How to Overcome Your Fears, Get Unstuck, and Fuel Your Success

What scares you? Learning how to overcome fears of failure can be challenging for everyone.
Fortunately, all fears are learned. No one is born with fears. Fears can therefore, be unlearned by practicing self-discipline repeatedly with regard to fear until it goes away.
The most common fears that we experience, which often sabotage all hope for success, are the fear of failure, poverty, and loss of money.
These fears cause people to avoid risk of any kind and to reject opportunity when it is presented to them. They are so afraid of failure that they are almost paralyzed when it comes to taking any chances at all.
There are many other fears that interfere with our happiness.

• People fear the loss of love or
• People fear the loss of their jobs and their financial security.
• People fear embarrassment or ridicule.
• People fear rejection and criticism of any kind.
• People fear the loss of respect or esteem of others.

These and many other fears hold us back throughout life…
Here are a few techniques to help you overcome your fears and fuel your success:

Fear Paralyzes Action

The most common reaction in a fear situation is the attitude of, “I can’t!”
This is the fear of failure that stops us from taking action. It is experienced physically, starting in the pit of your stomach.
When people are really afraid, their mouth and throat go dry, their heart starts pounding. Sometimes they breathe shallowly and their stomach churns.
These are all physical manifestations of the inhibitive negative habit pattern, which we all experience from time to time.

Fear Shuts Our Brain Down

Whenever a person is in the grip of fear, he feels like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. This fear paralyzes action. It often shuts down the brain and causes the individual to revert to the “fight-or-flight” reaction.
Fear is a terrible emotion that undermines our happiness and can hold us back throughout our lives.

Visualize Yourself as Unafraid

By visualizing yourself performing with confidence and competence in an area where you are fearful, your visual image will eventually be accepted by your subconscious mind as instructions for your performance.
Your self-image, the way you see yourself and think about yourself, is eventually altered by feeding your mind these positive mental pictures of yourself performing at your best.

Practice Acting “As If”

By using the “act as if” method, you walk, talk, and carry yourself exactly as you would if you were completely unafraid in a particular situation.
You stand up straight, smile, move quickly and confidently, and in every respect act as if you already had the courage that you desire.

Use the Law of Reversibility

The Law of Reversibility says that “If you feel a certain way, you will act in a manner consistent with that feeling.”
But if you act in a manner consistent with that feeling, even if you don’t feel it, the Law of Reversibility will create the feeling that is consistent with your actions.
This is one of the greatest breakthroughs in success psychology. You develop the courage you desire by disciplining yourself repeatedly to do the thing you fear until that fear eventually disappears—and it will.

Confront Your Fears Immediately

Your ability to confront, deal with, and act in spite of your fears is the key to happiness and success.
One of the best exercises you can practice is to identify a person or situation in your life of which you are afraid and resolve to deal with that fear situation immediately.
Do not allow it to make you unhappy for another minute. Resolve to confront the situation or person and put the fear behind you.

Move Toward the Fear

When you identify a fear and discipline yourself to move toward it, it grows smaller and more manageable.
What’s more, as your fears grow smaller, your confidence grows.  Soon, your fears lose their control over you.
In contrast, when you back away from a fear-inducing situation or person, your fear grows larger and larger.
Soon it dominates your thinking and feeling, preoccupies you during the day, and often keeps you awake at night.

Deal With the Fear Directly

The only way to deal with a fear is to address it head-on.
Remind yourself that, “Denial” is not a river in Egypt.
The natural tendency of many people is to deny that they have a problem caused by fear of some kind. They’re afraid of confronting it. In turn, it becomes a major source of stress, unhappiness, and psychosomatic illness.
Be willing to deal with the situation or person directly.
As Shakespeare said, “Take arms against a sea of troubles, and in so doing, end them.”
When you force yourself to face any fear-inducing situation in your life, your self-esteem goes up, your self-respect increases, and your sense of personal pride grows.

You eventually reach the point in life where you are not afraid of anything.
Focus and determination attract positive thinking. Be Yourself.
To Your Success
Okundia Austin

Read More »

The Major Obstacles to Financial Freedom & How to Overcome Them

Financial Success financial freedom, make more money

There are many major mental obstacles that deter financial success. The most common reason is that some people believe, for whatever reason, that they don’t deserve to be rich. Now, I know some of you may be asking, why is that?

Some people, including myself, have been raised with a steady drumbeat of destructive criticism. This has led them to conclude, at an unconscious level, that they don’t deserve to be successful and happy.

Of course, this is untrue. Yet, this negative way of thinking can lead to destructive financial habits. These habits can be hard to break.

Learn how to invest. Generate high returns in the stock market with low risk.

Change Your Attitude Toward Money

Negative experiences in childhood, which are all too common, can have terrible effects. For example, when people actually do succeed as the result of hard work, they feel guilty.

These guilt feelings then cause them to do things to get rid of the money, to throw it away. They spend it or invest it foolishly. They lend it, lose it or give it away. They engage in self-sabotage. It can come in the form of overeating, excessive drinking, drug usage, marital infidelity and often dramatic personality changes.

To change your results with money, you have to change your attitude toward it. You have to make a habit of seeing money as something positive.

The fact is that money is very much like a lover. It must be courted and coaxed and flattered and treated with care and attention. It gravitates toward people who respect it, value it and are capable of doing worthwhile things with it. It flows through the fingers and flees from people who do not understand it, or who do not take proper care of it.

See Yourself as Deserving of Money

Sometimes people say that they are not very good with money. But being good with money is a skill that anyone can learn through practice.

Usually, saying that one is not very good with money is merely an excuse or a rationalization. The fact is that the person is not very successful or disciplined with money. The person has not learned how to acquire it or to hold on to it.

The starting point of accumulating money is for you to believe in yourself. You have an unlimited capacity to obtain all the money that you will ever need.

Look at yourself as a financial success waiting for a place to happen. And see yourself as deserving all you can acquire.

Money is Essential to Our Lives

Money is good. Money gives you choices and enables you to live your life the way you want to live it. Money opens doors for you that would have been closed in its absence.

But just like anything, an obsession can be hurtful. If a person becomes so preoccupied with money, he may lose sight of the fact that money is merely a tool. If money becomes something used to acquire happiness, then it becomes a harmful thing.

Money is essential to our lives in society. It is also neutral. It is neither good nor bad. It is only the way that it is acquired and the uses to which it is put that determines whether it is helpful or hurtful.

Take Action!

Here are things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, recognize and accept that virtually everyone who has money today at one time was broke and probably broke for a long time. Then they learned the skills of accumulating money and they are now financially independent. Whatever they have done, you can probably do as well.

Second, become a student of money from this day forward. Study it, learn about it and apply the lessons you discover toward your own financial life until you begin to attract more and more money in your direction.

Take a good look at your expenses - Disassociate your happiness with spending money on immediate pleasures. Unhappy people go on shopping sprees and buy things they don’t need when they know they can't afford it.

Pay yourself first - If you haven’t already done so, open a “financial freedom account” at your bank, where you can deposit money leftover from your expenses to save for the long-term.

Think prosperity - Wealthy, happy people think in terms of prosperity and how they can use their money to make money. Look for opportunities to acquire and keep money, whether it’s investing in a new product, process, or breakthrough.

Money is hard to earn and easy to lose. Guard yours with care.

To your success

Okundia Austin

Read More »

can vitamin c help in fighting cancer?

What scientists know - and don't know - about treating cancer with nutrients.

Hydroxyurea. Mercaptopurine. Cyclophosphamide. One thing all cancer drugs seem to have in common is their hard-to-spell names.

Or do they? How about A? D? E? These aren't fancy new drugs - they're plain old vitamins. Yet, when administered by scientists in large doses, some vitamins may act like drugs, or work with standard cancer-fighting drugs. It isn't clear yet whether the research into this futuristic notion of vitamin chemo-therapy will ever pan out. But if the research is successful, chemotherapy could be much easier to take - and a lot easier to spell.

Here's what scientists have learned so far:

BATTLING IN THE BLOODSTREAM

Synthetic versions of vitamins A and D seem to hold promise in the treatment of myeloid leukemia, a cancer of white blood cells.

The main problem in leukemia is that immature white blood cells proliferate in the bloodstream, crowding out normal red and white cells. This causes severe anemia and comprises the immune system. But through a hormonal interaction, vitamins A and D seem to make the immature cells grow up. Mature cells appear to stop their rapid reproduction and are able to carry out their immune-system functions.

Initially the active form of vitamin D was tested, but in high doses this has the unfortunate side-effect of causing the body to retain calcium. That could cause complications, including hardening of the vital organs and death. But the synthetic version of vitamin D has a more powerful maturing influence on leukemia cells - and a much-lowered calcium-loading mechanism. In studies on leukemia lab mice, this synthetic compound achieved much better results than pure vitamin D. "Some of the mice treated with synthetic D may actually be cured of their leukemia," reports H. Phillip Koeffler, M.D., professor of medicine at UCLA and one of the leading researchers in this field.

Synthetic vitamin A has been tested in humans against leukemia, but not on a very widespread scale. A few years ago, American researchers at several different medical centers were involved in a double-blind, randomized trial of 13-cisretinoic acid (a retinoid compound) in patients with a pre-leukemia condition called myelodysplastic syndrome. Problems with the study - including many patients quitting the trial - cast suspicion on the results, according to Dr. Koeffler.

One of the researchers, however, continued the study on his own after the trial ended, and found a significant response. Was the original trial too short? It's hard to say without attempts to duplicate those results. The study also showed physicians that the side-effects of retinoid therapy drying can be reduced with doses of vitamin E.

More reports have come from other countries. Researchers in China and France have reportedly achieved promising results using trans retinoic acid (ATRA) against acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). Most of the patients in Chinese studies went to remission. A French researcher has reportedly duplicated their results.

Other research shows that of seven APL patients (from four different studies) treated with isotretinoin, four had what was termed "remarkable responses." Clearly, there's enough evidence to warrant further research on both synthetic A and D.

FIGHTING WITH FOLATE

Leucovorin is a synthetic form of the B vitamin folate. It's being used in in combination with a cancer drug called fluorouracil, commonly referred to as 5-FU. 5-FU/leucovorin is being used against several types of cancer.

By itself, 5-FU has been used against colon cancer for more than 5 decades. It interferes with cancer growth by binding to an enzyme needed for cell reproduction. (Some cancer cells reproduce much faster than normal cells. That's how some tumours grow in relation to surrounding tissue.)

Leucovorin, though, seems to strengthen the bond between 5-FU and the enzyme. The drug/vitamin combination hold onto the enzyme for a longer period than the drug alone. Fewer free enzymes means slowed or stopped tumour growth.

5-FU/leucovorin has determined its effectiveness against advanced, inoperable colon cancer. "That's where we hope to have real impact on the survival rates," says Susan G. Arbuck, a research clinician at Roswell Park Memorial Institute, in New York.

5-FU/leucovorin is currently also being tested against a variety of other melignancies, including cancers of the stomach, breast, pancreas, head and neck.

COLORECTAL PROTECTORS

Colorectal polyps are easy to remove but may recur. That prompted researchers at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Canada to test the effect of vitamin C and E on polyp recurrence.

Two hundred people who were free of polyps after surgery were split into two groups. One was given daily supplements of 400 mg. of vitamin E. the other got blank look-alikes. After about two years, all the patients were checked for polyp recurrence. The researchers noted a slight reduction in polyp recurrence among the patients receiving vitamins C and E. they stressed that further studies should be performed to rule out the possibility that this was a chance finding.

VITAMINS VS. BLADDER CANCER

Bladder polyps, which can become cancerous, are fairly easy to treat by surgical removal. But there's a 70 per cent risk of recurrence or that new polyps will form. To prevent that, researchers at West Virginia University tested mega-doses of four vitamins as an adjunct to conventional therapy after bladder surgery.

Patients are being divided into two groups: People in one group take multiple vitamins at the recommended daily allowance levels; those in the other group get the same, but with mega-doses of vitamins A, B6, C and E. vitamin B6 has been tested with good results in other preliminary blabber-cancer studies in humans. Vitamins A and C have been tried against blabber cancer in animal studies, with early encouraging results. Vitamin E hasn't been tested specifically against bladder polyps before, but has shown promise in other cancer trials.

VITAMIN A FOR ORAL HEALTH

A few years ago, a report from the British Columbia Cancer research Center, in Vancouver, announced that Vitamin A could heal oral leukoplakias (pre-cancerous sores inside the mouth). The study involved 21 people who chew betel leaves with tobacco and betel nut mixture known to cause an abundance of leukoplakias. After six months of taking vitamin A supplements, 57 per cent of the people showed no detectable disease. And none of the tobacco/betel chewers developed new sores while on the vitamin A. experts estimate that normally only 5 per cent of such sores disappear on their own.

Now word comes from the University of California Clinical Cancer Center and the University of Arizona Cancer Center that a milder form of vitamin therapy has the same effect. Seventeen people with oral leukoplakias were given beta-carotene. Each person took 30 mg. of supplemental beta-carotene per day for three months. Those whose leukoplakias responded to the treatment were kept on it for an additional three months.

At the end of the study, two patients had complete remission of their leukoplakias, and 12 others had partial remission. Of the remaining three, one showed no change and the other two got worse. Overall, that's an 82 per cent positive response rate.

The exciting aspect of this study is that beta-carotene, the safest source of vitamin A, was so effective. Pure vitamin A is toxic in high doses, and even the retinoids have unpleasant side-effects (primarily skin problems). But beta-carotene is virtually problem-free, even in high doses. That's because the body converts only as much beta-carotene into vitamin A as is needed at the moment. The excess is excreted harmlessly.

RETINOIDS AGAINST SKIN CANCER

Several synthetic forms of vitamin A, collectively called retinoids, have been tested as treatments for skin cancers known as basal-cell and squamous-cell carcinoma. In several tests - just in the experimental stage - oral doses of retinoids have been effective against these carcinomas because retinoids accumulate primarily in the skin.

Most of the studies performed so far have been small, but the results are encouraging. These skin cancers, like all the others that retinoids have been used against, are unlikely to regress on their own. So researchers think that even though their tests are preliminary and have no control groups, the retinoids are probably responsible for the positive effects.

The retinoids etretinate and isotretinoin have been used to treat basal-cell carcinoma. In three separate studies on a total of 56 people, 23 showed a partial regression of cancer (the tumour shrank), and five showed complete regression (disappeared). This is an overall response rate of 50 per cent, meaning that half the people experienced some decrease in the number or size of tumours.

Retinoids have also been tested against malignant melanoma, a more serious form of skin cancer. Preliminary results from a small study of 20 people with advanced melanoma showed some shrinkage of tumours in three people. It's far from a cure, but it's a glimmer of hope against a type of cancer that has been resistant to drugs.

A rare skin cancer called mycosis fungoides had shown good response to retinoid therapy. In five preliminary studies, a total 78 people with the disease were put on oral isotretinoin. More than half showed at least a partial response.

Once treatment was completed, though, many of the cancers returned. This suggests that regular doses of retinoids may be required for a "cure". Among other things, doctors are conducting studies to determine the best maintenance dose: one that minimizes skin and mucous-membrane drying, the main side-effect.

Researchers are having better luck using oral retinoids against squamous-cell carcinoma. In four small studies, a total 14 squamous-cell patients were treated with etretinate (4 patients), isotretinoin (9), or arotinoid (1). Six of the 14 had partial remission (tumour reduced in size) or temporary remission (tumours shrank or stopped growing for a short time); another 4 had complete, sustained remissions of the squamous-cell tumours. That adds up to a 71 per cent response om an admittedly small sample.

Both basal-cell and squamous-cell carcinomas are relatively easy to cure with surgical removal (used in 90 per cent of cases), radiation therapy or tissue destruction with extreme heat or cold. So, why all this fuss about retinoids?

Surgery and other tissue-destroying therapies leave scars. That's not a big problem for a person with one tumour on the back of a hand. But a majority of people with carcinoma have several tumours on areas of body that are regularly exposed to the tumour-inducing ultraviolet rays of the sun: not only the hands, but the head and neck as well.

Retinoids don't leave scars: Tumours shrink away and normal tissue fills in. That's especially valuable in advanced disease. "One patient had severe, disfiguring tumours on his neck and nose. After six months on isotrtinoin, the neck tumour had shrunk to a small, flat lesion. And the nose tumour had shrunk by 70 per cent, with preliminary rebuilding of his all-but-eroded nose," explained Scott M. Lippman, M.D., of the hematology/oncology department of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas.

WHAT THE GOOD NEWS MEANS

Vitamin chemotherapy is a seductive idea: The ultimate goal is an effective natural cancer treatment with no pain and minimal expense. But it's not quite that simple - yet.

Scientists are going full bore to see if any of these treatments will turn out to be effective. And even for the vitamins showing the greatest potential, questions of dosage and side-effects must be resolved.

Note, too, that several of the vitamin therapies don't use pure vitamins. Leucovorin and isotrtinoin are synthetic chemical equivalent of folate and vitamin A, respectively. Slight alterations in their chemistry make them more efficient treatments and/or reduce dangerous side-effects seen in high doses of the original vitamin. These synthetic vitamins are different enough to be treated as drugs by the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. where they're available by prescription only.

Until scientists nail down the facts, the best course is to go with what we know. Opt for the proven medical treatments. Have suspected cancer checked by a physician. And try a good defense: There's strong scientific evidence that a healthy diet can help prevent the start of certain types of cancer. To use this evidence to your fullest advantage, eat a well-balanced, nutrient-dense diet that is low in fat. This includes low-fat meats and poultry, fish, whole-grain products, and generous amounts of fresh fruits and vegetables. If you're on a restricted diet - or need added assurance that you're getting the requisite amount of vitamins and minerals - you may want to consider taking a multiple supplement.

My firm belief is: "Finding a cause leads the way to find a cure". So, it is basically important to understand everything from its deepest core. And the best way to do so is: Keep on reading to develop and deepen your understanding on health and wellness 

Read More »