***Get Off Your Duff and Do It in 2008

When I was researching my book Good Stress, Bad Stress, a man named Bill told me an interesting story. Only a few months earlier, he had been virtually paralyzed by fear. He had piled up tons of debt. He couldn’t pay the credit-card bills that rolled in every month. And to make it all worse, Bill’s daughter was about to start college and he had no idea how he was going to pay her tuition bills.nnBill felt stuck, but then one day he threw some unpaid bills and old tax returns into a grocery bag and went to a bank. He was convinced that his debt was going to sink any chance of getting a loan to pay for his daughter’s education.nnBut guess what? Bill’s house, which he had owned for 15 years, was worth a lot more than he realized. The loan officer at the bank told Bill that if he refinanced his house, he could level his credit card debt and have enough left over to pay more than one year of his daughter’s tuition. Then the banker told Bill about some very attractive low-cost educational loan programs designed for people in Bill’s income bracket. The banker even helped Bill lay out a plan to make small monthly payments that would allow him to retire with a well-funded IRA fifteen years down the line. Bill went into that meeting scared, but he came out empowered.nnThe moral of the story is, you have to act on your fears, not let them immobilize you. That’s only one of the lessons I learned when I was writing my book. Here are some more:n

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• You never know whether a situation represents a threat or an opportunity until you confront your fear and take action. Sitting on your duff will never give you the answer to that question. Unless you move ahead despite your fear, you will never know what you are up against.n n
• If you can see a positive goal behind what is scaring you, you are probably in a good situation, not a bad one. Sure you are stressed, but if confronting your fear will let you start a business, retire richer, or buy a property, then you had better move ahead and give it a try. If you can sense a worthwhile goal calling out to you, that is reason enough to move ahead.n n
• Taking action will open up even more possibilities for you. Perhaps you’ll get a loan for one investment house - and the income from that property will allow you to buy still more properties. Or the plan you make to eliminate your debt will free you to start making aggressive investments in only a few years. Moving ahead opens up new ways to succeed, while hiding from your fear only causes your life to collapse in on itself.n

nSo remember to think like a baseball player. Can you hit a home run from the bench? Of course not! If you want to swing for the fences, you have to step up to the plate.