I was once asked in an interview, ‘What do you fear the most?’
Honestly, so many things—snakes, spiders, sharks, being underground—but most of all I fear failure. But as opposed to this freezing me into inaction it’s actually the one thing that has kept me going through the highs and lows. It’s my motivator: it keeps me on course and focused.
And yet, often our fears (whatever they are) fuel self-doubt and eat away at our confidence and before we know it our ‘I can’ts become a reality.
We ask ourselves:
● Who would want to listen to me?
● Do I have the experience to do this?
● What if this fails?
● How am I not going to look stupid?
Last week I had the pleasure of jumping on a livestream with Dr Amy Silver, author of “The Loudest Guest – how to change and control your relationship with fear”
We talked at length about our relationship with fear as either controller, director, advisor or commentator and Dr Silver shared with me her 6 strategies for changing and controlling this emotion (recognition, self compassion, separation, evaluation, decision and experimentation) – check out the video here: https://youtu.be/8wB4My_sQvI
This conversation got me thinking:
Maybe we need to start seeing fear not as a dirty word but rather as an invitation to courage and an opportunity to learn how to become more.
Maybe fear is a precursor to change.
Unicorns and rainbows won’t happen 100 per cent of the time. But, if we’re going to change anything, we have to embrace the very things we are scared of, stare them in the face and say, ‘I’m coming for you anyway’.
In the words of poet Erin Hanson, author of thepoeticunderground.com,:
What if I fall? Oh but my darling, What if you fly?
What would you do differently today if instead of fear stopping you in your tracks, you embraced the fear and turned it in to your friend with a big “thank you” and “I’m coming for you”?
Until next week
