to feel that sentiment inside of you, and most people just ignore it. Learn to train yourself in feeling that, and going, ‘I know what I need to do when I feel that feeling,’ and then go forward with it.

Talking to strangers is a great tip. Do you have others?

There’s a million of them, you know.  I spoke to this guy who’s one of the lead speakers in regards to the stuttering community, and he said, ‘You know, some of the exercises that you present in [your book] are the same exercises that stutterers do.’ It turns out that [they are] some of the same exercises that people who have PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, or people who have anxiety attacks use. I’ve, sort of, without really thinking about those problems, have created something which really works for them and also works for the population at large.

 

I’ve been building homework assignments, and I plan to release them later in some capacity. One of them is to stutter on purpose. It’s this amazing thing you can do maybe four or five times in a day, and then just go about your daily life. Everybody knows how to do this, but it’s an exercise they make stutterers do so they can gain control of something they normally would not be able to control at all. If you go over to someone, especially someone who’s paid to talk to you, like a clerk in the corner store or something like that, and you stutter through what it is that you want to do, and then feel that embarrassment—it’s almost like purposeful embarrassment—to realize that when you get past the embarrassment you’re totally fine.Something else I would do to feel it physically is to do something like begin weightlifting at the edge of your capacity.

 

Most people when they go into the gym, they’ll go and they’ll do weights, like twenty five or thirty reps of some insignificant weight. Instead of doing that, do something like put it up to what weightlifters call your five-rep max, and put up a weight that is almost impossible for you to lift. Stare at it, and then go ahead and do it. You’ll feel in your body this extremely hard not only physical thing but psychologically taxing thing. Even weightlifters say if you squat three times a week at that kind of ability you become psychologically drained from how difficult it is, but it also carries forward into other parts of your life if you’re able to do it.

Let’s say we don’t only want to create change in our personal lives, but we actually want to be  change agents in the world. We want to make big change, or affect change. Do these small things you’re talking about doing, these exercises you’re giving us, help us learn to make change in the world?

Some of the criticism of this book comes from people who are like, ‘What the hell. This is so trivial.’ You know, Victor Frankel wrote a book called Man’s Search for Meaning. He was in the Holocaust; he was in a concentration camp, and he was one of the few survivors. He wrote something which is a famous phrase: ‘Between stimulus and response, there is a moment, and in that moment lies our freedom.’  Basically, you have a stimulus, and you have an ability to react instinctively or an ability to think out a reaction to that stimulus, whatever that stimulus is. He claims the reason he survived the concentration camp is because he was able to stay psychologically strong. He could watch people and see that once they had psychologically given way, their bodies would begin to wither away after that.

 

To me, the biggest strength is an internal strength. No person can give you a job that will give you this strength. No individual can ever take it away from you once you have it either. To me it’s an internal strength that you build. It is built with a conscious sort of construction that comes from the mind and from the psyche, and then, thereafter, builds out into the world. And you’ll see that when you do this, when you become a more conscious person as a result of these supposedly trivial acts, that people will see you differently, and doors will open as a result of it.

What does it take to really accomplish something and to create something that affects change in the world?

I’ve already written a few books. To write is actually is not a big deal at all. You just have to sit there and do it. A girlfriend of mine used to say, ‘People respect travelers so much; but really all you have to do to be a traveler is to get on a plane. It’s an easy thing to do.’ In the same way, being a writer is a very easy thing to do. It’s the ability to sit down every single day and do it over and over and over again and to have the humility to destroy things that you once thought were good that you now think are bad because your standards are higher. This is really what makes someone excellent. That’s a great internal change which is really effective in the world.

Julien spoke to me about writing books, making them bestsellers, and being a change agent via your writing. You can read this part of the interview here. He also spoke about blogging and affecting change with a blog. You can read this part of the interview here.

I highly suggest you read The Flinch;  you can download it for free for your Kindle (a free version of this program is free for your laptop). I’ve told all my family members to read it. I have a personal interest in the subject of moving through fear to achieve your goals. I wrote a short book, which will one day become a full length one on the topic: Navigating the Narrow Bridge.

Do you “flinch” often, avoiding fear and not moving toward your goals? Have you found ways to change your habits or thoughts about fear? Tell me about this with a comment.

If you are interested in writing and blogging, read the other parts to my interview here and here.

If you aren’t a subscriber to this blog, please consider actually hitting the RSS button at the top of the page or subscribing by email using the form below. Then you are sure to never miss a post.

Do you ever question your beliefs about Your religion? Do you question God’s word, the value of the commandments, the teachings of the forefathers, the meaning of the rituals and prayers?

They say the Jewish people are God wrestlers. We don’t always accept God’s word or anything to do with our religion without questions, without wanting to understand why, without pondering the value, the validity, the truth of what we are told or asked to do.

Yet, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or some other religion, sometimes we get stuck in fear—fear that if we don’t listen to God’s word, believe every single word we hear and do as those words command—something bad might happen. We might be struck down by lightning, fall from grace, not live another year, not receive God’s goodness. Then we stop wrestling with God.

It takes a lot to move out of that fear and to begin questioning again, wrestling again.

I was pleased this week to find a current example of someone who moved through that fear and began God wrestling—and did so in the public eye. I read in a JTA article that Chassidic reggae musician and singer Matisyahu publicly shaved off his beard and peyes and uploaded a picture of himself clean shaven on Twitter on December 13. Along with it, he posted this message:

“This morning I posted a photo of myself on Twitter.

“No more Chassidic reggae superstar.

“Sorry folks, all you get is me…no alias. When I started becoming religious 10 years ago it was a very natural and organic process. It was my choice. My journey to discover my roots and explore Jewish spirituality—not through books but through real life. At a certain point I felt the need to submit to a higher level of religiosity…to move away from my intuition and to accept an ultimate truth. I felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules—lots of them—or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself. Trusting my goodness and my divine mission.”

The next day, December 14, the JTA ran another story. In it he explained this decision in more detail during an interview WNYC’s Soundcheck. He began growing his beard when he became religious. The decision not to shave was based on a teaching from Kabbalah that the beard is a manifestation of the 13 divine attributes of mercy, he explained. (Learn about the 13 Attributes here.) He feared that if he were to shave the beard, he would no longer be privy to those blessings of mercy.

Recently, however, he asked himself, “How can [God’s mercy] possibly be connected to me shaving or not? And I began, over the last few weeks, I went through a pretty major transformation, probably bigger than any in my life, due to several things, but a lot of revelations and a lot of realizations started coming clear to me, and I realized just like these fears that I have, the idea that God’s mercy is connected to whether I shave or not is ludicrous. And I just need to trust myself, and that if I’m deserving of God’s mercy, I’ll get it regardless.”

That’s a big jump…to trust your own goodness and to trust God to be merciful whether you follow His commandments or not. Orthodox, or observant, Jews, live within the confines of God’s laws, God’s mitzvot. They offer structure. They offer a way of life. They offer a means by which to be a good Jew, a mensch.

Yet, here we see someone coming out of that world and saying, “I think I can be a mensch, I think I can be a good person, a spiritual and religious person deserving of God’s grace and mercy without observing every single mitzvah—every commandment.”

And haven’t those of us who are not that religious wondered what would happen—in the reverse—if I suddenly became more observant? Would God be more gracious, more merciful? Would my prayers be answered?

But maybe it’s simply about being a good person, about being deserving—beard or no beard.

What about you? Do you wrestle with God? Do you question your beliefs? And do you occasionally shave  (or have you ever shaved) your beard—metaphorical or real—to see what might happen?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about people who do things that are inspirational. People who are courageous in large ways and small ways.

They take risks. They put themselves on the line. They overcome obstacles. They move through fear. They don’t let anything stop them from pursuing their dreams. They put others before themselves.

And their actions–their courage and determination–makes us cry, makes us smile, makes us laugh, and gives us hope. They inspire us and make us realize that if they can do it, so can we.

My son inspires me. He left home his senior year to attend the School of American Ballet in New York City. He left behind his friends and gave up whatever normal life a teen might have to pursue his dream of becoming a professional dancer. This might not seem like a big deal, but it took courage, and I find it inspiring.

Watch the video below of Emmanuel Kelly, a victim of chemical warfare and a survivor from Iraq. Orphaned and found in a shoe box, he doesn’t know how old he is, but he does know that he wants to sing.  And he has managed to become a great singer. Here’s a young man who, despite his past and his physical deformities got up in front of the whole world to pursue his dream of becoming a professional singer. That takes courage. That’s a risk. But let’s not forget about his mother who had the courage to adopt him and his brother. That takes courage, too.

If this video does not inspire you to have the courage to pursue your dreams not matter what obstacles lie in your way, think about the people who inspire you. Martin Luther King? The non Jews who helped saved Jews during the Holocaust? Moses, with his speech impediment, who freed the Israelites from Egypt? The first responders who went into the Twin Towers on 9-11? I’m sure you can think of someone.

I am very proud to announce that I have finally updated my short book, Navigating the Narrow Bridge: 7 Steps for Moving Forward Courageously Even When the Life Seems Most Precarious, and released it as an e-book available in most e-b0ok formats. (It will be available at Amazon hopefully by the end of the week.) You can purchase it in all formats, including Kindle format, for the low cost of $2.99 from Smashwords by clicking here. You can sample some pages as well.

The printed booklet (old version) is still available from my website, as is the pdf version.

Here’s some information on Navigating the Narrow Bridge:

6.3 million American have some specific fear. If you feel imprisoned by fear, this book offers tools for breaking out of jail and moving freely, confidently and joyously through life and towards your goals. Discover 7 steps drawn from metaphysical and spiritual principles and the teachings of Rebbe Nachman to help you move from where you are to where you want to be despite your fear. Learn to live with faith, courage and the joy that comes from see the miracle of life itself.

No matter how much or how little fear you feel – or for what reason, that fear stops you from living your life fully and creating the life you desire. Fear prevents you from achieving your highest potential and immobilizes you on the path to your dreams.

Do you want to learn to move through your fear so you can achieve your highest potential and achieve your dreams? To find out how, click here.

According to Rebbe Nachman, who lived from 1772-1840, we need to know one thing: “A person walks in life on a narrow bridge. The most important thing is not to make ourselves afraid.”

The goal of this short book is to help you move freely, confidently and joyously through life and towards your fullest potential. To accomplish this, you’ll learn how to:
• live in the moment
• turn fear of death into awe for life
• find and communicate with God
• use thoughts creatively
• cultivate an attitude of gratitude
• use meditation and visualization to feel safe
• and make affirmations of action

To help you navigate across the narrow bridges in your life, you’ll learn how to take 7 steps to a fear-free life:
Step #1: Traversing the Spectrum of Emotion
Step #2: Utilizing the Power of Thought
Step #3: Reaching Out for God’s Hand
Step #4: Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude
Step #5: Using Meditation as a Link to Life
Step #6: Connecting with Commandments
Step #7: Making Affirmations of Action

Navigating the Narrow Bridge draws on Jewish wisdom—in particular the teachings of Rebbe Nachman, metaphysical and quantum physics principles, spiritual wisdom, and human potential techniques. Thus, it is pertinent to anyone from any religious or spiritual background or tradition. Indeed, it’s appropriate for anyone who simply wants to walk courageously through life.

It’s possible to feel safe in this moment, balanced and poised for your next step, and to move forward courageously with a lust for life and an unstoppable desire to fulfill your potential no matter what you find along your path.

To find out how, click here.

In a recent blog post, best-selling author and marketing expert made this statement:”No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.”

He was talking about the fact that authors and musicians are making millions without so-called “gatekeepers.”  They aren’t waiting any longer for publishers and record companies–the “pickers”– to offer contracts. They are picking themselves and producing books and CDs on their own.

Godin stressed that most of us want to get picked; it’s inherent to our human nature. He added that once you reject the impulse to be picked “and realize that no one is going to select you–that Prince Charming has chosen another house–then you can actually get to work.”

He goes on to say, “Once you understand there are problems just waiting to be solved, once you realize that you have all the tools and all the permission you need, then opportunities to contribute abound.”

I don’t know about you, but for me these word really hit home. I can see how I’ve been waiting around for someone to give me permission to move forward, in particular with my books.

I’ve self-published short books and kept them on my website only. Yet, these are short versions of what were to be full-length books. I wrote them instead of the full-length versions while I was waiting to be picked so I could sell them at the back of the room when I went to speak and build platform–to help me get picked. I was waiting for permission from the pickers to write the full-length versions.

I approach my blogs differently, though, writing about my topics with passion and total self-permission. And there, I’ve already been picked. I have readers–you. Hopefully, you would read my books, too, if only I’d give myself permission to write them and self-publish them. If only I’d stop waiting for permission from a picker.

With my blogs, daily and weekly I solve problems, I use the tools I have, I don’t ask or wait for permission, and I contribute.

Are you ready to get to work? What problems would you like to solve? What tools do you have to offer? Are you waiting for permission to move forward, to take action, to do what you want to do or to fulfill your purpose, achieve your dreams, create change, or contribute in some way?

Just a few days prior to reading Godin’s blog post I came across some notes I’d jotted down during a session with a coach about a year and a half ago. She’d told me  I needed to work with the affirmation ” I am in charge of the delivery of my life.”  Between Godin’s message and this affirmation I could see the need to take control of my own destiny.

What about you? Are you ready to be in charge of the delivery of your life, of how your life unfolds day by day, or are you going to wait for others to give you permission to do what you want to do, to create what you want to create?

Are you going to wait for someone to pick you–a boss, an agent, a man, a woman, a friend, a publisher–or are you going to do the picking? Do you believe in yourself enough to do so?

Don’t wait to be picked. Pick yourself.

Have you ever wondered why more people have a fear of public speaking than of dying? The reason is simple. They don’t want to be in the position Christina Aguilera found herself in yesterday as she sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl. In front of millions of people she messed up part of the ever-important national anthem, switching out the line “O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming” with her own creation of “What so proudly we watched, at the twilight’s last gleaming.” And people have been talking about it ever since.

Aguilera apologized, saying, “I can only hope that everyone could feel my love for this country and that the true spirit of its anthem still came through.” And she isn’t the only one to have ever forgotten the words or messed them up, by the way. Macy Gray and Mike Eli have done the same.

Her upcoming gigs have not been cancelled. Aguilera will apparently sing at the Grammys this Sunday alongside Jennifer Hudson. I’m sure she will walking in looking fabulous and carrying her head high.

So, what can we learn from Aguilera’s mistake? No…not that we should never get up and speak or sing in public. The world has continued spinning. In fact, Aguilera’s world has continued spinning.

So, here are the lessons:

1. Mistakes happen to the best of us. Usually someone else has made the same mistake. The moment is embarrassing, but it passes. Take a deep breath and wait…
2. Admit your mistake and apologize. Be honest and genuine. People will forgive you. We all make mistakes. It’s not the end of the world.
3. Roll with the punches. Good performers know how to cover their mistakes. Although everyone knew she had messed up the words to the national anthem, Aguilera didn’t stop mid-song and try to figure out the words she had forgotten. She kept singing. She made up some words. Or, if she simply sang the wrong words, she didn’t stop afterwards and say, “Oops. I made a mistake. Let me start again.” She just kept singing. That’s the sign of a pro.
4. Life goes on. People will talk. People love to gossip and discuss other people’s mistakes. It makes them feel better about themselves. It doesn’t make you less of who you are. Find a way to make even the bad situations into good ones. Keep moving forward. It won’t be long before everyone will forget what happened and things will return to normal.

When we get up and speak or sing–or do anything–in public mistakes happen. Be prepared for them. Know how to handle them like a pro. Then you won’t stop yourself from ever fulfilling your dreams of being a singer, speaker or leader.

Most of all, remember that we learn from our mistakes…and from the mistakes of others. Your public mistakes may be just what someone else needs to learn an  important lesson.

Okay, so, I have to admit it. The other day someone told me I am a procrastinator.

And I had to admit that he was right.

We procrastinate for many reasons. Fear. Laziness. Self-worth issues. Lack of passion.

What about you? Are you procrastinating? Why aren’t you doing what you say you want to do? What are you waiting for?

No more waiting for me. I’m done.

So, I thought it quite fitting when I read Seth Godin’s blog post yesterday. He quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., since it was the anniversary of his birth. Martin Luther King, Jr., said about a half a lifetime ago:

“We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood — it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, ‘Too late.’”

Are you going to wait until it’s too late? I’m not.

Godin wrote: “The world isn’t fair, and most people don’t get all the chances they deserve. There are barriers due to income, to race, to social standing and to education, and they are inexcusable and must fall. But the check remains, now more than ever. The opportunity to step up and to fail (and then to fail again, and to fail again) and to continue failing until we succeed is greater now than it has ever been.”

So, don’t let anything get in your way–not even the fear of failure. Don’t wait any more. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Do whatever it is you want to do. Do it now.

I didn’t mind when my children went off to school. I was happy for the free time, time for myself to do the things I wanted to do.

I missed my children when they went off to camp, even shed a brief tear, but always felt happy for them and for myself. They would have a fun experience and I would have a small “vacation.”

I’ve talked about my daughter going off to college for a year or more now. I’ve been excited for her. I know she’s ready for college…more ready than most kids her age. Yet, now that the time has come to say goodbye to her, I’m not ready.

How can that be? After all these years when I’ve allowed my kids–even pushed my kids and encouraged my kids–to be independent and enjoyed their independence with them, I’m not ready for her to be quite so independent. I’m the one who always says it’s the mark of a good parent when I child is raised to be independent. That’s what you want, not some 18 year old (or even a 12 year old) who is tied to his or her mother’s apron strings. But what if I’m tied to hers?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a mother with nothing to do once my nest has been emptied of chicks (pardon the mixed metaphors). I can easily fill my time. I just didn’t realize how empty it would feel with even one chick having let the nest.

Yes, I’ll miss my daughter. She’s a quite one, but the house will be much quieter without her. And I must figure out how to cut the apron string, how to stay in the nest while she spreads her wings and flies.

And maybe that’s the trick…Each time a chick leaves the nest the mother bird must spread her wings a bit wider as well, not just so her reach is longer but so she can test her strength and her ability for new doing new things as well.

I once participated in a ropes course where I was asked to climb tall poles, walk across a wire strung between two tall trees (another narrow bridge…), and repel down a cliff.  I had always thought myself afraid of heights, so performing these feats seemed unimaginable to me.  However, I did almost all of them.

Slowly, slowly I made my way to the top of the pole, the first exercise, and then navigated my way onto a little metal platform where I then stood like the ornament on a totem pole.  I remember the fear I felt as I climbed and the terror I felt when trying to get my feet onto that platform and then raise my body to a standing position.  Once I was standing there so high above the ground, however, I discovered that I really was not that afraid of heights.  In fact, being up there was an exhilarating experience.  Not only had I overcome my fear of heights, I felt great that I had accomplished the climb – which is not to say that it wasn’t still scary standing there atop that pole but the fear felt less like fear and more like awe.  I was in awe of myself and in awe of the experience itself.

I could have given in to my fear and never even tried to climb the pole.  I could have stood there and trembled.  I could have been too scared to come down. Instead I choose to climb despite my fear and to look upon the experience with awe and a sense of tremendous accomplishment.

Ropes courses are all about learning how you react to life on a daily basis.  While we don’t usually have to climb a tall pole in our normal life, we are often faced with obstacles or situations that bring up our feelings of fear.  In these situations, we have the same choices – climb or don’t climb, feel fear or feel awe, feel defeated or feel determined to accomplish the goal.

Life is all about choices. Every time we face a situation, any situation, we have a choice of how to respond.  That response can be a negative feeling one or a positive feeling one, and we have the ability to choose which one we want.

What choices are you making each day and in each situation?

For more information on how to move through fear, click here.

Long ago someone told me our cars symbolize our selves. So, when something goes wrong with our cars, we have to look at our selves and our bodies to see if we can discern the messages sent to us.

Interestingly enough, yesterday I found in my email inbox an email from an automobile service station I used to use. The message line read: Your Car Is Due For A Service. I looked at it and thought, “Yes, it is. I’m long overdue for an oil change.” I didn’t even open the email, though; I didn’t even notice that it wasn’t from the service station I typically use now.

Last night I parked my car at the high school so my daughter could drive it home. She called me about 15 minutes later to tell me it wouldn’t start. Sure enough, it wouldn’t. The battery would have been the most common problem, but all the lights were working in the car. (And if it had been the battery, I would have figured that I was out of energy…using it all up by doing too much. I needed a recharge.) Instead, after along wait for AAA, we discovered that it was what I suspected, the starter motor.

Ah, the car couldn’t start at all. What did that mean for me? I couldn’t get going. Like a racehorse at the starting line, I wasn’t getting out of the gate. I couldn’t move forward. Why?

I’m looking at my day today (as my car is in the shop and I’m stuck at home) and I see that I have not gotten to the most important things I need to do to get  going–to start the most important projects. I’m not taking the next step to achieve my goals. I haven’t devoted the time to them. I’m leaving them to last instead of putting them first. I’m doing all the ancillary things I think will get me there but I’m not tackling the big ones.

And maybe I have fear…fear of moving forward, fear of getting started. How about you? Does fear ever stop you from getting started or moving on to the next phase of what you need to do?

The service station called a little while ago. I have a very old car with lots of miles on it; they said the bolts holding the engine down need replacing as well. Plus the steering shaft needed some work.

Interesting. I’ve been working away at this same goal for a long time…so long that, like my car’s engine, I need to re-bolt it down again, firm up my commitment to achieving it, tighten up the foundational elements that will ensure that all the foundational parts stay with me as I move forward. If the “engine” drops out, I won’t get very far.

And, I’ve recently been trying to change my direction a bit, to hone my final destination and figure our how to navigate to that end point. No wonder the steering shaft on my car needed work!

About 15 years ago my car’s brakes were recalled. Despite the dealer looking at them and telling me they were fine, they went out on me. As I coasted safely to a stop (thank God), I thought about why I would have brake problems. It dawned on me that I was rushing headlong through my life with no ability to stop. Hmmm. A message from my car.

Today, I’m taking note of the messages from my car (and in my email inbox). I suggest you do, too! Learning to see, hear and understand the messages we receive daily helps us achieve our highest human potential. This skill allows us to change; it’s a tool for personal growth.  So, when life seems to send you events or circumstances that appear negative or troublesome, don’t just dismiss them. Look at them carefully; learn to see them clearly as messages–synchronistic messages offering you a means to change, grow, achieve, and live more fully.