How to To Overcome Fear

When faced with fear, we often talk ourselves out of taking action. Most of the time, we have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

1. Breathe!

When we are excited, we get body sensations that can stop us. Stop, take some deep breaths and then proceed. This is especially important to help your voice sound calm when your knees are shaking.

2. Remember, it isn’t about you!

When you get rejection, it is usually because the other person doesn’t need what you are offering. It isn’t personal. They may just be having a bad day. Or if they are genuinely a nasty person, they gave you a break by not prolonging the relationship!

3. Picture The WORST

Can you live through that? We awfulize most things and imagine the outcome far worse than it usually is. Ask yourself, what is the worst that can happen? Most of the time, you can handle it!

4. Master The Topic

If we feel confident in our knowledge, the fear about sharing it with others decreases. Even if they don’t see value or agree with us, we feel okay, because we have developed an expertise that gives us confidence in ourselves.

5. Put something at stake or give yourself reward

A reward or penalty that is big enough will motivate sometimes. A sales trainer coached a real estate agent in making regular prospecting calls to write a check for $1000 to his ex-wife and have his secretary send it any day he did not make the number of prospecting calls he said he would.

6. Get a Buddy

Taking on something fearful with another person often will get you through it and keep you from having those dialogues in your head that try to talk you out of it. A coach can also help shine light into those dark areas!

7. Talk about it out loud

Once you identify the fear and talk about it out loud, it will often diminish. Another technique is to close your eyes and picture yourself doing that thing you are afraid to do. Now run through the same scene but do it very fast. Now run through it very slow, next make it silly, make it brighter, make it dimmer. Has some of the fear dissipated?

8. Read something inspirational or listen to tapes.

Play your favorite motivational tape or read something inspirational right before you take action to help your mind focus on what is POSSIBLE rather than what could derail you. Think about how you will feel when you have taken action. Write down the top 10 feelings you’ll have when you have done this thing!

9. Use your strengths-take the easy way!

Sometimes we focus on thinking we "should" do things that just aren’t our strengths. Take a look to see if you can accomplish what you want some other way. What easy ones can you do first? How can you leverage what you already have without having to tackle an unknown.

10. If you have a frog to swallow, do it quickly

Don’t look at it too long. Sometimes, there is no way around the fact, you are going to have to take an action that is fearful. The longer you fret about it, there more energy you waste. JUST DO IT!!!!

Thank you, Alice, for the great information... because I think I'm afraid of paper!

And the buddy really works, too but that isn't original, just something that if you haven't tried it yet, you really should. Didn't need one of these when I was younger but now this really really helps when I'm procrastinating big time. Luckily, DH comes in very useful in this role. For those without a DH, hopefully, they could find a dear friend or even this forum could function as a "buddy" to some extent. Bet it does in a few cases.

--Alice