What is fear? Is it ok to admit you are fearful of something? Will your fear make you appear stupid? so many questions
When I think back in life fear to me was something you don’t admit, you are scared at being laughed at - can you imagine the senior manager of a large company being terrified of doing a presentation, in your mind they are senior management, how can they be scared in their position. Would you be even more surprised that they hadn’t slept all the night before and the pure dread of doing this, even though they totally know the content inside out, caused them to be short tempered before the presentation and very anxious. What an awful situation to be in.
Now I am not saying for them to stand up at the presentation to say I am nervous is right but to have that fear it pure harm to yourself.
What we forget as humans is, we are all human, it is usually the fear of doing something that is worst, and the build-up is just impossible to imagine.
So before lockdown I was terrified of trying anything new with IT, I am sure a lot of us were the same, I had never heard of Zoom, I had never listened to a podcast, my view of a podcast was they are for intelligent people so I will not be able to do this! What!!! I hear you say
My first morning of Zoom was a networking event, one I have been to before and know a lot of lovely supportive people, even so I was terrified! Looking back what was the worst that could have happened. I don’t know how to use gallery view, I don’t know how to mute myself - really I hear you say but this fear made me short of breathe, irritable to family, very anxious and thoughts such as - I am a professional, people will not think I am credible if I mess Zoom up. Zoom has now become a firm fixture in my life and will certainly be very much part of my way of coaching, networking, training etc – I look back now and see so much energy and anxiety was created and could have been avoided.
I also this morning on my 5-mile daily walk listened to two Barefoot Coaching podcasts, they were really helpful, really engaging – my fear was avoiding this – crazy hey?
I was at an Estate Agency last week where I am doing some staff training and one of the staff took a call from a very angry customer, never pleasant, she calmly advised the person that she needed to get some information and would call her back. She came off the phone and immediately said, I can’t call her back, I don’t know what to say, she was really angry - and the fear took over. After a few minutes of me trying the help with what advice to go back with, discussing scenarios that could occur in the call, she spent the next half hour dreading making the call. She certainly never refused to make the call but was not looking forward to it. I encouraged her to make the call sooner rather than later, the call was made, the client was happy with the information and the staff member came off the phone with a huge beaming smile. Success written all over her face, pure delight, she had dealt with her fear, the fear then had changed into a major hurdle overcome. A week or so later the same nature of call was to be made with the same member of staff, she initially dreaded the call and I reminded her of her smile last week and the feeling she felt. Call made, dealt with, hopefully fear reduced if not disappeared.
Fear can also be a warning for you, so today as mentioned, I was enjoying my daily walk in the Saturday sunshine and a large group of cows were on my horizon, now I was ok to walk through, but it would not be something to advise. So, this type of fear is looking after you, it is not a failing to not walk through a field of cows, walk a different route don’t beat put yourself through this, you have a choice.
If you have a FEAR, and it is safe to try to avoid this FEAR, try to dig deep as to why am I fearful of this, can I prevent this, can I talk to someone however silly it may be. Fear is not nice and doesn’t need to control you.