Have you ever felt overwhelmed by fear - so much so that it stopped you from doing great things you wanted to do? Yes, you know they’re great, but you just don’t have the courage to face the challenges. You aren’t alone actually. Undeniably, this is a very common issue faced by most of us.
Fear has the power to hold you back from being bold to follow your wildest dreams, or becoming truly successful at anything you try to do. If you let it control you for long enough, it can eventually erode your quality of life and keep you locked in the prison you build for yourself.
What most of the people don’t realize is that fear is nothing more than a conditioned response. It’s a natural reaction to a unfamiliar or uncertain situation. While it is usually automatic.
Recently, I experienced some great fear when I decided to start another business. To do so, I must give up many things that keep me comfort and feel secure, but they’re things that keep me from going anywhere too. It wasn’t easy I must say.
There are a few things I did to over come that fear, you can do so too.
Shift your expectations
One major contributor of fear is the prevalence of negative expectations. Do you usually find yourself expecting the worst in every situation? Do you worry obsessively about what could go wrong, rather than focusing on your strengths and capabilities?
If you make a conscious effort to expect the best, see the positive side of each situation and keep reminding yourself that you can handle more than you often think, you’ll find yourself with much less fear to deal with. Even if feelings of fear do manage to creep into your consciousness, you’ll still be able to keep them in perspective and balance them against an underlying sense of confidence.
Discredit your fears
Experts will tell you that the majority of things you fear will never come to pass anyway. While this may be true, it sure doesn’t feel that way when fear has a chokehold on you! However, if you look a little more closely at your fears when they arise, you may be able to dismiss at least a few.
For example, if you have a fear of talking to the crowd, and your company wants you to give a big sale presentation, you might feel like your life (and perhaps your livelihood) is on the line. You may fear getting fired, or worry that your colleagues will lose respect for you if you don’t do a good job.
But is any of this likely to happen? In most cases, NO. Rather than worrying about what “might” happen if you don’t give a solid presentation, you might brainstorm ways to help improve your performance, such as being well prepared, practicing your delivery on friends and family members, writing notes to yourself and so on.
The more you get yourself prepared, the more confident you will feel. That’s the key.
Do the very thing you fears
When you remember that fear is simply a feeling, it loses much of its power. It can’t harm you and except in truly threatening situations you can choose to ignore it and move forward anyway.
If you weigh the pros and cons in any situation, you may decide that the possibility of negative consequences is minimal so there’s nothing to stop you from ignoring your fear and going for it! This will be determined by you on a case by case basis, of course. The point isn’t to become reckless with your decision-making but rather to empower yourself to know when a fear is groundless and easily overcome.
So, just do one or two small things you always fear (like talking to some strangers in the lift, talk to your boss about your cool ideas, etc.), you will soon find they aren’t that hard to to. From there, you can move all with bigger challenges, get the rewards for your boldness, and learn that you can always do better.
“Buy your insurance”
By “buying your insurance”, I meant be prepared and plan your move carefully. There is no guarantee in life, so anything can go wrong, but it is NOT the reason for you to just give up. The best thing you can do is to prepare and plan things carefully for the whole process. Go one step futher, prepare and plan your way out if things go wrong too. Remember, if things go wrong, you will certainly have to bear damage. BUT, there is always a way to minimize it. Thus, cover yourself carefully and you will execute your plan with much more confident. As a result, things are less likely to go wrong. By the way, sometimes, the unknown damage caused by not doing anything because of fears is even greater than any undesirable outcomes.
That’s it. Now, would you go out there and conquer your fears?
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008
