You may perceive yourself as the kind of person who is overly-sensitive, too easily discouraged and quickly gives up on yourself before you give yourself a real chance. You may forget, but you didn’t always think this way. Something happened to shatter your self-confidence. Right now is the perfect time for a crash course in the benefits of risk-taking.  Choose to remove the foggy glasses to perceive differently.

1) Discern your innate patterns. As an infant, when you were learning to walk, chances are, you didn’t perfect this skill right away. Infants instinctively exert effort to pick themselves up, after each fall. Since you likely walk upright these days, or at least have experience doing so, you weren’t completely discouraged after your first attempt at walking. You can reflect on other instances where you weren’t easily discouraged. Take when you learned to ride a bike, when you learned a sport or another physical skill. You can train your mind to tap into thought patterns that developed your sense of discipline, patience, focus and a growing appreciation for moment-to-moment experience.

2) Uncover causes of inhibited temperament. Differences in temperament influence different thought patterns in each of us. There is a period in the past when most people feel less inhibited than they feel now. Something happens to trigger that mental change. It has been suggested that preconscious activity in the brain triggers the onset of emotions and only though life experience can each of us become more aware of how they influence our behavior. Harmony and equilibrium can be reviewed throughout your lifetime. What you sense would enable you to achieve these states would evolve (or not) with you.

3) Rethink your perception. Six prominent issues tend to adversely affect people’s risk-taking; ignorance, attachment/ fear, anger, pride, misunderstanding and self-doubt. Each feeling or sensation can be broken down into different parts which help to explain why your mind permits it to form and intensify to control you. As you learn to work backwards, you can realize that each one is linked to something you believe exists when you actually fool yourself. Each one is a clever illusion constructed by your ego which has as its purpose to prevent you from proving who you really are and what you can do. How long will you continue to buy into this irony? You can be your own worst enemy yet, you can also evolve your mind to be your own best friend.