Do you feel very happy after some success/achievement then feel sad? You work hard for few days then you feel sick suddenly? Do you pick up fights with your spouse/close friends after having a period of good time? Then you may be having Upper Limit Problem . After I accomplish some thing I feel happy then some thing used to come up that will create some disturbance. And, I also used feel that some how the level of happiness stays  pretty much in the same range . I used to believe this is

“A friend in need is a friend indeed” “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me” – Henry Ford “If you have one true friend you have more than your share”  Thomas Fuller There are numerous quotes on friendship. What is friendship? As I was typing this I became bit curious to see what is the Wikipedia’s definition of friendship. Here is the definition as per wiki “Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between

“Know Thyself” – from Socrates to your spouse to swami ji and every one tell you “Know yourself”. I never understood this well. If someone is talking about this from spiritual angle, then it is different from what your spouse or someone else meant. Here I will be talking about from the context of knowing your core personality. My understanding of about “Know yourself” has the following components: Values:   What are values? Values are nothing but

Did you visit any doctor recently for any health issues? What kind of treatment was suggested?  Holistic/preventive or more of symptom suppression approach? Do you think doctor is really interested in your health and well-being? Of course, not. Unless you get a Munna Bhai MBBS type of doctor, which is very rare. Why should he take care of your health really? He is there to treat you as per medical procedures. Our fundamental building block of life is health. But why we try to outsource it

Other day I was talking to some one  and suddenly he started talking very emotionally about some guru he follows and I started sharing some thoughts on the role model I like. I notice now a days ( it is there ever since) people split into groups based on the guru/path they follow and they promote their guru and talk about why other guru’s approach is not good. Isn’t it funny that it negates the whole purpose of “spiritualism”? It is not funny to me.Here is why…

Conclusion When I had started on this blog, I did not think that this will go into these many solutions and run as a series of blogs.  Thanks for reading the series (part or full). You would have got bored a bit and lost some interest in between. But I wanted to provide the comprehensive information so that it can referenced forever by whoever needs it. At this same time, it is not practical for people to practice all 25 solutions and in fact it is not required. Based on the kind of fear

24. TAKE OWN DECISIONS Some times fear comes when you are not used to take your own decisions. Underneath every fear there is a decision making related resistance and vice versa. So longer you avoid taking decisions then more weaker your decision making muscle would be. Take more decisions and experience failure or success and repeat the process. After some time your thought on fear will fade away as you get used to experience both failure and success. One of the main fear people experience

Solution # 22 – RE-WRITE YOUR STORY We continuously tell stories to ourselves. Just observe how many stories you tell yourself in a single day. Stories get formed through our beliefs, experience and emotions. Unfortunately these stories are most often negative stories – why you can’t do certain things because of .blah  blah blah… Most successful people would visualize and tell optimistic stories and that is why they their stories becomes realities. Same thing happens for negative

Solution # 20 – JOURNALING Any fear would have power when it is sitting inside the mind. The moment you take it out and go into the details like what you are believing in, what stories you are telling yourself, what emotions you are experiencing, etc then you will get the complete hold on your fear. In other words, you will get all the building blocks of fear. This solution is some what similar to “EXPERIENCE FEAR IN DETAIL” solution. But the difference with journaling is you are

Solution # 17 – PERSONAL COACHING Personal/Life Coaching is gaining prominence in India slowly. This service is reasonably well known in many of the western countries. Personal coach role is very different from a physiologist. Phycologist (through CBT) would be beneficial when you are facing with specific and deep rooted fears/phobias. When we are dealing with fears related to key changes/decision/transformation, coach would be more beneficial. It is very difficult to get a good coach

Solution # 15 – ACTION is ANTIDOTE for FEAR “Fear could paralyze. Action was the antidote.” – Ken Follett Most often fear becomes stronger when you hesitate to act. I think the real fear is to act and if you act the fear loses its power automatically. Also, once you start moving forward with decision and action you would realize that the fear is the illusionary and the action is real. I feel we try to hide under the name of fear or some thing else just to avoid action. Why?

Solution # 13 – BUILD PHYSICAL STAMINA We all know the relation between body and mind. You can take either body route or mind route to conquer fears. Swami Vivekananda was a very big advocate of having a strong body. Here we are talking about body route. Having a strong body and strength has a huge impact on how you think and take decisions. For a moment, assume that you are sad and dull then how would your posture will be? Your head will be down and your shoulders will be lose and

Solution # 11 –  VISUALIZATION When you think about any fear you mostly run a movie inside your mind. Through visualization you can change your movie/images. Visualization is a very powerful tool. The more you run negative pictures in your mind the stronger your brain becomes in running them. So you have to reverse your pictures through very strong repetition of positive images. Take any fear you are running in your mind then create a positive picture until it becomes the default

Solution # 8 –  LIVE YOUR CORE VALUES Fear comes when you are not living your core values (core beliefs). Most courageous people are very authentic and they live their core values. Who comes to your mind when you have to think about a courageous leader? There are many of course. For me, Mahatma Gandhi comes to my mind. All his strength he got by living his core values to the most. When you live your core values nothing can scare you and not even death. Read about any of the world top

Solution # 5 –  LOVE IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR FEAR Does this statement look like a cliché? What is opposite of Fear? It is not courage. It is love. If you have pure love or passion towards any thing then there is no room for fear. Let’s say some one comes and tells you that they are starting a new venture or new career then if you do not have same level of passion for it then your mind will come up with all kinds risks, problems, pains, etc.. Why it so? Because you do not love as much as

Solution # 4 –  GET COMFORTABLE with PAIN Actually the title of this solution should be “GET COMFORTABLE with FEAR” but I chose to call it as “GET COMFORTABLE with PAIN” for a reason. When you experience any fear it creates some kind of emotional discomfort/pain. And this pain is what will make you hold back. So if you can manage this pain then you will be able to move forward and the fear will lose its strength and it would disappear. But if you have less threshold limit for pain

Solution # 3 –  Build Optimism At the base level fear is nothing but negative thinking. Our minds would have accumulated lots and lots of negative thoughts through out the years. For many people the default mode of thinking would have been ‘negative’. What this means is that you naturally think negatively about any situation or event. Your brain’s neural pathways are wired to think negatively. Your brain might have the predisposed mode of negative thinking or through the accumulation

Solution # 2 -Living in Present/Mindfulness In the previous blog, I wrote about Meditation. In this blog I want to discuss on our solution # 2 -Mindfulness.  Most often Meditation and Mindfulness are used very interchangeable. Even though it is very much interlinked I think there is a difference in terms of how they practiced and implemented. Meditation is some thing you practice for some duration of time while Mindfulness is some thing  you have to be Mindful of whatever you do in your

Out of the 25 solutions from yesterday’s blog, I will discuss about top solution in this blog. Meditation We all know meditation is good. Very basic thing right and especially if you are from India then we know this stuff very well (really?) but we don’t take this as seriously as some of the western countries and neuroscience research is taking. First, thing we need to understand is Meditation is very scientific. This is not a mumbo jumbo thing. We discussed in the earlier blog about

Solutions to Face your FEARS Before we look at different solutions to facing your fears, let us understand the exact science first – It all starts from the brain!!. When you feel the fear, your brain’s “Amygdala” gets activated. As soon as Amygdala receives this fear feeling it activates different responses in the body – increased heart rate, shallow breathing, sweating, high blood pressure, etc.  Amygdala looks like almond shape with in the brain. The function of Amygdala is to

Click below for Part 1 if you have missed to read Part 1. How to romance with Fear? – Part 1 (Introduction) Origin of FEAR If you believe Darwin’s theory, then you know we have evolved from animals. Fear has been protecting us since our animal life to save us from any threats from other animals etc. Even if you don’t believe Darwin theory, I hope you understand that Fear as an emotion has been built in as a protective mechanism. I also believe that like any other memory in our brain

When we hear the word “addiction” we typically think of alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, etc. There are tons of other addictions and most people are unconscious about them or not very visible outside.  Let me give you some examples of these not so commonly accepted addictions. Social Media /Web surfing addiction – Find out exactly how much time you are spending on social media per day/week. And you will realize how much time you end up spending. People who build social media