Living on the ‘What if?’ Side of Life

Has there ever been a time in your life, when you have thought back to an opportunity and thought ‘What if?’, come on be honest, I know I have, many many many many many(erm I think you get the picture) times! It’s soooo not a nice feeling.The thought of all those missed opportunities, and the sadness of the missing beautiful memories that could have been. It’s that old enemy ‘Woulda, Shoulda, Coulda!’ rearing its oogly head!

So what was it that stopped you in the first place? What is the reason you are now sitting here on the ‘What if?’ side of life? What could you have done differently or more importantly, what can you do differently now, to stop that ever happening again? Many of us spend half our lives sitting on the ‘What if?’ side of life and then feel more and more disillusioned with ‘our lot’ in life, which then leads to more missed opportunities and then the beliefs that ‘well, it’s probably because we’re just not good enough’. Do you really believe this to be true? What is the one thing that we should do when we get to this stage? Well quite simply, it is to sit up and address what it actually is that has stopped us from grabbing all those opportunities with both hands. What is the fundamental underlying factor or factors that keeps us stuck where we are?

Most of us will be oh so surprised to know it’s fear! Fear of success, fear of actually fulfilling our dreams, fear of being exactly who we deserve to be, fear of living that beautiful life we think about all day long, fear of actually driving our dream car, fear of making that oscar winning film, writing that booker prize winning novel, creating the song that is going to win you all the music accolades out there! So where does this fear come from?

Normally from a ‘Limiting belief/decision’ we may have placed upon ourselves many moons ago, sometimes as far back as a previous life, sometimes before, after, or during birth or early childhood or at some point in between all of those periods upto the present time. Now I can hear some of you saying ‘oh whatever! Here we go again, this is some hippy/new age fangled explaination, bah humbug this doesn’t exist!’ And I say, you’re right! Because if you think that something does not work, well then, if truth be known, it won’t work for you! And for those of you who are open to the wondrous possibilities of removing this fear/limiting belief/decision, well then welcome to my world.

My fear has always been fear of success, so I’ve gone through life being mediocre and average at everything, from school all the way through to one of the most amazing opportunities of my life which was, interviewing Jackie Chan to leaving my media career behind and becoming a Medical Sales representative. I was always average joe, I’m not, for one moment, suggesting that being average is a fate worse than death, but for me it was always a case of wishing and wanting more, dreaming of huge success, fame, money, great love, my house by the beach (Ibiza or Sardinia). And I never seemed to move out of the ‘What if?’ side, from me finishing exams and passing them with average or sometimes less than average marks, and then kicking myself with ‘What if you had put more effort into your revision, I mean if you can get 50% with no revision, you could have got 100% with revision!’ So why was I stuck in the ‘What if?’ fear based part of life, what could I do to move out of this?

Well the first and most important step for me was to realise and admit that this is where I was and to then admit to myself that ‘Yes Nidhi, you are a ‘What if?’ person’, I’ve got to say this was the hardest part of my journey. It’s not nice to see reality for what it is, and then to be honest with yourself about what you have seen and admit that living on the ‘What if?’ side of life is not for you anymore! Taking that step towards your dreams is tough, because more people are afraid of being a success than they are of being a failure, but I have taken that step, with the help of doing my NLP courses, working with some great mentors and friends and as scary as it is, it is also an exhilarating feeling of finally taking the actions needed to remove the less than positive and very unnecessary limiting beliefs/decisions I had placed on myself for so many years and move NOW towards the ‘I DID IT!’ side of life…Come on and join me….I DARE YOU…xxx