Fear Archives - Susan Choi

Seattle Public Speaking and Anxiety Coach

The Art Of Public Speaking

Who doesn’t have to speak in public?

No really, if you think about it… we all have to engage in some form of public speaking on a daily basis.

But what if you have to speak publicly for a living?

What if you need to present to the C-Suite on a weekly basis?

What if you need to talk with and encourage and motivate your team members on a DAILY basis?

I came across this wonderful book, The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and Joseph Berg Esenwein, and I had to share some of my golden nuggets.

While it doesn’t compare to reading the book… it might bring you some insights as you prepare to go into your next meeting later today or even this week. Here it is:

It is sheer egotism to fill your mind with thoughts of self when the greater thing is there – truth.
If the theater caught fire you could rush the stage and shout directions to the audience without any self-consciousness, for the importance of what you were saying would drive all fear thoughts out of your mind.
Have the first few sentences worked out completely so that you may not be troubled in the beginning to find words. Know your subject better than your hearers know it, and you have nothing to fear.
Overconfidence is bad, but to tolerate premonitions of failure is worse.
If you believe you will fail, there is no hope for you. You will.
Rid yourself of this “I am a poor worm in the dust idea”. You are a god, with infinite capabilities. “All things are ready if the mind be so.”

Take a deep breath, relax, and begin in the quiet conversational tone as though you were speaking to one large friend.
The bravest no fear, but they do not yield to it.
In your audience slice some victory for you and the cause you represent. Go with it.

and this is the one I love the most:

And remember that your audience is infinitely more important than you, the truth is more important than the both of you, because it is eternal.

Sure there are the jitters, but the jitters only get worse because of the story you are telling yourself in your mind.

Get good and telling the truth, and then you become unstoppable.

In wellness,

Susan

Why Mindset Is The Key To Feeling Better With Adrenal Fatigue

In my practice I particularly enjoy working with clients who are experiencing adrenal fatigue or other auto-immune related illness. Why? Because I’ve been there myself. I understand what it took to full recovery and wish I knew the tools and thought management techniques I know now. Regardless, I am incredibly thankful to share what I know today.

What I notice happening a lot with people experiencing adrenal fatigue (or other related illness) is a three part phase:

Despair/Breakdown
Determination/Identify Protocol
Maintenance or Plateau

The first phase is clear for anyone who suddenly understands the depth of their situation. It’s a time where you begin to question everything in your life and analyze what lifestyle patterns may have caused adrenal fatigue in the first place. Bottom line: give yourself a good cry. Don’t judge yourself for why you got here or panic about how you can change things. Let it be and give yourself compassion.

The second phase is a re-birth of sorts. You begin to track down some of the best doctors who can help you identify a path to recovery. It’s a time to learn more healthy lifestyle habits to incorporate and if there’s one piece of advice I give to anyone going through this now it’s this: don’t get overwhelmed about the plethora of information out there, this is the opposite of recovery. Trust the information will flow to you; trust the timing and don’t rush it.

The third phase is what I wanted to emphasize in today’s blog post. You see, how you manage your brain will be the KEY to whether or not you can mindfully continue through to maintenance phase or it will be the point it which you plateau completely or retreat back to phase one.

You have to understand that one of the biggest root causes for adrenal fatigue is stress, and stress can only come from one place – our minds.

If we can’t manage our minds to begin with, we will have a much longer time recovering from adrenal fatigue. This is why understanding how your brain works and whether or not it is serving you will be key to achieving peace.

Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to understand whether or not you need to evaluate your current thought process:

Do you often feel rushed, anxious, angry, or worried throughout the day?
Is there a set of thoughts and/or problem you repeat over and over again in a given day?
Do you feel overwhelmed by a thought and/or problem to the point where it starts to cause physical stress?
No matter how much you apply will power, do you find yourself using food, drinking, working out, or the internet to avoid/buffer in order to feel better?

If you answered yes to any of the above, chances are you would benefit from understanding why your brain works the way that it does, and how making tweaks to your own internal process can help provide more peace, joy, and personal power into your life.

You see in a nutshell, when you understand your brain and why you have certain thoughts you start to uncover limiting beliefs, habituated thought and behavioral patterns. With this recognition you can now do the work to understand your individual mental model that has been driving your actions until now.

After all, if you’re doing all the work to live a healthier, more mindful lifestyle why not work on the one thing that can help you manage stress to begin with?

Because the good news is it’s completely possible to optimize your very own internal world and THAT, is priceless.

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash

What We All Have In Common

I know some pretty amazing successful people, the kind of people that drive fancy cars, own big businesses and seem to have it all. And I also know people that are, well, regular people.

But you know what we all have in common? Doubt.

We all have those mornings where we wake up wondering what the heck we are doing.

We wake up wondering am I on the right path.

We wake up fearing what we are going to do that day because we know it’s beyond our Edge.

We wake up depressed wondering why we are feeling the way that we do.

And I’m here to tell you that you are not the only one feeling these feelings.

These are experiences that we have because we are human. As long as we’re here on Earth we’re going to feel all the feels. And it’s up to you on how you want to transform this feeling, because it’s going to come back, and it’s how you think about what it means that is going to make or break you.

You’re not special for having these feelings, because everybody is special and has these feelings. You’re not the only one, nor are you weird for feeling these feelings.

There is nothing wrong with you there is everything right about you. So don’t let something like a feeling be in your way. Go out there and be big.

In wellness,

Susan

Susan Choi is an Integrative Life Coach and helps people experiencing deep adrenal fatigue and other auto-immune illness manage their recovery by focusing on optimizing their mental state. Learn a mental meta-model aimed at breaking down old mental patterns and behaviors so that you can finally tap into your own personal power.

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

Change Starts With You

No matter how much knowledge we have accumulated there will never be a “right” time than now. Start stepping toward your dream life now.

Do the change. No one else will do it for you.

Because who better to do it than you?

In wellness,

Susan

Susan is a Life Coach based in Seattle, WA. Her main focus is to coach people build a strong emotional container so that we can experience the fullness of life coming from a place of deep confidence. Susan also coaches clients looking to heal adrenal fatigue by using a mental meta-model aimed at breaking down old mental patterns and behaviors so that we can finally tap into our own personal power.

Friday Focus – 6/22/18 {The One Word That Indicates You Have A Limiting Belief}

We’ve all been there before, limiting beliefs and all, because we’re only human, right? But you know what? Whether we like it or not, it’s in our evolution to break free from old patterns and continue to grow – it’s how we’re wired.

I get it, oftentimes it can be hard to separate truth from illusion. Sometimes we’re so deep in the thick of things it REALLY DOES seems as if we’re incapable of going after what we want.

I’m here to tell you it IS possible, but first, we need to identify when those limiting beliefs start to creep into our thoughts and penetrate our lives.

A very effective and easy way to identify a limiting belief is by catching one word:

BUT

Yeah…BUT

Do you already see the ways in which the words that follow “but” can seem so true, yet doesn’t serve you? Here are a few examples:

…but I’m just not wired that way
…but s/he was born with those gifts, I wasn’t
…yeah, but it won’t work for me
…but my body type won’t let me lose these last 5 pounds
…but I’m too old to start something new

Honestly, the list can go on and on!

The good news is you have a mindful way of catching yourself, and as you do, make sure you aren’t judging the thought or yourself. The point isn’t to replace the “but” thought with another negative, judgmental thought!

Words are strong, watch what you say in passing.

Now is the time more than ever to deeply inquire with curiosity and compassion at what the root of your limiting belief is. Notice how your limiting beliefs hold you back from what you truly want out of life.

Remember, thoughts create action but if you have a limiting thought you can’t rely on a miracle to get you what you truly desire.

If it’s too hard to go the 180 from a limiting belief to a positive belief, try going to a neutral belief.

For example, if your limiting belief is, “I can’t stand my body”, and your positive belief statement is, “I love my body”, but you don’t find yourself completely believing it, try focusing on, “I have a body”.

The more you practice the neutral, bridging the thought the more you create capacity in your brain for better, positive thoughts that actually get you the results you want.

We all have limiting beliefs but they are truly a gift in disguise, because they point us toward what we really want.

In wellness,

Susan

3 Signs You’re A People Pleaser

We’ve all done it before whether we want to admit it or not – people pleasing. Likely it comes from a deep primitive yearning for survival; after all, if you weren’t seen as part of the pack, you didn’t belong to the community and that meant you needed to fend for yourself – food, shelter, love, and all.

However, when we cultivate our own intrinsic worth there’s no need to people please because we already know what we like, don’t like, and what our boundaries are. Suddenly agreeing to something you don’t want to do, or feeling the need to apologize all the time falls out the window.

So, what are the signs of people pleasing?

You spend a lot of time thinking about someone else
- How much you spend your time thinking about what to say, do, act, or even wear before meeting this person (or group of people) is an early warning sign of people pleasing. Ask yourself, what is the underlying need for all this attention toward someone else’s acceptance? What does this mean if I don’t get “it” right?
Your feelings are hurt when someone ignores you or doesn’t show affection toward you
- It’s impossible for everyone to like you because everyone is worried about their own selves! Ask yourself why you get hurt when people don’t respond or react the way you want them to. What would it mean if someone didn’t like you? Often there’s a deeper limiting belief behind the negative emotion.
You say yes to things you don’t want to do
- Unfortunately when you continue to say yes to the things that don’t align with who you are or your deeper values, you end up in a puddle of resentment. Ask yourself what it means every time you say yes. What would you gain by saying yes? What would it mean if you said no?

The bottom line is: it’s impossible for everyone to like you, so why not start with YOU?

Ask yourself the questions under each of the headers above and answer truthfully. You will find it all comes down to rejection, fear, and the need to feel accepted.

But what if you could give the very thing you need to yourself instead of looking for it outside of you?

Once you realize there’s a shorter, more pain free way to acceptance, you will begin to live a life full of freedom and choice. Oh, and a lot more time 😉

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Regret

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the things you did.”

~Mark Twain

Do it guys. Go for what scares you the most and never look back. The worst thing that can happen is you face your own emotions – good or bad. It’s never about what happens, it always about what you make it mean inside your own brain.

In wellness and love,

Susan

Photo by Morgan Sessions on Unsplash

The Secret

“Therefore the secret of all power, all achievement, and all possession depends upon our method of thinking.

This is true because we must be before we can do, and that we can do only to the extent which we are, and what we are depends upon what we think.”

~Charles F. Haanel

Our minds can lead us to the largest and unthinkable potential of ourselves or the exact opposite.

What thoughts are you thinking yourself towards today?

In mindful wellness,

Susan

Photo by Unsplash

Speak It Out Loud

Oftentimes we think through solutions, problems, worries, past/future events in our minds, but in doing so what we don’t realize is that we begin to ruminate and voice our thoughts (and God forbid our worst nightmares) in ways we would never talk to our family and friends.

A long time secret I’ve shared with as many people as I could is simple, yet effective – speak it out loud.

Say it out loud! Rationalize, debate, worry, do whatever it is you would typically “say” to yourself inside your head.

What you’ll quickly realize is:

You always speak to yourself in a more calm, soothing, objective way than you would inside your head
You begin to realize once you speak it aloud once, it’s typically rare you repeat yourself again and again. In you mind, it’s much too easy to think something over 100 times and get no where
You are solution oriented instead of repeating a problem over and over again
You speak to yourself you would a friend or family member
Things aren’t as bad when you bring your thoughts out into the open instead of inside your head

In a sense, you’ll quickly realize just how silly we can get in our heads.

Give it a shot and see how it feels.

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Joe Gardner on Unsplash

Life is 50/50

If we understood that there are peaks and there are valleys, and that life is never always perfect, then we can simply allow the “bad” things to play it’s course throughout our lives.

Oftentimes, we suffer through the “bad” times because we assume life shouldn’t be so hard or that our current unhappiness is wrong.

But really, life is 50/50. If we can accept the fact that there will be good days and there will be bad days, it lessens our grip on the control we think we have over outside circumstances.

Further, it allows us to grow the inner peace we always have control over no matter what is going on outside of us.

Life is 50/50. How will you handle the 50 that makes you uncomfortable?

In wellness,

Susan

Photo by Kees Streefkerk on Unsplash

You have to understand that one of the biggest root causes for adrenal fatigue is stress, and stress can only come from one place – our minds.

And I’m here to tell you that you are not the only one feeling these feelings.

Never miss an announcement!

Never miss an announcement!

If it’s too hard to go the 180 from a limiting belief to a positive belief, try going to a neutral belief.

Never Miss an Announcement!

The bottom line is: it’s impossible for everyone to like you, so why not start with YOU?

Never Miss an Announcement!

Never Miss an Announcement!

Say it out loud! Rationalize, debate, worry, do whatever it is you would typically “say” to yourself inside your head.