Over the weekend I read another fantastic article from Bottom Line Health entitled, Fight Your Inner Chicken.  Beth Weissenberger of The Handel Group in NYC, a corporate, private, and educational coaching company, provides some serious insight about what might be preventing you from achieving your goals.  Since you can’t access this article on line, first I urge you to buy a Bottom Line Health subscription and second, I’ve summarized it below for  you.  It’s too good not to share.

Excuses abound in our heads for why we can’t achieve our goals.  “It’s too hard…” or “just not the right time.”  So, we justify taking the easier, seemingly more secure way out, which usually means staying in the same job, keeping quiet, or continuing to indulge in bad habits rather than changing behaviors.  Those excuses in our heads are what Beth Weissenberger refers to as our “inner chicken.”  It’s the voice that keeps us from taking the challenging path.  If we took a closer look at some of these voices we would realize that many of them spring from deep-seeded, and sometimes irrational fears.

To get your inner chicken in check, Beth suggests the following:

• Think about what you would like your life to be like. Consider all aspects of your life:  professional, family, social, and financial life.  Thinking about goals summons the inner chicken and his excuses.  Write these excuses down so you can recognize them as the voice of your inner chicken in the future.
• Ask an expert or a level-headed, objective friend to evaluate your inner chicken’s excuses.  An outside perspective is a good way to decipher a valid excuse from those that are not.  Experts include your doctor (if the excuse is medical related), therapist, career coach, mentor, teacher, pastor, etc.
• Remember the opportunity cost.  Often the cost of remaining in the status quo is very high.  You give up the ability to chase and eventually fulfill your dreams.  You live without risk and consequently the feelings of excitement and adventure that accompany that risk.  And what about the feelings of accomplishment when the risk pays off?  “Our greatest happiness usually is found on the other side of fear.”
• Force your inner chicken to be more confrontational.  Often our inner chicken finds reasons for tolerating less than perfect behavior from those around us.  Inner chickens do not like confrontations.  They argue that voicing your opinion only worsens the situation.  The trick to overcoming your inner chicken’s proclivity toward avoidance is to learn how to conduct a successful confrontation:  1.  Look at the situation from the other person’s perspective.  Are you doing anything equally disturbing from their point of view?  2.  All confrontations should be initiated when the other person is alone.  No need for an audience.  3.  Ask if it is okay to bring up a difficult issue before launching into it.  4.  Present the issue as something that can be dealt with and changed rather than a clear-cut right and wrong.  5.  Assume that the individual doesn’t realize his or her actions have been causing a problem.
• Tackle one scary endeavor daily.  Whether it be starting a blog, taking on a new hike over steep cliffs, or simply calling someone you haven’t spoken to in years, all of these tasks can be stress inducing.  Developing a system that allows you to face fears that bring you closer to your life’s goals is key.  Facing any fear, goal related or not, forces you to get good at moving past them.
• Name calling can be a good thing.  Finally, when you hear your inner chicken beginning to yammer with excuses, call him on it!  Call him the chicken that he is.  Name-calling gives your excuses less power and allows you to tackle your goals head on.

Get to it!