Despite my work uplifting women and doing motivational speaking, and my experience studying and teaching positive psychology, I have a number of fears that I deal with regularly. I share some of my fears in this episode, and I invite you to think about some of the things that you fear.

Fears are not only natural, they serve a purpose in terms of evolutionary biology. I discuss negativity bias and the “fear brain,” also known as the “reptilian brain,” and how our ancestors needed to perceive threats in their environments in order to survive. In addition, the “fear brain” is physically closer, more closely connected to our brain stem and our central nervous system, which means that a relatively small amount of fear can feel huge and can impact us greater than the more rational part of our brain.

A principle called confirmation bias describes the way that our brain notices and gives more weight to things that support our fears, and dismisses or gives less weight to things that contradict our fear. Our brain does this with lots of our deeply held beliefs, but it’s certainly true of our fears.

Fear served as a protection mechanism for our distant ancestors, keeping us safe, but now fear can serve to hold us back, prevent us from taking healthy risks, and keep us from going after our dreams. Fear can keep us small, and you were not born to be small!

Carol Dweck, a researcher from Stanford, does a lot of work with mindset and identifies two main types: Fixed mindset and growth mindset. Put simply, a fixed mindset believes that either you’re athletic or you’re not, either you’re smart or you’re not. A growth mindset believes that you can become more athletic with practice, that you can become smarter through effort. People with growth mindsets tend to become more successful because they don’t see certain setbacks as failures, they see them as opportunities for growth. People with a fixed mindset are more likely to be paralyzed by fear, not wanting to be seen as failing at anything, and end up living small and live a less happy life.

If you are afraid of failure, think about it this way: There is no such thing as failure, because we can always learn from the experience, which will inform our next efforts and help make them more successful. Another technique for combatting fear is to detach from the outcome, which I address in this podcast as well, using one of my own fears as an example.

I wish I could tell you that you can stop feeling fear, but that’s just not the case. Instead, the big question here is, what can you do about it? How do we exist with fear but not let it take the driver’s seat, not let it control us and control our actions? To answer this question I offer several Purpose Power Tips, specific, actionable tools, to work with your fear emotionally and rationally.

Fear leads us to play small, and your playing small does not serve the world.

It would really mean a lot to me if you would go to iTunesand leave me a review (hopefully a great one!), leave a 5 star rating, subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode, and download the episodes! And please spread the word and help our community grow!

Thank you so much spending your time with me! And if you aren’t following me already, you can find me on Instagramand Facebook, and click hereto receive my newsletter.

May you live purposefully, may you love yourself, and may you love life.

Bye for now!

We spend a significant percent of our waking hours at work, and yet, too many of us feel undervalued and underappreciated at work. It’s well documented that when employees are happier and feel valued, they perform better and retention is higher, but many employers aren’t conscious of this, or if they are, they don’t know what to do about it. Fortunately, the field of positive psychology holds a lot of answers, and my guest is the perfect person to share this knowledge with us.

Senia Maymin is a dear friend, a close colleague, and a mentor. She has a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Stanford, is a consultant and executive coach working with clients like Google, Intel, and VMware, and coaches entrepreneurs and executives on building confidence and creating successful teams, writes for a wide range of media outlets, founded, edits, and is the chief of research for Positive Psychology News Daily, and is the most get-it-done woman that I’ve ever met!

Senia shares a little of her background and some of the work that led to the writing of her book, Profit From The Positive. She and a colleague, Margaret Greenberg, had each been coaching a number of executives and entrepreneurs, and they began to realize that they were seeing patterns in the struggles and questions of their clients. They decided to conduct a number of interviews to dive deeper into this, and they asked what their biggest business burning questions were. Many said they wanted to know how they could get the mostout of their people, and Senia and Margaret felt this was the wrong way of thinking about it. Instead, better questions would be, “How can we get the bestout of our people? How can we bring our people to be their best?” From these interviews and their own research they learned so many important truths about how to maximize positivity and success in the workplace, including how crucial it is for employees to feel valued.

We discuss strengths, and Senia poses three questions for you to ponder to help you begin to identify your own strengths. Research is very clear that by using your strengths every day you’ll be happier and more productive, so understanding your own strengths is fundamental to leading a more fulfilled life. To go much deeper into strengths, you can take the Values In Action (VIA), a free questionnaire created by two of the founders of Positive Psychology; you’ll find a link below.

Senia and I share a number of questions that we ask our coaching clients to help get at their deeper truths and allow them to share more of themselves, we talk about the concept of “struggling well,” and Senia shares her thoughts on how people can take action on their dreams, which is different for different people.

We discuss the idea put forth by Martin Seligman, the founder of Positive Psychology, that we are called to the future, drawn by our future self, we are motivated every day to take action based on what our future self wants us to do. To me, this boils down to purpose, that if we think about the highest and best self that we can possibly be, then we’re going to take a different action in this moment.

We end with Purpose Power Tips on how you can immediately go into your own workplace and start being the champion of positivity and profitability, and for you to do and feel better and be more successful.

To take the free strangths assessment tool, the VIA, go to http://www.viacharacter.org.

To learn more about Senia and her coaching services, go to https://www.svchange.com.

You can also check out Senia’s book, Profit From the Positive, at Amazon: https://amzn.to/2LOIRKi

I invite you to check out Positive Psychology News, which you can find at https://positivepsychologynews.com.

We mention the Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP) program, which I’ve been teaching for a number of years. If you’d like to learn more about it, you can check it out at http://certificateinpositivepsychology.com/. And if you decide to join CAPP, whether you study with me or another one of the outstanding instructors, you can receive a discount by using this code: carinr27

It would really mean a lot to me if you would go to iTunesand leave me a review (hopefully a great one!), leave a 5 star rating, subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode, and download the episodes! And please spread the word and help our community grow!

Thank you so much spending your time with me! And if you aren’t following me already, you can find me on Instagramand Facebook, and click hereto receive my newsletter.

May you live purposefully, may you love yourself, and may you love life.

Bye for now!