Sharing Resources to Help You Grow Personally, Professionally & Financially

Sometimes it helps to get a little dose of encouragement—along with a good cup of coffee!—to start the day.

Hopefully the message below will help you get off to a good start for the week.  Please feel free to forward the newsletter on to others that you think would benefit from the content.

Insecurity

I doubt there are many adults around who were not at some point in time a bit scared by the noises that they heard once the lights were turned out at bedtime. I am not sure if this is some sort of primal fear, or if there is something different that is driving this feeling, but I am very certain that there are areas in all of our lives where we feel insecure.

For some it is their physical appearance, for some it is their relationships, for some it is their jobs, and for some it is something that is difficult to understand—just a feeling of uneasiness.

When this sense of insecurity comes over me, I find it extremely helpful to ask the question, “Why do I feel this way?” Harkening back to my scientific mindset, I continue to ask “why” to the answer that the first question offered, and then I repeat the process with five more “why’s.” (No doubt this sort of behavior contributed to my Mother asking, “Why did I have this child?” on more than one occasion!)

What normally happens as I drill down into the “five why’s” is that I either arrive at some false belief, or I come to something that I can control/change. In either case, the root cause of my insecurity can often be dismissed by breaking it down to the core driver. While the feeling does not immediately subside, repeated cycles through the process normally get me to focus on the process; and, therefore, I lose focus on the feeling/insecurity.

There is absolutely no doubt that feelings are real and have an impact on our physiological and psychological states. However, I also believe that many times our feelings are based on beliefs that are NOT founded on reality. That is why, in my opinion, many insecurities live more in our mind than they do in the physical world we live in. That brings me back to one of my favorite quotes from Stephen Covey:

• All things are created twice; first mentally; then physically.

The corollary suggests that if you can see it in your mind’s eye, you can create it in the world’s reality.

That brings us to this week’s question:

• Are your feelings of insecurity based on reality?

Thanks for sharing a bit of your time with me this Monday morning.  

Have a great week!

Blog post from this past week:

Monday Morning Motivation - Middle