FEAR has to be the most over used excuse of all time. I’m not talking about eminent danger fear; I’m talking about the fear we experience most in our daily lives. The fear that when faced… vanishes into thin air and then shows up the next day wearing a different mask. Conquering this elusive beast is not easy, but the odds may be stacked in our favor.

I was having a debate with my 13 year old son this morning about the importance of school. Of course, he doesn’t want to go because it is stupid and a waste of his valuable time. “How is this going to help me in my future?” he asked. My reply, “Learning is like putting sand in your box. If you want to build a sand castle, you must first have the sand. If you refuse to learn, you cannot build anything.”

Everybody has them; everybody needs them; few take the time and effort to analyze and modify them. They help us make mundane, repetitive, and complex decisions with speed and accuracy. You guessed it – I’m talking about habits. Many of our habits are helpful but some of them can really hurt us when the’re out of alignment with who we want to be. Let’s look at how they are formed and how to improve them.

Most of us need to have a paradigm shift from goal setting to goal getting. Pie-in-the-sky wishes and long term goals are often very difficult to translate into actionable items. Instead of asking yourself, “How do I achieve my long term goals?” ask yourself, “What type of person could achieve my goals?“