Getting Unstuck

May 7, 2012

Interview with Jonathan Alpert, author of the book Be Fearless: Change Your Life in 28 Days

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Mike Carruthers:
Would you describe yourself as fearless - probably not as fearless as you’d like to be?

Jonathan Alpert:
What I find that what people do instead of being fearless is they’re very negative and they think about all the reasons why they can’t or shouldn’t pursue a goal as opposed to why they can and should.
 

Jonathan Alpert, author of the book Be Fearless: Change Your Life in 28 Days...

We’re sort of programmed to think negatively. Thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago it actually served us, it protected us we needed to be alert to danger that may have lurked around the corner like a wild animal that could kill us. And that’s called the negativity bias - most can remember a bad fight before they remember a good time.

And that negativity bias causes us to worry about what can go wrong and to focus on what does go wrong.

You know a lot of the reason why people think negatively is because they want to be prepared in case something does go wrong. And they’re playing out different scenarios in their head to try to prepare for the worst case – but it really doesn’t help them.

Because worry by itself doesn’t do anything but taking action does.

Instead of feeling like a victim or feeling as though there’s no hope they can change around their thinking and they can be solution oriented. A lot of the times people focus way too much on the problem so just by shifting their thinking to what can I do to make things better and actually free themselves of shackles that have held them back.

To hear the complete unedited interview, click here.