“I you do the things that you are afraid of, the fear goes away” says Brian Tracy. I love this idea, and yet it is so hard to do because it’s outside of what we believe is possible, isn’t it?
I was coaching someone the other day and she was telling me about the things that hold her back. We explored this some more and got to the root cause… that she was afraid to do them. So I asked her a question:
“Have you ever been chased by Lions or some other creature intent on rending you limb from limb?”
“No” came the answer, with an odd expression that I expected meant that she wondered where I was going with this questioning.
“So I wonder, if you’ve not experienced very real danger, where fear is a given, how do you know what you feel in those other situations is actually fear?”
That’s a tough question to answer. The truth is, emotions aren’t digital… we have an analogue set of feelings that we code, or generalise in to words. The words aren’t the feelings.
And even if they were, what is fear? Fear is a very real and practical emotion if you are in physical danger. Fear fires off adrenaline, which primes our bodies for fight or flight, handy in the jungle, annoying and fairly pointless if you are only anticipating stating your name and occupation at the beginning of a Health and Safety workshop. Thus, for most of us in our everyday lives, fear is redundant, and actually annoying.
And yet I said it doesn’t exist, didn’t I? That’s right. It’s just a name that we give to something, so if we aren’t really feeling fear in those moments where we get butterflies and the blood is pumping in our ears, what is it?
I wonder, is it excitement, anticipation, and a load of other “emotions” that are positive?
It could be, after all you name your emotions, it’s up to you.
So the next time you feel the fear, check that you aren’t in a jungle or similar, and feel something more productive instead!
Head here if you’d like some nice quotes on the subject:
http://2gethelp.blogs.com/takingcontrol/2007/04/facing_fear.html
July 24th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Talking of “feeling the fear” I purchased that book you recommended “feel the fear and do it anyway”. It is quite a good book; I am on page 61 and just about to do the first set of tools/questions/self analysis/exercises (whatever you want to call it).
I have a question for you though. Question 1 for example asks me to list all the payoffs that I get from staying stuck in some aspect of my life. Now my interpretation of a payoff is something that holds you back because it is comfortable to you, ie I don’t want to change my job because the travelling is easy etc.
Now this is fine, and I could probably think up at least two items here that are obvious to me. Now this may not make sense, and I am struggling to put it in a way that seems right. But what about the things that are not so obvious? What would you suggest would be the best way of finding out what those payoffs are? What I mean by this is that I may have areas that I need to look at but I don’t actually see them as an issue, because I may have lived with them so long it just feel “natural” to have it. does that make sense?
Do you know of any online forums or discussion groups around this book/subject that might help?
July 25th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Hi,
Tough question, which I think is “how do you know what stops you from moving towards some place new, or away from where you are?” Well everytime we do “anything”, we do it because we have made a decision, and that decision is the one with the most positive intention given the information to hand at that point.
So when you consider what keeps you in place, I wonder what decision process you went through to stay there… what was the positive intention behind it. Those that come to mind for me could include:
It’s safe
I like the familiar
I’m good at what I do
And whatever they are, they aren’t wrong, they are the best choices to make at the time given the information you have to hand. And by information I mean beliefs, past experiences, values, attitudes and emotional state.
We tend to make decisions “now” based on what happened in the “past”, and as the stockmarket often says, past performance is no indication of future returns!
So to consider what holds you back you need to consider where you want to go. So perhaps you might find it useful to write down your answers to the following questions (in order):
1. What do you want in life (be specific)
2. How will you know when you have got that \ them \ there? What will you see, hear and feel?
3. Imagine yourself at that time, seeing through your future eyes, look back from then to now and note what you had to change to get there - what were the key hurdles in your life that used to stop you from achieving your dreams?
Taking that new position should help you see your blockages from a new perspective, and hence the payoffs that kept them in place.
I hope this helps, if you want to talk about it more drop me an email. I’ll have a look around for a forum on the subject for you.
Matt