20 Seconds of Courage

This is a challenge I’m going to start doing in my own life, so I thought I’d share it with you.

It’s the 20 SECONDS TO COURAGE challenge.

Whether it’s:

• Choosing an apple over a cookie, a glass of water over a coke, exercising over watching TV
• Doing a task you’ve been dreading
• Making a phone call you’ve been avoiding
• Having a difficult conversation
• Taking action on a project

You can use the 20 SECONDS TO COURAGE challenge to help you out.

Take 20 SECONDS to muster up the STRENGTH, MOTIVATION and COURAGE to make CHOICES that immediately move you in the direction you want to go.

Our lives are made up of many small choices.

• What to eat.
• What to drink.
• What to do next.
• What to say
• Where to go.
• Who to spend time with.
• How to spend your time

Each decision we make moves us in a certain direction.

Are your choices leading you in the
direction of your dreams, goals and values
or away from them?

We often tend to avoid doing things that are uncomfortable and raise our anxiety.

We like to stay in our comfort zone.

After all, it’s comfortable!

Here’s how to implement the 20 second challenge.

STEP ONE: Identify the ‘thing’ you want to do.

• Exercise
• Have a difficult conversation
• Eat healthy food
• Ask for a raise
• Make a phone call you’ve been avoiding
• Apply for a new job
• Tackle a project you’ve been procrastinating
• Improve a relationship

STEP TWO: For 20 seconds, put all your energy and focus into building up the courage to immediately take an action step towards the thing you need to do.

• Give yourself a 20 second pep talk in the mirror.
• Repeat “I can do it”
• Repeat Nike’s Mantra “JUST DO IT”
• Put on a great pump you up song, jump around and psyche yourself up
• Don’t think about what happens after you get started-just use this 20 seconds to get motivated and pumped up to go.

STEP THREE: Immediately take one small action step towards the ‘thing’ you want to do

• Dial that phone number.
• Put on your exercise clothes
• Grab an apple and bite into it
• Get out of bed
• Don’t think-just “Do It”

REMEMBER: Take Action FAST before you back out

• Don’t feel like it??? Do it anyway.
• Scared? Do it scared!
• Don’t let that internal voice talk you out of it-You know–the one that says:
“You can’t do it”
“It will be too hard”
“Do it later”
“Oh, just give in”

A life where you get what you want and deserve can begin with having courage just 20 seconds at a time.

In order for change to happen,
you have to do something different.

If you keep doing the same thing,
you will keep getting the same results.

Change can happen as the result of making small different decisions 20 seconds at a time.

• Courage to do the things that scare you.
• Courage to do the things you don’t feel like doing

Is often the only way to get what you want out of life.

Pick something you want to do but either you’ve been too SCARED to attempt it or you just haven’t been DISCIPLINED to change your habit.

Muster up 20 SECONDS OF COURAGE and take one small action step to get you started.

What’s the first thing you are going to
muster up 20 seconds of courage to do?

If you’d like to find out how personal life coaching can help you, Contact Fay for a FREE, NO OBLIGATION 30 minute consultation.
_______________________________________________

Fay Prairie is a personal life coach and speaker specializing in relationships and POSITIVE, empowering mindsets.

She helps set you free from stress, anxiety, worry, negativity, and depression, so you can be a Better You, have Better Relationships and live a Better Life!

Contact Fay to set up a FREE 30 minute call to
discover how Personal Life Coaching can help you to begin making positive changes in your life!

E-mail: fay@fayprairie.com
Call: 507-829-0181

Fay also provides workshops and trainings for businesses and schools. Check out her speaking page.

We do things because we want to FEEL GOOD

• Go on a vacation
• Buy Stuff
• Get in or out of a relationship
• Quit or get a new job
• Remodel our house

The ultimate goal is to FEEL GOOD

Another way to help us FEEL GOOD is to change our ratio of POSITIVE TO NEGATIVE thoughts.

Let’s face it-most of us don’t even realize how many NEGATIVE thoughts we have in a day and how many needless UPSETS and FRUSTRATIONS they cause us in our life.

We are so much more skilled in scanning our environments for threats, fears and reasons to be upset than we are in scanning our environment for reasons to be thankful and full of joy.

We are so good at scanning and comparing our lives to others and then noticing what we’re missing and what we don’t have versus being thankful for all that we do have.

We all yearn for happiness, for positive emotions, yet we view the                                                                                   world through primarily negative lenses.

Negative thoughts have the power to spiral your brain out of control and cause harm like–

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Stress
• Overwhelm

Negative thoughts cause:

• Irritability
• Anger
• Unhappy marriages
• Being short with your kids

It’s not totally your fault because our brains are wired to efficiently FIND THE NEGATIVES.

In the cave man days our brain needed to constantly be on the alert to threats to ensure survival.

The GOOD NEWS is:

You can consciously CHOOSE and PRACTICE being more POSITIVE which will change the physical structure of your brain to produce chemicals and hormones that will help you FEEL GOOD.

Here are Three SIMPLE EXERCISES you can practice to overcome negativity:

EXERCISE ONE:

Spend one minute three times a day looking for positive things. Do this every day for 45 days straight.

It doesn’t have to be something big; just simple things:
• a positive feeling;
• a child’s smile,
• a flowering tree,
• a random act of kindness by a stranger.

It’s easy for all of us to find the positives and good when things are going well but the real skill is when you can find the positives when things aren’t going well.

This easy and small exercise will train help train your mind to do just that. It’s just like strengthening a muscle; each repetition you do will increase your skill.

By the end of those 45 days, you’ll start finding positive things with a lot less effort than before.

Before you know it, finding the positives will just come natural-even in difficult and challenging situations.

EXERCISE TWO:

Stay Realistic; Manage your Expectations

People don’t always act, talk, and behave in the way you expect. Situations don’t always go the way you expect.

It’s easy to feel NEGATIVE when things don’t go your way; you end up feeling:

• Disappointed
• Sad
• Angry
• Resentful

which causes cortisol (stress hormone) to surge and it can make you feel awful.

Do you often find yourself upset and
dissatisfied with people in your life?

It could be that you could benefit from
becoming aware of and reducing your expectations.

EXERCISE THREE:

Break down your goals:

It’s easy to drown in negative thoughts when you focus on the big picture or the end goal.

Sometimes, the enormity of the goal ahead can seem so overwhelming to your brain and the uncertainty of you being able to accomplish it can bring about a lot of negative feelings and stress.

Maybe it’s the goal of:

Improving your marriage
Overcoming anxiety.
Losing weight
Making more money
Being a better parent
Getting out of debt

Even though you can’t control the end result, you can always control the NEXT STEP you choose to take towards your goal.

When you choose the NEXT ONE SMALL STEP and then take action on it, it gives you a positive feeling of accomplishment.

Break down your goal into smaller, actionable steps.

Focus solely on each small step as you go along.

This will help keep the negativity in your brain in check, and increase your positivity and motivation in completing the next step.

Conclusion

We don’t want to completely escape negativity because we need it for our benefit sometimes, but we can certainly reduce its bad effects on our life by training our brain to control it. The tips given above will help you do just that!

If you’d like to find out how personal life coaching can help you, Contact Fay for a FREE, NO OBLIGATION 30 minute consultation.
_______________________________________________

Fay Prairie is a personal life coach and speaker specializing in relationships and POSITIVE, empowering mindsets.

She helps set you free from stress, anxiety, worry, negativity, and depression, so you can be a Better You, have Better Relationships and live a Better Life!

Contact Fay to set up a FREE 30 minute call to
discover how Personal Life Coaching can help you to begin making positive changes in your life!

E-mail: fay@fayprairie.com
Call: 507-829-0181

Fay also provides workshops and trainings for businesses and schools. Check out her speaking page.

This SKILL has the AMAZING POWER to
ELEVATE every relationship

People don’t need to be rescued from
their emotions; what they need is
someone to LISTEN and
VALIDATE their emotions.

People need to know:
• Someone is on their side
• Someone is there to hear, accept, and understand how they feel.

Too often we try to talk people out of their feelings or get defensive and tell them why they’re wrong for feeling the way they do.

The simple act of identifying and validating someone’s emotions can:

• Diffuse anger
• Clarify needs
• Help people to see solutions
• Decrease Conflicts/Disagreements
• Opens the flow of communication

Invalidating, ignoring, or trying to
talk someone out of their emotions
can actually intensify them.

VALIDATION-LISTEN WITH UNDERSTANDING

1. Listen to how the other person is feeling
2. Ask questions to show that you are interested and want to understand them correctly.
3. Allow them to safely share their thoughts and feelings
4. Express warmth and acceptance

 Don’t judge what they are saying
 Even though you may disagree with something they are saying, their feelings about the situation are real and important to them.
 Expressing warmth shows that you care about them and how they feel and that their feelings matter
 Acknowledge and accept their feelings
 Communicates to person that you understand and respect where he is coming from
 Identify the primary feeling they are having and then reflect back the feeling with understanding and empathy.
 People yearn for acceptance of their feelings.

Invalidation: Reject, ignore, or judge someone’s feelings. (Shuts down the flow of communication.)
• Judging

o You shouldn’t be feeling that way.
o Discounting Feelings/Minimizing
 People are uncomfortable with emotions and will sometimes try to convince you that your feelings are inappropriate. Often the message is that it’s not okay to feel whatever you are feeling. It’s not that big of a deal. Just get over it.
 Giving Advice/Trying to solve the problem
 People want you to listen and understand their feelings without forcing a lecture on them. (Just do this or do that and you will feel better.)
 Not responding at all
 The person doesn’t feel listened to when you sit there without saying anything.

If there is a communication breakdown between two people, it can often be taken down by chipping away at it with validation.

Why would we feel free to talk to someone who judges, discounts, minimizes or lectures us?

We feel much more open to someone who displays understanding and acceptance of our feelings without judgment.

Examples

SITUATION

Your son didn’t follow through on an assignment and is complaining about the harshness he received from his teacher.

Invalidating Response (usually what first comes to our minds)

“Well, that’s what happens when you don’t get your work done on time.”

(this response will discourage them
from feeling free to talk to you in the future)

Validating Response

“That must have felt awful”

(now they feel understood and feel more
open to communicate with you in the future)

Validating doesn’t mean that you agree with them or what they’ve done but that you understand how they feel.

Most people have a hard time validating someone’s feelings because they think the other person will think they condone the way they have behaved or handled a situation.

On the contrary, they may own up to their own behavior when they feel validated.

SITUATION

“If the neighbor parks in my spot again, I’m going to let all the air out of their tires.”

Invalidating Response

“Oh, settle down. Don’t get so worked up about it. He is our neighbor.” (minimizing and judging)

Validating Response

“Wow, you sound really angry with him.”

It’s so easy to try to talk someone out of the way they feel-we think we’re doing them a favor by calming them down but they really need us to understand how they feel.

Validating their feelings is actually a way to help them calm down.

SITUATION

Friend: “I haven’t gotten into any of the schools I applied to.”

Invalidating Response

“Did you wait until the last minute to apply?” (judging)

Or

“I’m sure it will work out-just stop worrying about it!” (dismissing their feelings)

Validating Response:

“That must be disappointing for you.”

SITUATION

A mother and father took their son to the doctor. She sensed his fear and asked him if he was scared; before he had a chance to respond, the Dad said in a scolding tone:

Invalidating Response

“There’s nothing to be scared of!” (discounting feelings) (making the child to feel even worse)

Simple responses to validate feelings

• • I hear you
  • That hurts
  • That’s no good
  • That’s no fun
  • Wow, that’s a lot to deal with
  • I would feel the same way
  • I’d feel sad/hurt/jealous/angry etc. too
  • That sounds discouraging
  • That must really hurt
  • You seem worried, troubled, scared
  • You look pretty sad
  • That must have been hard

Begin to use validation of feelings in your
relationships and you will see how powerful this one small change can be!

It’s amazing how good it can feel to be HEARD, UNDERSTOOD and ACCEPTED!

Be mindful of how you feel when people either validate or invalidate your feelings.

Be mindful of how you are responding to other people’s feelings.

Be mindful of how other people respond when you validate or invalidate their feelings.

Can you notice a difference?

If you’d like to find out how personal life coaching can help you, Contact Fay for a FREE, NO OBLIGATION 30 minute consultation.
_______________________________________________

Fay Prairie is a counselor, personal life coach and speaker specializing in relationships and POSITIVE, empowering mindsets.

She helps set you free from stress, anxiety, worry, negativity, and depression, so you can be a Better You, have Better Relationships and live a Better Life!

Contact Fay to set up a FREE 30 minute call to
discover how Personal Life Coaching can help you to begin making positive changes in your life!

E-mail: fay@fayprairie.com
Call: 507-829-0181

Fay also provides workshops and trainings for businesses and schools. Check out her speaking page by Clicking Here