Russ Harris is one of the world’s leading practitioners of “Acceptance and Commitment Therapy” (“ACT” for short)—which is basically a cool hybrid of cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness training.

Russ has written a couple of great books we’ve featured: The Happiness Trap and The Confidence Gap. Today we’re going to focus on an idea from The Confidence Gap.

Here we go…

Want more confidence? Awesome. (Who doesn’t, right?)

Well, Russ tells us we need to move from FEAR to DARE.

Let’s start with a quick look at FEAR then we’ll sprinkle some of its DARE antidote.

F: Fusion
E: Excessive goals
A: Avoidance of discomfort
R: Remoteness from values

Want to feel a bunch of fear? Here’s the recipe: Create “fusion” between you and your thoughts about whatever it is you’re up to. Then create an excessive number of goals (and focus on them excessively—forgetting the endlessly evolving process). Then try to avoid any and all discomfort as you go after those excessive goals. And, in the process, make sure you create remoteness from what’s important to you.

Enter: FEAR.

(I feel it just creating that ingredient list! Hah.)

The solution? DARE.

D: Defusion
A: Acceptance of discomfort
R: Realistic goals
E: Embracing values

First, we need to “defuse” from our thoughts—stepping back and seeing that whatever is bubbling up in our minds is more like a cloud rolling through the sky of our lives than anything. Then we ACCEPT the discomfort. (And, if we’re feeling really feisty, we “Reverse our desire” and scream “BRING IT ON!” to ourselves—remembering that our INFINITE POTENTIAL exists on the other side of our comfort zone.) Then we dial back/chunk down our potentially crazy goals and make sure that at least the next steps are realistic as we go for greatness. And, perhaps most importantly, we embrace our values—reminding ourselves WHY we’re so committed to Optimizing and actualizing.

Voila!!

FEAR to DARE.

Got any FEAR in your life? I DARE you to walk through that little exercise Today!

FEAR -> DARE #447

ACT on How to Make the Switch

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The Confidence Gap

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The Confidence Gap