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6 Key Steps to Overcome Fear

Your fears are holding you back from maximising your potential in business and life.

The emotion of fear is designed to protect you and keep you safe. At the highest level, fears fall into two categories, danger and irrational or illogical fear. Danger applies to when you’re in genuine danger and you want the emotion of fear to kick in and keep you safe. For example, you might have a car hurtling towards you or being chased by an animal.

Where the fear has gone wrong over many years is around irrational or illogical fear, ie. the fear of public speaking or the fear of having a sales conversation. Are you in danger in these situations? No, of course not, but yet we’ve created this danger in our mind and hence the emotion of fear takes over, preventing us from taking action.

Here are six key steps that I use on myself and recommend to my business and sales coaching clients to overcome fear:

  1. Isolate the fear. What is the fear? Is it a fear of failure or perhaps the fear of being criticized by other people?
  2. Seek the source of this fear. What has fear come from? It could be from your parents, teachers, friends, past experiences, the news, and so on.
  3. Recognise that fear is not true. Fear is also known as a limiting belief, and beliefs are representations in our minds. They are things that we make up regardless if they are true or not. In fact, in the middle of the word belief is the word L-I-E.
  4. Start forming empowering beliefs. As I just mentioned, beliefs are representations in our mind, therefore if we’re going to make something up, why not make it empowering and positive. The opposite of fear is love, therefore instead of saying you have a fear of public speaking, why not say that you love public speaking. Instead of fearing sales calls, what about telling yourself that you love doing sales calls?
  5. Start acting ‘as-if’. Start assuming that you’re already doing the thing you were fearful of. This is also about changing how you identify with yourself. Start behaving like the person who is doing what you want to do. What does a successful salesperson do? How do they behave? What do they say? This does not happen instantaneously, but you must start.
  6. Create evidence of success. We do this in one of two ways: a) Start small. Have some success with the process, reward yourself, then do it again; and b) Transfer your skills. Remind yourself of when you did have success doing something else. You already possess the blueprint and are capable, therefore you just need to apply that mindset to this new task that you’re wanting to accomplish.

Practicing these steps on a daily basis will also help you take action without the prompting of a business coach when you face your fears eventually. So, the next time you’re confronted with fear try these 6 steps and watch as your fear disappears.

These tips are essential for you and your business. If you’re looking for Brisbane executive coaching that delivers results, Tony Meredith Coaching (TMC) is your partner in success.We provide Individual Business / Executive Coaching, Strategic Planning, Sales, Leadership, Mindset training, and Online Group coaching.