Over the past 9 years of working with a variety of people from different cultures and contexts around their personal development goals, I’ve come to see that “what’s most personal is most general” (anyone know this quote reference?), and that deep down, we all worry about the same stuff. Actually, I think there are only 2 major fears that underlie all human fears, in every culture:

* Fear of rejection
* Fear of failure

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Today we’re continuing on the Thursday theme of “Leading Your Life” by reconnecting with what’s most important to you, being fully self-expressed and realizing the contribution you’re uniquely placed to make in the world.
So far we’ve explored:

Leading Your Life By Getting Into the Flow
Leading Your Life: How is the World Broken?
Leading Your Life: Your 10 00hrs
Leading Your Life by Noticing Your Smile
Leading Your Life By Re-Playing Your Childhood
The Grumpy Old Man’s Guide to Figuring Out Your Life Purpose
Who Are You Not To?

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I’ve mentioned before that I’m a bit of a contrarian. Not a rebel or eccentric or anything. In fact I’m pretty boring in a lot of ways - I dress pretty conventionally and I live quite a quiet, simple, drama-free life. What I mean is that I’ve always highly valued freedom and independence, had a bit of a stubborn streak, resisted being told what to think, and been fascinated by counter-examples to widely accepted ideas and “rules” about life. I don’t know where I got this from, because I come from quite a quiet, polite, conservative family, but my first word as a baby was “no,” and later in life, when told I couldn’t do something, I would usually respond with, “Says who?!” My dad always used to say I would be a lawyer one day because arguing with me was so exhausting (sorry, dad!)

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I really enjoyed this post by Dan Breslau, on “how to make mistakes.” I especially enjoyed his question, “What would you do if you had no fear of making mistakes?” What a powerful question!

I thought this topic is especially pertinent considering that in a recent poll, the top 3 fears that were cited by most Mine Your Resources readers were:

* I’m worried I’ll be out of my depth and I won’t have the skills and knowledge to do those things
* I’m scared of committing in case it’s the wrong decision
* I’m scared I’ll start and then not finish it

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One of the most common reasons why people spring for Resource Mining Conversations with me is because they’re unhappy in their work, and they want to figure out what work they’d like to do instead. And one of the main ways that I see people getting stuck with these sorts of decisions, is that they focus on trying to find a box that already exists, and trying to figure out if they could fit into that box… rather than figuring out who they want to be and what experiences they want to have, and either looking for a box that would offer the opportunity for that, creating their own box around who they want to be and what they want to experience, or even finding ways they can do and be what they want to do and be in their current “box.”

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Recently Corbett and Lea ran a survey for people who are location independent or aspiring to be, and asked all sorts of questions about their aspirations, their fears, and their current life and work positions. Because I see our fears as being the greatest thing that gets in our way of living the lives we want, I was really interested to see what people’s main fears are about location independent living. I loved that the most commonly cited, biggest fears were all about relationships (I think that says a lot about the personal values within this community). People were concerned about how to find and stay connected to the people who are important to them while they’re working at home, in a remote part of the world, or moving around regularly. And they were concerned with handling important relationships with people who don’t understand or support their choice to create a location independent lifestyle.

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