We’ve all got fears, just like we’ve all got our comfort zones. And on your path to success, your fears are going to appear out of the woodwork, one by one. They’ll try to distract you from your goals. They’ll do their best to scare you, so you’ll go running back to your comfort zone with your tail tucked between your legs.
But you know what? Fears are only scary because you make them scary. Think about it this way: why is it that nobody else is afraid of your fears? Why are you the only one afraid of your fears?
The answer is, they’re yours! Your fears only exist within you. You are consciously and subconsciously scaring yourself. You’re letting your imagination run circles around you.
If you want to reach your goals, you’re going to have to face your fears head-on. There are quite a few ways to overcome your fears. Here are some of them:
Understand your fear
Human babies are supposedly only born with two fears – the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. This is why newborns cry when they’re exposed to loud noises or when they’re set down too fast.
All the other things we’re afraid of are acquired. So, there has got to be a reason for your fears. Try to look beyond your fears and trace its beginnings.
When did you start feeling afraid? And why? Did something terrible happen that it left such a negative mark on you? And now you can’t think about it without cowering in fear?
When you rationalize your fear, you’ll see it will be much easier to deal with it. When you look at your fears logically, you’ll usually find an antidote to it.
To make it easier for you to find an ‘antidote,’ you can write down your fears on a piece of paper. And then beside each fear, write down what your ‘antidote’ is or how you propose you’re going to overcome that particular fear. This is a simple technique, but it works. Try it, you just may be surprised at what you discover!
Keep yourself occupied
When you’re busy, you don’t dwell on your fears. When your mind’s somewhere else, you’re not going to be thinking about your insecurities and your fears. You’ve got something more important to do.
The best way to keep yourself occupied is to actually go and do whatever frightens you! Take baby steps. The simple act of doing something to conquer your fears may be enough to keep your fear at bay. With every step you take, your courage grows.
Your courage will be inversely proportional to your fears. The more courage you have, the more your fears disappear. When your courage is at a hundred percent, your fears will be totally wiped out.
Stop scaring yourself
Fear begets fear. When you tell yourself you’re scared, then, of course, you’re going to be scared. But if you tell yourself you aren’t scared, and you say it with conviction, then trust me, you’re not going to be scared.
Instead of dwelling on the negative narrative, focus on the positive. If you’ve been rejected at a job, you really, really wanted, it’s okay to feel sad at first. But find a way to bounce back immediately. Don’t dwell on the negative aspects of not getting hired. For instance, you may think that just because you’ll be jobless for a little while longer than you’re going to starve or you’re going to be homeless.
When you scare yourself like that, then you’re not doing yourself any favors. What you can do instead is to look at the positive side. For instance, you can say that since you didn’t get that job, then maybe it means you were meant for something greater. That job would have held you back and wouldn’t have contributed to your growth. So, you need to look for a better option.
Putting things into perspective like that will let you see that sometimes our fears can be irrational. And when you think irrationally, you let your emotions and your negativity cloud your judgment. It gets the better of you.
So, really, just by shining a light on your fears, you’ll be able to see it for what it really is. Perhaps there’s an opportunity lying in wait, just waiting for you to recognize and take advantage of it!
At this point, you should recognize that being afraid of leaving your comfort zone is irrational. Sure, what lies beyond it may be the great unknown, but it’s not all about the ‘monsters’ lurking there.
It’s all about the wealth of opportunities that lie just beyond your wall, opportunities that will never present itself within the confines of your comfort zone.
Commentaires