How to Improve Your Life and Business

Have you ever thought about how incredibly limiting the word “but” is? It’s like a stop sign, halting us on our journey. Even when we are agreeing with someone, the moment “but” comes out of our mouths, it negates everything we just said.

“You’re right, but…”

“Okay, I will, but…”

“Yes, I will clean that up, but…”

“But” is a fatalistic word. When you use it, you redirect the conversation from what could be to what cannot. Unconsciously, when we “yes, but”, we give into the fear and hesitation that are holding us back, without realizing it. When you throw a “but” at something, you’ve predetermined that some outcome is inevitable. You stop yourself from following through. “Yes, buts” are excuses wrapped up to look like agreements. That’s why they’re so important to spot. 

“Yes, and” on the other hand is the key to infinite possibilities.

Every few years, I try to do something to get out of my comfort zone and push my limits. So a few years ago, I enrolled in an improv class. Anyone who knows me personally knows that this was VERY outside of my comfort zone. I’m an introvert and love my alone time, so the idea of taking this class was quite overwhelming, and it did, admittedly, take a while for me to get into it. But once I did, I was hooked!

During this class, I was taught the concept of “yes, and.” In improv, “yes, and” keeps the bit going, keeping the theater goers, and the cast members, on their toes, pushing the story along. By using this word, cast members are fostering cooperation and communication between one another, rather than shutting down, and, in turn, they’re able to build trust with one another quickly. Which is what makes the whole process fun for them and the theater goer. 

Now, what if we take that model and apply it to business and life? In business, “yes, and” actually encourages you to listen and be receptive to the ideas of others. It creates trust between parties and encourages you to try out different strategies for success. Even if you’re a solo entrepreneur without a team, this method will inhibit you from making excuses for yourself and pushes you to stay open to the possibilities that surround you. 

Think about it! When you’re trying to come up with a new client workflow, but you keep stopping yourself because of your fear of how long it will take to implement, you’re saying, “Yes, I agree I need a new workflow, but it will take too much time.” If you’re like me, you spiral and start thinking about all the things you will have to change, all the different systems you will have to implement, and how you are going to explain it to your clients. Doing so you create what I refer to as a “mountain”: an insurmountable melting pot of all the things that you believe need to happen before you can actually do the thing. That’s what “but” does to life, it creates mountains to climb instead of showing you a walkable path forward. But (pun intended) if we use the “yes, and” method, we are focusing on the end goal - having a streamlined workflow that will make our lives easier in the end. 

Let me give you an example from my own business. In 2021, I decided to transfer my website over from one web host to another. This was a HUGE undertaking and one that I had been putting off for - literally - years. Instead of continuing to say, “yes I should do that, but the workload will be too much for me.” I thought, “yes I should do that, and I will start small.” It took me a while, but over the course of six months or so, I had moved everything over from Wordpress to Squarespace, including the manual transfer of 250 blog posts! - which has allowed me to improve my SEO and the performance of my  website in such a way that allowed my coaching practice to grow exponentially - essentially improving my life and business.

Ready to trade your “buts” for “ands?” Here are my five best tips to start improv-ing your business and life, getting unstuck, and leaving yourself open for the possibilities that are just around the corner:

1. Commit to “yes, and.” from now on. It’s not enough to just say yes, you have to commit to it. Change your mindset for the long-term, make it a habit to avoid the word “but” as much as you can. . 

2. Be part of the team. Listen to your teammates, whether they are your business partner, spouse, or children, with an open mind. You don’t have to agree with everything they say, but you need to respect their suggestions and consider how they might work for your particular issue. 

3. Be part of the solution. Don’t just ask questions and point out obstacles, instead share ideas and work on the solution with your team. Keep adding creatively to what you are building, and let flow and inspiration guide you.

4. Recognize that there are no mistakes, only opportunities. Some of the best ideas will come from accidents. If you say “but” to everything, you won’t give yourself the chance to experience new things - and fail at them. Failure deserves to be celebrated, AND to be learned from 🙂

5. Make sure your team has your back. Your team should be made up of people who will push you into taking new opportunities and trying out new strategies, rather than sitting back and letting you call all the shots. Even the best employers or business owners need a gut check from someone they trust.

Remember, these tips will also work easily for a solo entrepreneur without a team. Instead of focusing on collaborating with others, you are focusing on dropping your internal guards and learning to acknowledge what you really want out of your life and business. Do you want to work 60 hour weeks? Do you want to build in monthly retreats for yourself? Are there days you want to keep your children home from daycare? The “yes, and” method will help you lead you to greater self-trust and confidence, which will, infinitely, enhance your life and business. 

The point of the “yes, and” method is to allow you to become more adaptable to change. The businesses that do the best work are the ones that can encourage new ideas and perspectives, stay flexible, and stay open to new possibilities.

The key is to treat your life and business like an improv class. Keep your heart and mind open to the suggestions of others - even your inner child - and before you say “yes, but,” think about what opportunities saying “yes, and” could bring about. 

What would change? How would your life and business improve if you said yes and then became a part of the collective intelligence, of the amazing experience that is your life?

Afraid to say, “yes, and?”

It can be overwhelming to try new things or to follow through on elaborate plans. Saying, “yes, and” can be scary, but the possibilities it opens you and your business up to are worth the fear. I tell my clients all the time to just take a leap! One step in front of the other until you are out in open air, soaring above the ground.

You are capable of scary things and I’m here to help! In our coaching sessions, I help my clients identify the cliff, assemble the parachute, and take that first - or tenth - step towards the edge. We will review your “yes, buts,” and see how your life and business can improve with a little “yes, and” flip!

Schedule your free session!

How to overcome your fear of failure

One of the cornerstones of the work that I do with my clients is to first deconstruct the belief system they’ve build around themselves and their dreams. Very often this is one of the main blocks stopping them from going after what they want.

Within that belief system the fear of failure takes a central role. The culture we live in is a culture of winners, where failure is seen as something bad that needs to be avoided. As women this translates into us easily being seen as helpless when we fail, with society ready to come to our rescue by letting us know it’s OK not to pursue our dreams. When we try and fail we’re not motivated to try again, but rather dusted off and put back into the good girl box, confronted with the cultural bias that it isn’t for us in the first place, that we’re not supposed to be winners anyway.

Because of this many women fear failure. It’s hard enough to step out of comfort zones, and go against what society wants us to believe about ourselves. When we fail – or think about failing – our biggest fear comes up: that we’re simply not good enough.  The truth is there’s no growth, no change, no progress without some failure too.

Failure is an essential learning experience to get to where you want to go. If you already knew exactly how to get there you wouldn’t fail – true – but you’d already be there!

How to overcome your fear of failure?

Here are 3 tips that have helped me and many of my clients to overcome their fear of failure. I hope they’ll be helpful for you too.

• Change your belief system about failure

Failing is not something bad that needs to be avoided at all costs. In fact, it’s one of the fastest ways to learn. In order to overcome your fear of failure it’s important to change your belief system about what it really is.

Failure doesn’t define you. It has nothing to do with who you are. Failure doesn’t mean that you’re not good enough, or smart enough. It only teaches you something. Probably a valuable lesson. By changing your belief system about failure you’re giving yourself space to experiment, play, and learn. Essential practices to dream bigger, and achieve your goals.

• Remember that everyone fails

There’s no such thing as overnight success. Everyone who ever achieved anything failed miserably – probably a gazillion times – before succeeding. History is full of stories of big dreamers who went on yearlong journeys of failure before becoming the successes they’re known to be today. Just think of Oprah, J.K. Rowling, Lady Gaga.

That’s why I love reading biographies. By learning about the struggles that others came across their journeys to success, I’m empowered to dream bigger and believe I can do it to. Here’s a couple that I particularly like:

Oprah Winfrey: A Biography
Michelle Obama: A Life
Gloria Steinem: My Life on the Road
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and was Shot by the Taliban
Angela Davis: An Autobiography

• What’s the worst that could happen?

When everything else fails (pun intended) I love to ask myself this question. This powerful question is a miracle worker. Both for myself, and my clients. When the fear of failure becomes so strong that it causes procrastination or indecision it’s my go-to mantra. By asking myself what’s the worst that could happen I almost always realize the worst possible outcome is far better than not taking a chance at all.

I invite you to try it out for yourself. Think about what it is you want to do. Now think about what would happen – and I mean really happen – if you failed. Chances are your ego might be bruised a bit, and you might have to go back to the drawing tables and rework your plan. But… will the world end? Will everything in your life fall apart? Will you grow a second pair of legs? Probably not.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

How to take risks (without losing everything you have)

In today’s dream bigger tip I want to focus on the “bigger” part of the process. In everything we aim to achieve there’s a level of change involved. Learning a new language, starting a business, developing healthier habits, … whatever you decide to undertake change is what will take you from where you are right now to where you want to be.

If you’ve been dreaming small until now – that is if you haven’t acted on your big dreams because you believe those dreams are not for you or you don’t know where to start – dreaming bigger means changing the way you’ve conceived your dreams so far. This change – like any other – requires you to learn to be comfortable with what often feels like excruciating uncertainty. It means learning to take risks, and be OK with doing it.

Imagine your big dream is to start your own shop on Etsy. You create the most beautiful jewelry, that all your friends love. But your own business? Actually making money from your craft? That’s not for you. At least, that’s what you keep convincing yourself of. So you keep dreaming small.

In order to dream bigger you need to be willing to take risks. Try something new. Tell yourself, whatever the voice in your head is saying, that you can do it.

How to learn to take risks?

In what follows I share 3 things that have helped me to learn to take risks, and reprogram myself to dream bigger. Whatever your big dreams are, if you’ve been hesitant to pursue them because it feels “too risky”, these tips might help you get started.

• Dream big, but start small

What I hear most often when I’m working with clients, is that they don’t know where to start. The lack of clarity about what to do first sometimes comes from not knowing what they really want, but in many cases it’s the result of feeling overwhelmed by the daunting task to start working on achieving dreams that look like huge mountains.

I know it can be so overwhelming to look at your big dreams in their entirety, and ask yourself how you’ll ever be able to reach them. Like standing in flip flops, t-shirt and pink shorts at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, wondering how you’ll ever reach the top. The result of this type of overwhelm is often inaction. The risks to undertake the adventure are simply too great to even try – or so it seems.

That’s why it’s important to dream big, but start small. Instead of focusing on the mountain, focus on the first step you can take right now. Then take that step. It will help reduce the level of risk you think you’re taking, while actually moving you towards your goals.

• Remember that you can always change your mind

Another reason my clients often procrastinate on getting started with their big dreams is the fear that the choices they’ll make will be forever. This is a mistake our mind makes when we’re about to step into uncertainty. Leaving the familiar behind is one of the hardest things we can do. We’re programmed to like the comfort that comes from knowing what to expect, so jumping into the unknown often feels like one of the most important decisions we can make in our life.

Although deciding to change something in your life can feel like a decision you’ll have to live with forever, this simply isn’t true. It’s not because you start an Etsy shop today, that you have to commit to it forever.

Even if you make a decision that you end up regretting later on, there’s almost always a way back. Or at least another direction you can take that will get you closer to what you really want. That’s the beauty of being in charge of your life, and having the power to make decisions. And why risk taking is not so risky after all.

• Always fail forward

Change involves risk, but it also involves learning. Perhaps there’s even no real learning without at least a little risk taking. Inside our comfort zone we’re usually well aware of what we know, and what we don’t know. Learning requires us to step outside of it, and stretch ourselves a little more. It’s outside of our comfort zone, where risks are taken, that we open ourselves up for failure.

The fear of failure is one of the top reasons why so many women don’t follow their dreams. Unfortunately, as I’ve explained above, there’s no risk taking without risk of failing. And that’s actually OK. What needs to happen to dream bigger is not to avoid failure at all costs, but to reframe what failure really is, and to get rid of the notion that it’s bad to fail.

Failure is essential to growth, and part of the process. Learn to get comfortable with your mistakes, to see them as key learning moments, to fail forward.

If you want more tips to get unstuck, I’ve got great news for you! This tip is part of a series, you can find all entries here.

7 easy things you can do to release anxiety (immediately)

In the past years, I’ve worked really hard to overcome my anxieties, to stop the worry chatter in my head. Along the way, through my coaching practice, I’ve also helped a lot of women overcome their anxieties, fears, worries.

Through this work, I’ve learned that anxiety can be lessened, sometimes even cured entirely, but that to do so you need to change one or more aspects of your life.

What Is Anxiety?

Anxiety is a terribly unpleasant feeling of fear, worry or even panic. When we’re anxious we feel stressed out, our heart pounds in our chest, our breathing changes, our mind goes into overdrive, with what seems like millions of thoughts per second. Or we’re so focused on one fearful thought or experience, that we can’t get it out of our head, as if it was haunting us! We get up with it in the morning, we go to bed with it at night. This can last for hours, days, weeks on end. Believe me, I know, I’ve been there many times.

The thing is, everyone experiences anxiety sometimes. We all inevitably worry about ordinary, day-to-day issues, such as health, family, work, money. That’s perfectly OK.

When Fear Or Worry Won’t Let Go

The problem starts when you can’t seem to shake a fearful, negative thought or when – even after a particular experience has ended – it remains in your mind, and you still worry about it. Another expression of anxiety, one that I struggled with for a long time (still do sometimes) is worrying about all possible, negative scenarios concerning an experience (past or present), a person, or a thing.

Most of the excessive worry is irrational, yet the fear or worry won’t let go. Unpleasant to say the least, often difficult to live with, anxiety can be mild or strong depending on a number of factors, ranging from higher emotional awareness, sensitivity to stress, family history, trauma, or even genes.

Your environment, what you eat, the amount of sleep you get, the people you surround yourself with… all of these things can also have an impact on your level of anxiety.

7 Easy Things You Can Do To Release Anxiety (Immediately)

Throughout the years I’ve learned how to deal with my anxiety, and worry much more efficiently. The good news is, there are simple and effective ways to get rid of big chunks of anxiety, calm the brain, relax the body, get back on track with your life. Some start working right away, while others need more practice, may help lessen anxiety over time.

1. Get Enough Sleep

Women often don’t get as much sleep as they need or don’t sleep well. But sleep is designed specifically to help control stress. It’s something you should never skip on purpose.

Go to bed at the same time each night and wake up at the same time each morning (even on the weekends). Try to schedule a full seven to nine hours of snooze time every day.

When I don’t get my eight hours of sleep I’m not just tired, I’m more anxious too, I even get a tat depressed (another symptom of anxiety to some people).

2. Eat Well-Balanced Meals

Give the body the support it needs. You should limit your intake of rich, fatty, or spicy food, especially during your evening meal.

Try to eat more products that contain vitamin B, omega-3s, healthy whole-grain carbohydrates.

A morning glass of green juice can get you on the right side of calm. You can try this recipe (which is one of my favorites) for a guaranteed mood-booster: combine one banana or green apple, sliced ginger, a bunch of kale, one lime, cucumber slices, a few ice cubes, a cup of water to a blender or juicer. For more protein add an egg, yogurt, nuts, or protein powder.

3. Get Rid of Clutter

A messy workspace or home can make it difficult to relax. Make a habit of keeping things clean and anxiety-free. Take 10 minutes to tidy up your living space or work area every day. I don’t do this nearly enough, but when I do the feeling of bliss that comes over me when things are neat and tidy is incredible.

If you have too much stuff cluttering up your living or work space, try this quick hack for instant clean-up madness:

• Choose just one drawer, cabinet or closet to clean out

• Take everything out

• Categorize the stuff you don’t use (I usually get rid of anything I haven’t used for four consecutive seasons) by making three piles for items to throw away, to donate, to sell

• Only put back the stuff you use

• Get rid of the throw-aways immediately, mark your calendar for the ones to donate or to sell

4. Meditate

Meditation or mindfulness training can help you learn how to better cope with stress. One aspect of anxiety is racing thoughts that won’t go away. Meditation helps with this part of the problem by quieting the overactive mind. Or it will teach you how to not let yourself be affected by your thoughts, which is my case.

Give yourself the gift of serenity, start the day with 10 to 20 minutes of solitude and positive energy.

I’m a big fan of transcendental meditation. It has helped with my anxiety tremendously, amazing results from a practice of two times 20 minutes a day.

5. Hold Your Breath

Yoga breathing has been shown to be effective in lowering stress and anxiety. There is a classic yoga breathing technique “The 4-7-8 Breathing Exercise”, also called “The Relaxing Breath”. This was one of the first breathing techniques I was every introduced too, long before I was practicing transcendental meditation, or any other effective anxiety-relieving method, I was using this technique successfully.

One reason it works is that you can’t breathe deeply and be anxious at the same time. How great, right? To do the 4-7-8 breath:

• Sit comfortably in a straight up position.

• Exhale through your mouth, making a ‘whoosh’ sound.

• Close your mouth, inhale quietly through your nose for 4 seconds.

• Hold your breath for 7 seconds.

• Exhale through your mouth, making a whoosh sound for 8 seconds.

• This is one breath. Now inhale again, repeat the cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

6. Get Hot

Heating up your body reduces muscle tension, anxiety. One of the symptoms of my anxiety has always been muscle stiffness. When I get stressed, my muscles contract without me realizing it. This puts a lot of pressure on my body.

Take a long bath or hot shower, you may find that your anxiety decreases right away (it does with me).

Warming up may be one of the ways that exercise – not to mention curling up by a fire with a cozy cup of tea – boosts your mood.

7. Create a Vision Board for Your Anxiety-Free Life

If you believe that positive things are going to happen, they usually do! I’m a big believer in visualization. One way to enjoy the benefits of visualization is to create a vision board. This is a type of blueprint for the kind of life you’d like to create for yourself.

It’s important to make sure that your vision board not only holds the vision you have for your life, but also reflects the feelings you want to see come forward when you’re actually enjoying that life, looking at the board.

When it comes to anxiety, your vision board should be about things that calm you down. Sounds crazy, I know, but it really does work!

You can also try to make an e-vision board using Pinterest for some Pinspiration. Keep this vision board within your reach. Look at it with love, know that each time you see it, you’ll feel grounded, happy, calm.

Remember, life isn’t something to take too seriously. Often when we worry, that’s all we do. Everything is so serious, so scary, so fearful. When I’m working my way through anxiety, I try to remember to make time to do something I truly enjoy: read a book, talk to a friend, craft, learn something new.

Especially when your anxious, it’s important to find balance in your life focus on the good things that surround you.

Looking forward to hearing from you below. So do tell me, what works to reduce your anxiety? How do you deal with worry?

FREE MEMBERS: DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE ANXIETY WORKSHEET

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How to overcome your fear of conflict

For as long as I can remember, I hated conflict. Until well into my adulthood, I was unable to confront anyone about anything in a more or less decent way. I would keep things bottled up for as long as I could, until there wasn’t any room left to bottle any more. Then, everything would come out. In those moments I’d change from a nice, and understanding woman into a nasty, and irrational version of myself.

After a confrontation had taken place, when I would calm down, my opponents would tell me that I couldn’t handle criticism, that there was no way to reason with me during those phases of anger. And of course they were right.

Fear of conflict is a complex issue

It took me a long time to see that I had an issue with conflict. I thought I was good at it, strengthened by the fact that I had almost no conflict in my life. Until I understood that it was not diplomatic skills, or perfect negotiation abilities that made it so, but rather that I did everything I could to avoid conflict. Always. Everywhere. At all costs.

As a recovering people-pleaser, and a highly sensitive person, I’ve come to believe that my fear of conflict shares its origin with my people-pleasing, and perfectionistic tendencies. In fact, I’ve been able to pinpoint four factors that greatly contributed to me being so afraid of conflict:

#1 I’ve had to deal with conflict growing up

Throughout my childhood, I’ve been witness to, and victim of conflict, mostly because of the recurring, often hurtful confrontations between my parents. So my childhood didn’t feel safe. In fact, I grew up in an environment where emotions weren’t dealt with properly, where anger wasn’t allowed, where anxiety was all around. As a result, I’d become totally conflict averse, and have not learned to stand up for myself in a healthy, positive way.

#2 Unresolved conflict shaped me as a people-pleaser

Because conflict was never resolved at home – just suppressed until the next outburst – early on I started to internalize this conflict anxiety until I believed all of it was my fault. I became a people-pleaser as a means to try and solve the recurring conflicts. Of course other events, and experiences helped shape my people-pleasing behavior, but consistently being exposed to lingering conflict at such an early age definitely played a big part in it. Trying to please everyone became so important to me, that I couldn’t stand the idea of someone being mad at me. So I became even more afraid of conflict. How ironic, right?

#3 People-pleasing led to perfectionism

Trying to please everyone all the time quickly led to perfectionism. As much as I hated the idea of anyone being mad at me, I hated the idea of losing self-control even more. Still in an effort to resolve the conflicts at home, through people-pleasing trials and errors that led me nowhere, I developed a cruel version of a perfect self. I convinced myself that once I’d be that girl, all would finally be well. But because that girl didn’t get angry, was always composed, accepted everything without complaining it became impossible for me to stand up for myself. By this stage I wasn’t just afraid of conflict, I’d also rationalized why it was imperative to avoid it at all costs.

#4 Avoidance of conflict hurt my self-confidence

Growing up with unresolved, lingering conflict, and developing people-pleasing behavior, I wasn’t able to build a strong foundation for self-confidence. When you keep on trying to fix something that is not in your power to fix, and keep blaming yourself for it, you’re like Sisyphus, eternally trying to roll a rock up a mountain. I felt something was deeply wrong with me, otherwise why would this situation persist? This only made things worse. I wasn’t just afraid of someone being mad at me, or of shattering the picture-perfect image of myself. Because of my low self-confidence I also became terrified of the result of confrontations. Because of my lack of self-confidence, the potential retaliation was unbearable to me, a source of much of my anxieties. Having never witnessed conflict being resolved in a positive way, I was terrified by what the other person would do when I stood up for myself by confronting them.

How to overcome your fear of conflict

In my case, the healing process started when I understood the underlying dynamics that caused me to fear conflict so much. By doing that work I was confronted with my lack of self-confidence, self-worth, and self-love.

Having worked my way through understanding fear, overcoming fear, and helping my clients get through their fears, I believe (as Susan Jeffers so beautifully said in her magnificent book Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway) that all our fears come down to one and the same thing: we’re all afraid we won’t be able to handle it. That we’ll be all alone.

What if I told you that from now on until the end of your life, whatever comes your way, good or bad, you’ll be able to handle it. Would you be afraid of anything?

Probably not.

But when you lack self-confidence, self-worth, and self-love like I did, it’s hard to believe that you can handle anything, let alone conflict. So you’re afraid of it. Like I was. And you don’t engage in it, desperately trying to avoid:

• people thinking bad of you,

• people not liking you,

• people seeing through your picture-perfect self,

• people retaliating,

• and so on…

… so that you could finally be loved, because you’ve convinced yourself you’re not lovable to begin with.

The way out of fear is through self-confidence (and self-love)

Conflict is unavoidable. You’re not alone on the planet, there are people all around you at work, and at home. You’re a social being that interacts with other social beings. So you’re bound to run into things that are unpleasant, and that you need to defend yourself for, or confront another person about. And that’s OK. It happens every day all around the world.

Some people are actually pretty good at handling conflict, and resolving confrontations in a positive way. What differentiates those people from how I used to be is their level of self-confidence.

When they confront someone, their self is not in jeopardy. Whatever comes out of that conflict will not dictate how much people love them, or more importantly, how much they love themselves. By believing in themselves first, and having a healthy dose of self-confidence, self-worth, and self-esteem, these people can work their way through conflict in a healthy way.

Self-confidence means trusting yourself

Whatever your level of self-confidence today, you have the ability to work on dealing with conflict more easily. And it all starts with trusting yourself.

The more you believe in yourself, the less you’ll be affected by:

• what other people think of you,

• by people not liking,

• by not being perfect all the time,

• by how people might retaliate,

• and so on…

Or, as Gary Vaynerchuk says (slightly paraphrasing here Gary, hope that’s OK), they put zero weight into anyone’s opinion about themselves, because they know exactly who they are.

What a powerful statement, right? Bathed in a tremendous amount of self-awareness, self-confidence, self-worth, and self-love. And that’s exactly what you need to focus on to overcome your fear of conflict.

Now it’s your turn. In the comments below, let me know what your biggest fear is when it comes to conflict. How do you deal with it? What’s been helpful when you needed to stand up for yourself?

How to stop making excuses for yourself

I was talking to a friend last week about how hard it is for her to stay on track with her goals. She came to me desperate to find a schedule that would work for her, claiming she never has enough time to work on her goals.

But more than that, during our conversation I noticed how she kept making excuses for everything that she was unhappy about in her life: the way people treated her, the promotion she didn’t get, the neighborhood she was living in, the bills that kept on piling up. Pretty much everything in her life has nothing to do with her – or so she tells herself. What I told her is that it was time for her to stop making excuses for herself, and time for her to start achieving her goals instead.

We all love making excuses for ourselves

My friend is not alone in this. In fact, we all love to make excuses for ourselves. It’s our go-to habit when fear sets in, keeping it at bay comfortably by convincing ourselves that – although it’s not our fault – we simply cannot do, have, or achieve what it is we claim we so dearly want.

The reasons we rely on excuses may vary, but the results always remain the same: we don’t move forward with our lives, we don’t achieve our goals, we keep ourselves small.

Our excuses make it so easy for us to stay in our comfort zones

As I mentioned above, the reasons why we fall back on excuses may look different, but there is one thing almost all of them come down to: fear. When we start digging into the reasons why we love excuses to much, fear is almost always where we end up at:

• Fear of failure

• Fear of success

• Fear of not being good enough

• Fear of being made responsible

• Fear of the unknown

• Fear of making mistakes

• Fear of change

• Fear of (fill in the blank)

In my own life, I know I’ve kept myself small for so many years because of, well… all of the fears above, and more! I was even afraid to feel fear, and made a point out of avoiding anything that could make me feel uncomfortable. As a result, my comfort zone kept becoming smaller, and smaller, and smaller.

Until one day I realized that anything that remotely affected me with fear – things I had loved doing in the past, like going to amusement parks, or skiing, or even boarding a plane – had unconsciously made it from the fun list to the fear list.

Little by little I had shrunk my comfort zone to the point where it fit into my own pocket. I was devastated.

Our excuses and our fears love to work together

When I realized what I had done, and how much of the goals I wanted to achieve where unattainable for me considering where I was, I started to see a steady pattern between fear and excuses. I came to the conclusion that they love to work together!

Fear will ignite the excuse-o-meter, while our excuses are based on all the false ideas and beliefs we’ve gathered throughout our lives about what it is we can or cannot do. After a while – as I discovered through my own fears – this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: fears lead to excuses, and the more excuses you use the more fearful you become.

Overcoming your fears is the first step to stop making excuses

In order to break the cycle then, you need to work on overcoming your fears. Because the less fearful you are, the less you’ll hide behind excuses. If you don’t, you’ll not only keep yourself from achieving you full potential, and best life, you’ll also have a heap of other issues besides not achieving your goals:

• You’ll start believing so many excuses that there won’t be any room left for creativity and risk in your life

• You’ll reduce your comfort zone until it fits in your pocket

• You’ll become self-centered, and probably very pessimistic

• By relying on excuses you’ll reject taking responsibility for your own life, and actions

• Eventually you’ll probably regret not having taken more chances in your life

Recognizing you’re making excuses is the first step to overcoming your fears

As with most things we do to ourselves, recognizing that we’re doing them is the first step toward change. With excuses it’s no different. But recognizing you’re making excuses for yourself can be difficult, and something that can meet a lot of resistance. With me, it’s definitely been the case. I kept myself small, and kept telling myself why things couldn’t be different, but I never questioned my beliefs.

My daily inner chatter, when thinking about the big dreams and goals I had for myself, would usually sound something like this:

• I don’t have enough time to do it

• I’ll be able to do it when…

• I can’t do it, people will hate me if I do

• I’ll never be able to make a living out of it

• It’s not meant for me

Eventually I started noticing my inner talk. Then one night, when I was contemplating the big dreams I had for myself yet again, she said: you’ll never do it anyway. It was a defining moment in my life.

Redefining excuses as opportunities

That night, I made a list of all the things I had dreamed of doing but never actually done. Or started, but never finished. The list went on and on. Then I made a list of all the things I knew my parents dreamed of doing, but also never did. So I made a pact with myself, and decided to become the watch guard of my goals by noticing when I was making excuses, figuring out what my fears were, then redefining my excuses as opportunities instead:

#1 Ask yourself what kind of excuses you’re telling yourself

What am I telling myself so that I don’t have to do this or that?
What kept me from doing this or that?
I know I want to do this or that, so why am I not doing it?

#2 Identify what fears your excuses are expressing

What am I afraid of?
What do I think will happen if I do this or that?
What does fear look like for me?

#3 Redefine your excuses as opportunities

“I don’t have time” becomes “I have as much time as anyone else”
“I can’t do it, people will hate me if I do” becomes “What’s the worst that can happen?”
“I’ll be ready when” becomes “I’m ready now” or – my favorite – “I’ll never be ready, so I might as well do it now”

By redefining my excuses into opportunities, and always being on the lookout for the ways my fears love to express themselves to me, I’ve been able to overcome so much, and to make so many seemingly impossible things happen in my life.

That is what I want for you too. Don’t let your excuses stop you from achieving anything in your life.

10 easy tricks to overcome indecision and move forward with your life

Over the weekend a dear friend of mine confined in my about how she currently questions everything in her life, making her indecisive about what actions to take to move forward. What ensued was an openhearted discussion about fear, self-confidence, and breaking free from attractive cages. This post aims to further the conversation I had with my friend, and to offer her – and you – some practical ideas on how to overcome indecision to move forward with your life.

But what is indecision, really?

At its core indecision is the inability to make a decision quickly. Often, as is the case with my friend, indecision shows itself as a constant, and recurring questioning of options, without ever (or at least it seems that way) being able to come up with a decision.

The thing about constantly questioning your options is that it all comes down to fear. Yes, I know, here’s the f-word again, but based on my own life, and the work I do with my clients, that’s what I’ve come to believe. When it comes to indecision, the most basic fear is that you’ll make a wrong decision. But that’s not it, really. The fundamental fear that lies behind you being afraid of making a wrong decision, is that you won’t be able to handle the result of what you’ve decided to go for.

From my experience, it’s this fear of losing control that keeps most people from making decisions in the first place.

So here’s clue #1: Indecision is a fear-based reflex, related to:

• Feelings if insecurity.

• Not knowing what you really want.

• Wanting to please others, thus taking them too much into account.

• Rationalizing what you intuitively know to be true.

In all the examples above, fear lies at the root of your indecision.

• What if I make a mistake?

• What if I choose the wrong thing?

• What if people don’t like what I choose?

• What if my intuition is wrong? (I particularly love this one, oh dear, your intuition is almost NEVER wrong!)

As we’ve seen above, the fear of losing control is what really drives us to not make any decisions at all. And the reason why we fear losing control is because we don’t trust ourselves enough to actually handle our lives, and whatever might come our way. So we prefer to stick to the status quo, to what we know, to the life we have rather than the one we know we want to be living. My advice is: don’t. Don’t settle for the attractive cage that you know, but rather go out and seize the life that is yours to live.

There is a pertinent question that can help you to overcome your questioning and tetanizing fear of losing control.

A question that can help open the door of the attractive cage you’ve been living in for so long: What would you choose, if I could promise you the outcome would be all that you dreamed it to be?

Other ways of asking this question include (but are not limited to):

What would you choose:

• If you knew you could not get hurt?

• If you knew you could do it?

• If you knew you could not disappoint anyone?

• If you knew it would end well?

• If you knew it would make you happy?

• If you knew it was the right decision? (yeah, I know, this one’s the kicker)

Well… my guess is, you would simply go out and do it, wouldn’t you?

Clearly, what’s keeping you from making a decision is not your incapability to make sound decisions, or know what’s best for you for that matter, but your lack of trust in yourself.

This brings us to clue #2: Indecision is related to your level of self-confidence.

Bottom line: you don’t trust yourself enough to pull it off (whatever off is), and so you do nothing (or think you do nothing, because staying put is a decision too, more about that below), and you:

• stick to the safe option you’re familiar with,

• or go with what you think people expect you to do,

• or simply do what you think you can handle.

But by doing this you avoid going after what you really want.

In my opinion indecision is a clever way to mask our fears. Basically we can do two things when faced with a decision: we can decide something, or we can pretend we’re not deciding, which – newsflash! – is a decision too, and a terrible one at that. Indecision is giving away the power you hold over your life, giving up on designing it, letting other people take charge of your happiness.

But what if I don’t know what I want?

When I talk about indecision to my clients, I often get a “but I don’t know what I want” in return, claiming that that’s the reason why they’re not choosing, and not the fear of making a bad decision. When they tell me this, I simply have to call them out on it, by asking them the following question:

If you were the only person on the planet, would you know what you wanted?

And guess what? Every single one of my clients is crystal clear on what they want, when they’re the only ones inhabiting the planet!

Now the inquisitive mind must ask… but why is that?

It all comes down to the same thing: self-confidence. When my clients imagine they’re the only ones around, there is no fear of being judged, and so no issue with going for what they want. And the more they imagine themselves in action, the more confident they get.

Enter clue #3: Indecision will only be cured by taking action.

Just like the story of the chicken and the egg, who came first: the decision or indecision? We usually have it all backwards: we think the fear comes first, and when we’ll be sure about what to do next the fear will go away. But the reality is we have to act first, only then will we be able to overcome our indecision. I know it sounds and feels so counter-intuitive, but it simply is the truth.

So now that you know where all this questioning comes from…

10 Easy Tricks To Overcome Indecision And Move Forward With Your Life

• #1. Build up your self-confidence: as we’ve seen above, indecision and lack self-confidence go hand in hand. The more you trust yourself, and know that you can handle whatever comes next, the less indecisive you’ll be (and the less fears you’ll have for that matter!).

• #2. Trust your intuition: she usually knows best, and will lead you towards what is good for you. Try and follow your gut feeling whenever possible, instead of waiting for the right decision to show itself.

• #3. Don’t worry about making mistakes: you will never know for sure that a decision is the right one until you make it. By being OK with making mistakes, you’ll allow yourself the flexibility to not know everything for sure before taking action, which will eventually help you to move forward in life much faster!

• #4. Beware of attractive cages: it’s so easy to accept the status quo, especially when the situation you’re in feels safe, and familiar. But how attractive that cage might be, it’s still a cage. Don’t let fear make you settle for less than what you really want, instead use your fear as a signpost that there’s something for you out there.

• #5. Don’t think too much: this is related to trusting your intuition. The more you allow your rational mind to weigh your options, the less likely you’ll be to overcome your indecision.

• #6. Talk to people: indecision can often be nipped in the butt by gaining knowledge. Make sure you talk to people, and ask as many questions as you can about the options you’re weighing against each other. A word of caution here though: only ask advice from positive people that are knowledgeable about the subject matter! There is nothing to gain from asking your overprotective mom, or your doomsday prepping roommate.

• #7. Don’t wait for others to decide for you: very often indecision leads to giving away our power to someone else. We wait, and hope that situations will improve on their own. You have to realize that you’re always in control, and that nobody can choose for you. Keeping this in mind will ease your indecisiveness, because who wants to wait around for what will never come?

• #8. What’s the worst that could happen? I really love this question, and serve it to almost all of my clients when fear and indecision creeps in. It’s also my go-to mantra when I start to feel out of control, and lack the confidence to move ahead with a decision. Almost always, the worst possible outcome is far better than not deciding anything at all. Try it out for yourself, you’ll see.

• #9. Know that indecision is a decision too: a true a-ha moment right there. Yes, not doing anything, is actually doing something. Knowing this allows a lot of people to actually move on, and make a decision. Because indecision in and of itself is really the weakest position you can find yourself in, isn’t it?

• #10. So just do something: doing something beats doing nothing any time. As we’ve seen above, the only way to move past your fears is to take action. The same goes for your indecision. Very often, choosing something, even if it’s the wrong decision, will allow you to move forward and choose the right one down the line.

I hope these thoughts help you move past indecision. Just so you know, this post was first published as an email to subscribers of my bi-weekly Love Notes. If you enjoy reading my work and want to stay informed, you can sign up here.