Success in 12 Months: Are You Ready to Face Your Fear?
Welcome back to your “Success in 12 Months’” blog series, and as we move forward together into Month 5, I’m going to be discussing everybody’s favorite topic, the topic of fear, more importantly, facing fear.
What we want to do with this month is take some time to think about fearful situations and how our natural fear response that happens in our brain can really negatively impact us, and then how to actually face fears.
Because you’re not going to be able to necessarily remove them, but how to face them and move through them so that you can start doing the things you want to do and achieving the things you really want in your life, no longer being held back by fear.
No matter how big and tough you think you are, or maybe somebody you admire is, everybody has fears. We all have them.
The most successful people in their chose fields, people that you and I may look up to and look at them in awe wondering how they do the things they do, all have fears.
We all have this. None of us are immune to it. It basically all boils down to the ability to face fears and move through them.
The good news is, any of us can face fears, and the quickest way to do it is to face it directly. By repeatedly facing our fears head on, you can manage them until they cease to exist or at least they’re so much smaller than they were at one point.
What is Fear?
It really comes down to an understanding of what fear is. Typically, fear is your brain’s response to a certain situation or circumstance in your life that you deem unsafe or uncertain.
If you stand on the edge of a building 20 stories up, naturally your brain is probably going to be going a little bit crazy warning you not to get any closer, and that’s a very good thing. That fear response keeps you alive.
The problem is, these same kinds of responses, from an emotional to a physical type of response, can happen when we’re trying to just do every day normal things or we’re doing things outside of our normal routines or habits that are helping us progress our goals, but we get these same negative or discomforting feelings.
And it causes us to retreat. But instead of being at the edge of a building, we’re just at the edge of a new experience that may involve us talking to someone you’ve never talked to before or making a presentation in a board room or going into a busy area you may not be comfortable with.
I don’t know what it is for you, but these things are going to happen and these kind of responses will happen when you begin to take new actions that are in line with your goals of things you’ve never done before.
So it all comes down to understanding this process and then working with it, knowing and understanding you will feel this way but it’s okay and you’re not going to die but you’re going to work your way through these feelings so you can become the kind of person that acts anyways.
You’re going to feel the fear and do it anyway. You’re going to do it scared in the beginning, and the more you do it the less scared you’ll be. Eventually, that fear will really not have an impact on you anymore.
An example is public speaking. Most people have a general fear of public speaking. If you were to go and ask 10 of your friends or coworkers, probably 9 or more would agree that getting up and speaking in public is not a comfortable experience for them. They just don’t want to do it. There’s a natural fear response there.
Then you look at somebody like a standup comedian or a famous presenter or speaker and you wonder how they do it. How do they not have fear?
It’s a weird way of thinking, but it’s true. You think they don’t have fear, but the truth is they did.
They may not have it anymore, but a lot of them still do. If you do some research on some famous comedians or performers, they’ll still admit to having stage fright or jitters or whatever you want to call it, right before they take the stage.
They’ve just found ways to work through that fear and to go and do it anyways and give it their all in the face of whatever they’re feeling. Usually, it makes them feel alive once they’re in the moment.
It’s just a matter of understanding that you too are going to have to go through the same thing.
Your Weekly Exercise: What Are Your Fear Factors?
What we’re going to do this month is assign a couple of different action steps, four in total, that are going to help you become the kind of person who can take action in the face of fear and who will ultimately work and act in spite of fear.
It all starts with conscious awareness of what your fears are.
A lot of us go around avoiding things in our day-to-day life and just not doing things because we’re afraid, but we don’t actually consciously realize that we’re afraid of these things.
This week, your very first week, you’re going to sit down and from time to time start thinking of different things that cause you to feel fear.
It could be, like I said earlier, the fear of public speaking or the fear of introducing yourself to somebody you’ve never met before. A lot of our fears end up being social, but it could be anything. Maybe you have a fear of heights. Put that down so you become aware of it and you acknowledge this is something you’re fearful of.
Make a list as long as you can so you know what your fears are.
Next week, I will present your next exercise to help you face and move through your fears. In the meantime, I invite you to share with me your progress throughout your program. Share your thoughts, insights, inspirations and results with me in the comments section below, or send me an e-mail and let me know what’s going on.
Your partner in moving through the fear,
James