5 Tips to Stop Fear from Limiting Career Changes

In drizzling rain, we waited in line to pick up our tickets to Oprah’s Lifeclass: the Tour! Even though we traveled to Radio City Music Hall on a Saturday to get tickets for a Monday show, we already felt the event’s excitement because our names were picked by lottery online to this free, rare occurrence. Soon we would see the TV legend herself and be a part of the live broadcast simultaneously aired on OWN (The Oprah Winfrey Network) and Oprah.com.

With all the fervor of a travelling  evangelical revival, Oprah brought her messages of finding purpose, ending pain, battling fear and discovering your spiritual solution to St. Louis, MO, now New York City and later to Toronto, Canada. This series of motivational classes was alternately taught by: Bishop T.D. Jakes, Iyanla Vanzant, Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra.


In the last season of The Oprah Show, staffers held audience members’ cell phones until after the show taping in Chicago. But, here in New York City as part of the Lifeclass tour, social networking abounded as Oprah encouraged the class/audience to tweet pictures and thoughts on Twitter and to post on Facebook. Viewers also Skyped in from Australia, England, Russia, Florida, Georgia and a women’s correctional facility in Indiana.


For this show in New York, Oprah packed Radio City to capacity with people eager to hear Robbins, the inspirational guru, who recently convinced her and an earlier lifeclass to walk on 12-feet of burning coals. So, if anyone could tell us how to stop the fear that limits career choices or life goals it was Robbins.


Below are five tips Robbins shared that can help stop the fear of making career changes.


1. Don't Turn an Excuse into an Identity
Don’t label yourself as a weak person. Labels come from current or past behavior. Decide how you want to be going forward.


2. Develop a Habit
Courage is not the absence of fear; it’s impossible to get rid of fear. People who are courageous are scared to the core—they just make themselves go forward anyway. Taking action is how you become courageous —because courage, like fear, is a habit.


3. Let Your Body Lead the Way
Taking that action for the first time can be pretty rough. Don't start to analyze it. The longer you stand there, the harder it gets.


4. Write Your List
People have stages in their lives when they are courageous; it could be in a relationship or in a job. Write down a list of times when you acted braver than you thought you could. Once you look at your list, there's always a pattern. You might have been scared to death, but you got up and did it.


5. Remember to Stretch
If you want to live a life that's courageous, you've got to stretch. That means every time you say, "I can't do it," immediately say, "I must do it." Just take action!


What tips can you add? Let us know.