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A while back I was very pleased with myself. I had come out to all my friends and relatives. I had even broached the final frontier and come out at work. I thought I was finally free of the closet! Or was I? As it turns out, I was in for a rude awakening. Coming out never ends. It is a process that you will have to go through time and time again. Each time you meet a new friend, each time you change a job, or move to a new neighborhood the coming out process starts again, each time you meet a new set of people.

So what’s the secret to coming out over and over again and keeping your sanity? For me, simply normalizing the process has eliminated nearly all the stress of coming out. Here’s what I mean by normalizing. In conversation, people will often refer to their spouse or boyfriend when discussing weekend plans or describing their life. “My husband and I are going to the movies on Friday.” or “I live with my boyfriend and two kids.” I simply have the same conversation, only substituting the word partner for husband or boyfriend. “My partner and I are going to the movies on Friday.” “I live with my partner and three dogs.” I don’t announce the fact that I am a lesbian. I live the fact that I am a lesbian. Other people can listen, observe and form their own conclusions.

Normalizing the coming out process has a few advantages. First of all it de-dramatizes the process. When we de-dramatize coming out we exude confidence and send a message that being gay is OK. When we are comfortable with ourselves, others tend to be more comfortable with us also. When we take our lesbianism in stride, others tend to take it in stride too.

Normalizing also reduces the stress of coming out. Speaking about our partners as a matter of course, just like straight people talk about their spouses, simply becomes a habit, requiring little or no thought. Coming out then becomes a simple and natural part of your daily life.

For those who are coming out for the first time, there really is no way around the jitters and anxiety. But for those of us who have been through the process already, normalizing is a great way to live your life in an open and honest way.

Pat Cheney is a life coach working with gays and lesbians who are coming out in midlife. She also works with lesbians to strengthen and energize their relationships. To find out more about her services, visit Pat’s website at http://www.discoveringpride.com.

If you have a fear of failure, you’re not alone. Many people do. However, the fear of failure can do more than keep you from being successful. It can also hold you back in other areas, including simple life enjoyment. Often times, fear of failure develops over a period of time, often triggered because you did not get the acceptance and approval you needed from those who were important to you as you were growing up.

If you were raised in a particularly negative environment and received little praise for what you did, you may be among those who experienced fear of failure. Even as you strove for positive recognition and encouragement, you may have learned that no matter how well you did or how hard you tried, it wasn’t good enough.

This may have resulted in low self esteem and may even have become a self-fulfilling prophecy, feeding negativity. Over time, you may have developed an ever-present fear of failure that has made you reluctant to try anything new. If this has carried over into adulthood for you, you may fear that you’ll never succeed in anything you do.

Fortunately, you can overcome this fate. Here are six things to remember:

1. There is a relationship between fear of failure and the resulting (or even preceding) lack of success.

Even though a lack of success and fear of failure have some things in common, they are different. If you lack success, you haven’t succeeded for one reason or another. If you have a fear of failure, you won’t even try to succeed, which in turn of course will lead to a lack of success.

Let’s take a look at how much effort you’ve applied to succeeding at something. Do you see a pattern whereby you stop trying once you’ve lost confidence? If this is you, it’s something that can change and is in fact the biggest reason people fail to succeed. How long did you honestly, truly try before you stopped even trying to succeed with a particular endeavor? Stop for a moment and think about when you’ve lost confidence and subsequently given up trying.

2. How much time and effort do you give something before you give up?

Of course, no one is saying that you need to keep trying endlessly (especially in the same ways) at something that simply isn’t going to work. However, if you have experienced a fear of failure or lack of success previously, you may not have the patience and persistence you need.

Remember that successful people, too, have experienced failure. The difference is that they picked themselves up after such failure and gave things another try, perhaps taking a different tack. Increasing the amount of effort you give something without feeling overly stressed or willing to give up too soon is something you need to pay attention to.

3. Build relaxation into your schedule

Of course, you shouldn’t simply sit back on the couch and watch TV all day, but you do need to build breaks into your day so that you don’t get overly stressed and tired, which can lead to giving up overall. If you have an excess amount of stress and negativity in your day, this will give you an even stronger fear of failure. Take regular moments during your day to do something fun that will relax you, exercise, or otherwise take your mind away from the task of the moment. Doing so will put you in a more positive frame of mind and may even allow you to solve a problem you’ve been stuck on. It certainly will also ease the tension.

For example, if you can just work for half an hour before you feel stressed, take a small break every half hour. You’ll have an easier time pushing forward if you know that you’re going to take a break in just a few minutes. In addition, make sure you do push forward with full effort during the time you are working. Knowing that you’ve got regular breaks scheduled is, again, going to help you give your full attention to what you’re working on, which will increase your chances of success.

4. Baby steps are the way to go

Instead of trying to accomplish one huge project in its entirety, break it into small and easily achievable steps. Again, take breaks regularly so that you don’t become overly stressed or overwhelmed. If you do this, you’ll come back to your projects fully relaxed and re-energized, ready to tackle problems once again. In addition, this will help keep you positive in general.

5. Keep doing things you know you’re good at

If you know you’re good at something, make sure it’s something you keep doing regularly. If you know you’re good at something, you’re going to feel confident and self-assured when you do it. This, in turn, is going to give you the tools you need to carry that self-confidence and self-assurance into new activities.

With this confidence, you’re much less likely to fail and are also much more likely to take setbacks in stride. Therefore, you can take this confidence and utilize it in the efforts you make for new tasks you’re not yet comfortable with. This, in turn, will make it much less likely that you experience a fear of failure to the point where you want to quit.

6. Regularly boost your own self-esteem

One of the best ways to ensure your success is to make sure your own self-esteem is high. Often times, a fear of failure can have its roots in a lack of self-esteem. As you improve your self-esteem, you’re less likely to fear failure. And rather than relying on approval or acceptance from others, you’re going to be able to turn inward and focus on yourself and your own abilities. This in turn will help you garner self-approval in what you do, which is a much more reliable barometer. This makes others’ opinions of you less important.

If you focus on these keys, in time, you’ll begin to see your confidence grow and your fear of failure weaken. Ultimately, it may disappear altogether.

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of My-Personal-Growth.com, a site that provides information and articles for self improvement and personal growth and development. http://www.my-personal-growth.com

Each and every single one of us has a unique set of values, beliefs, and even inspirations that make us who we are as individuals. Naturally, as we progress through life, these very important elements that lie at the very core of our existence will slightly alter and adjust in a manner to allow for the new experiences and situations that we have endured. Life is much like a sea… at one time; we may drift peacefully and quietly atop the glistening waters. Then, there will be situations in which we must work to keep ourselves afloat waters that are ferocious and ominous in nature.

Yes, it is true, there will be treacherous waters and frightening and intimidating clouds that linger among us throughout life, but it is essential that we each realize the importance of being true to ourselves. Is it not true that in the roughest of seas men learn to survive? Is it not among the violent waves that men learn to welcome and appreciate the calm surfaces of the water? Is it not true that when men face the evil of the storm that they relish in the calm that occurs after the thunders and treacherous waves have passed? If you are searching for the importance of being true to yourself, consider the man that was consumed by something much larger than he.

In order to be true to yourself in the midst of peace and calmness, you must stand firm in your beliefs when staring opposition in the face. This is what assists in developing who you are, this is what defines you… your ability to overcome and learn.

Many times in life, we will be faced with temptations that may defy who we are as individuals. It is so much easier to go with the natural flow of the tide than to push against it. It is human nature to want to experience as little complications as possible. What you must consider is if you are denying yourself of some important lesson, of something much bigger than you or you ever imagined. If floating with the direction of the tide defies you as an individual, and you feel as if you will not gain any type of insight as to who you are, or it does not allow you to stand alongside of your personal beliefs and convictions, turn that boat around and push with all of your might against the tide.

It is better for a man to be true to who he is, rather than deny himself of all the rewards he will experience as standing alone in his personal convictions and beliefs.

Being true to yourself is a very rewarding experience. Many experiences and situations will come your way and threaten the very existence of your unique stand in life. We pass over many different waves in life, many ships come in, and many ships pass us by. In many cases, animals of the wild such as sharks will want to engulf us in order to define their existence. Stormy skies will sometimes linger over us, and violent wars sometimes rest on the banks of life. In all of these things, you must stand strong in who you are. Allowing these situations to overcome you, violate you, and even control you in any way, just may be the point in which you lose sight of the horizon, sight of who you truly are.

Compromising your values, compromising your beliefs, compromises not only who you are, but your place in the world. By compromising your place in the world, you may very well be denying another the strength to remain to true to themselves… remember the important and wise saying by Aldous Huxley:
“Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.”

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of Be Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business. http://besuccessfulnews.com/

The common perception is that we choose friends whom we like, but a new study suggests that it is more about who gets in contact with us first. Research suggests that the act of choosing our friends is not intentional, rather it happens by itself depending on a number of factors, most important of which is our proximity with the person.

Proximity refers to whether the person befriended is close to us in some manner, whether he is a neighbor, a classmate, or even our partner in a school or college project. We generally think that friendship is based on common interests or values.

This research refutes this, saying that the probability of a person befriending another is no more than the probability of withdrawing a certain number randomly from a box.

In the early school years, friendship is based on proximity, and the peer network is highly dependent on the child’s survival systems: the parents, the teachers, and of course his schoolmates.

As children grow up, their horizons widen and they start developing a network of friends on the basis of common interests. As they move into adolescence, the gender barrier evident in the elementary school now starts to break down, and more interaction takes place among children of opposite sexes.

The number of best friends decreases from the earlier years, but the emotional bonding with friends starts to deepen. The intimacy among friends increases, especially among girls, where they share more private thoughts as they age.

Adolescents describe friends in terms of loyalty, genuineness and intimacy, and also as people upon whom they can depend in times of need. Friendship at different stages of growth is realized in different ways.

No matter how friendship develop, however, a recent issue of Psychological Science (a journal of the Association for Psychological Science) reports that sitting in neighboring seats as a result of randomly assigned seat numbers when meeting for the first time led to higher ratings of friendship intensity one year later. The same was true even if participants were merely in the same row.

Have you ever noticed how most of your school friends were in your class seated close to you at some point? Perhaps that is how you met, or maybe you knew each other already but when you sat closer to each other is when you really became friends.

Whatever the researchers say, one thing that remains constant is that friends help in buffering, preventing, and mediating stress; and are also almost always there to cheer each other up during tough times.

Friendships also offer tremendous opportunities for learning from each other, and having fun while doing the same. Moreover, friends help each other in acquiring social skills, which is very important to us as we grow up.

A lack of friends is commonly associated with poor social skills, emotional problems, lack of teamwork skills, poor school attainment and adjustment, pessimism, and lack of communication and interpersonal skills.

All these skills are vital in the modern day world, whereby the successfulness of a person depends to a large extent on these skills, no matter what education you’ve received.

Sara Jones was a fine student but science was a source of frustration she didn’t want her kids to suffer. She met Rick and Amanda Birmingham and realized their grasp of everyday science was the secret to making science fun. To learn more about the solution to science visit http://SupeFunScience.com