Step forward

CHAPTER THREE FEARS Have you ever found yourself convincing yourself why you should not embark on some new enterprise or another. How often do you do this, is it a habit with you. In other words you are not in the habit of always telling yourself why you should try a lot of new ventures, rather you do the opposite and worse still you even do it to your friends. You always discourage your friends from trying something new and you may not even know it seeing it has become such a part of you. Did you know this is based on your inner fears? Do not worry because we all have them and it is because so much garbage has been programmed into our lives over the years from our birth by society or by bad influence and it continues to happen everyday. It is reality for you when you have lived a certain experience, no one can tell you it did not happen when it happened to you. Let us look at an example of how our mind convinces us even when we may not be very conscious it is happening. Did you know that as real as something may seem to you, it may also be a lie in fact most of the time when there is no factual evidence to disprove it then it is a lie and we buy into this lie. You had an opportunity to get involved with a jewelry business. You are excited about it because of the manner it was presented to you. Then your mind goes to work on you (fear) you begin to see yourself having to wear this jewelry as part of your advertising. You know the compliments you have received on how beautiful they wear on you especially how you accessorize with them so you are now getting used to this life style and feel you should keep most of what you should be selling?it is not free. So your mind is telling you at this point of how much money you are loosing while selling this jewelry. It tells you how much you have purchased for yourself and how much you have actually sold. Mind you, you have not yet started this business but it has been presented to you and you do love it because you love jewelry. Now having rehearsed allthe above scenario in your mind you have convinced yourself why you should not even try it much less do it. Then your mind reminds you of the last thing you sold (coffee) real gourmet coffee. You drank so much coffee with your family and ended up with even much more in your pantry. Most parties you got invited to, you would take coffee as your party gift. You made a little sale but somehow it did not go quite as you anticipated to your dismay. At some point your friends stopped inviting you to their parties so you would stop giving them your gift of gourmet coffee. It was disaster and you do not plan on trying it again. Wow! If I were your friend or you I am convinced already, I will certainly not try it. But think about the word TRY. How convincing is that word. TRY is a word we often use when we are not sure of something so we say I will TRY. But we do not feel strongly about it so we should really not bother at all till we are convinced it is something we want to do. It is much more affirmative when we say I will DO this or that. From the get go we are convinced it is something we like and are willing to put our all into it. There is no FEAR there. This is exactly how quickly we buy into lies as a result of the fears we harbor and I will go into it later on in this chapter to talk to you about the root cause of FEAR. As soon as you recognize it you will be delivered from it through a simple prayer. Let us look at Amy and Pam two good friends in their 5th grade both 11years old. It is the beginning of summer and their families were both planning summer vacation, but they will be driving to their location out of state to see wonderful sites and have a great family time and some adventure too. Both Amy and Pam decided they wanted to make some vacation money so they can spend it on shopping for their friends and themselves in buying souvenirs and some memorabilia they can show off for having had a great summer. They knew their pocket monies may not be sufficient so they both agreed to sell freshly made lemonade. Their trip was to be in July so they had all of June to do this. Seeing these two girls were neighbors it was easy for them to set up a lemonade stand at the front of their home. They decided they would sell every Saturday except any Saturday it rained. They were very fortunate to have their 4 Saturdays dry with no rain. So with the help of their mom?s they set up table covered with a good table cloth, provided disposable plastic cups, crushed ice, store brand sweetened lemonade, paper towels, two big pitchers, and drinking water. They mixed their lemonade to a good sweet consistency seeing it was powered lemonade. It was very fresh and very palatable to drink with the crushed ice on such warm summer days. They beckoned to customers as they drove by and they had such good customer skills service as they smiled to their customers and invited them for a tempting cold drink of lemonade. Much like selling Girl Scout cookies. For each Saturday they set up table, they were successful and made good sales to their excitement and pleasure. They were making more money than they needed for their up coming vacation so it was a lot of fun. But on the last Saturday, they did not do anything different from the previous 3 Saturdays, it did not rain either, they were out as usual doing their thing. But there was no sale, hardly one or two people came by their stand. At the end of the day they packed up and closed shop happy for the experience and money they made. Now let me introduce you to Susan and Lisa. These two had same ideas as Amy and Pam had. They did not one another so this was strictly their own idea. They lived in different neighborhoods not too far from one another. They also set up table during the warm Saturdays in June. They got help from their mom?s with mixing their lemonade, as they equally had purchased store brand sweetened powered lemonade. They provided crushed ice, disposable plastic cups, paper towels, pitchers, everything needed to mix their lemonade and sell to neighbors and passerby?s. The only difference is their customer service was not quite the same as both Amy?s and Pam?s. But they were both 5th graders too. During their sales, they would chat and giggle with each other not paying too much attention to the customers or beckoning them quite as much. It was their own way of occupying themselves. But it portrayed an attitude of a lack of confidence even though for their ages it will be one of naiveté. So what do you think was missing here in these two scenarios with our 5th graders. I truly do not believe it was the naïve attitude of Susan and Lisa which cost them their loss. Is it their neighborhoods maybe, we do not know that either. After all it all happened in the same warm month of June. It all happened on Saturdays; they both sold the same product. It does not make a lot of sense to me. It maybe easy to think it was their being engrossed with each other not paying too much attention to the passerby?s may have led to their lack of success, but we truly do not know what went wrong here even though it is the easy way to assess their performance. There are sometimes factors not visible and not logical. Now this is my question; if you were Susan and Lisa, would you want to do this again next year. Would you believe it will not work out seeing you have already experienced failure. You pack up shop for good and never allow the thought of it to cross your mind again. After all your experience was real, it happened to you. But we know now it worked for Amy and Pam who had such great success and would do it again in a heart beat. So would then say Susan and Lisa has bought into a lie when they say never again. Even though their experience was real, the idea of the business of selling lemonade in June not working is in itself a lie because it works. There are many experiences out there that will work for some but not for other