This is a guest post by Alex Fakhri of Blogging Toolkit.
Fear is one of the oldest and strongest emotions known to man, something that is inscribed within us. At first it was a basic emotion for the human animal. A survival instinct from thousands of years a go, when wars, plagues and natural disasters developed an intense fear inside us of something powerful.
However, since the the human race has developed and gained more control over its surroundings, where survival instincts are not a threat anymore, our fears have evolved. Instead of reducing our fears, we have in fact began to multiply them. Our fears have developed about our status in society, whether people like us or not, our health, money, and personal possessions.
Instead of our natural fear of nature and an intense fear of something powerful we started to develop a generalized fear of almost everything that could possibly go wrong in our lives.
There is a whole study and book by Robert Green and 5o Cent called The 50th Law, which is incredibly fascinating, looking at the real intricacies of fear and how it has come to rule most people’s lives. More importantly, it discusses how to overcome fear itself and turn every aspect of your life into an opportunity.
The question is though: what have you really got to be afraid of?
I hope the answer you’re giving is nothing!
For years I’ve been listening to success stories of others and how they quit their day job to start a business that was a success or left to go traveling around the world. I wanted to be that person; I wanted the successful business and travel around the world. But the real thing that held me back was that I was never an expert in any field. That was my fear, lack of experience.
But how do you get experience? By actually doing what it is you want to become.
I have seen people go into all sorts of different fields of work in life and most of them either had no experience to start a business in it or even go near it. But if you take out that fear of not being an expert, you can do anything you want. Once you eliminate that fear there is nothing holding you back and you can learn everything else “on the job”.
Lets take Richard Branson for example. His story of naming Virgin has to be my favorite and helps to reassure others about starting a company.
The name Virgin came about as a group of them were working on the mail order record company and were brainstorming names. Someone shouted, “how about Virgin, because we’re all virgins at running a business”. See, you are definitely not alone in embarking on a new adventure.
“Fake It Till You Make It” as an Expert is exactly what you should be doing and it’s exactly how you become an expert. So, why do we have this fear of conquering our field and becoming an expert? The truth is, society deems what is seen as an expert and what isn’t. We rely on society to tell us what we can do and what we can become.
I have one piece of advice, read Corbett Barr’s Rewriting the Rules.
Taking The First Step Conquer Fear
Unfortunately you can’t get rid of fear over night, but you can work towards your dream one step at a time. You can develop successful habits that will get you there, depending on how hard you’re willing to work.
Start With Why?
As with anything, you need to understand the real reasoning behind your motivation and dream. Why do you want to be an expert? What will it do for you? Is it the right decision for you? Once you have your goal of becoming an expert, you start to understand your true drive behind that goal.
Visualize a Dream
Being able to visualize your dream is incredibly important for anything you want to accomplish. You need to be able to see that dream clearly in your head. You need to paint a picture that is so clear it’s almost like reality. While visualizing the dream you also want to be able to understand what “being an expert” means to you. They’re all kinds of different experts within a field and all at different levels. What level do you want to be at?
Self Doubt? What Self Doubt
I hope that’s what you are saying to yourself as you have are already visualized your dream of becoming an expert.
Eliminating self-doubt is your next step. It has a tendency to creep back in every so often, so you need to crush it. If you don’t believe in yourself, neither will anyone else.
List Your Goals
What is it that you want to do? You have your clear picture, you believe that you can become an expert, now map out your path to success. Write out the target you need to be hitting every day, week, month and year. Without mapping you have no idea where you’re going to end up. It’s like starting a road trip without a destination. Where are you going?
Becoming an Expert
Follow through with your goals of being an expert. Starting a journey is both amazing and life changing for anyone embarking on it, finishing it will take your life to whole different level.
“When I nearly died it made me think – this can happen again any second. I better hurry and do what I want. I started to live like I never lived before. When the fear of death is gone, then nothing can bother you and nobody can stop you.”
- 50 Cent
***
Have you ever conquered your fear? Are you doing what you want to in life? Make sure you tell us about in the comments below.
|
Share this post
|
Get free email updates
|
Fear is very much holding me back. Well, not so much fear as self doubt. I suppose that can be considered fear of failure. As such, I’m working toward fighting my general fears as a way to build my self confidence and fight self doubt. I have a fear of heights, so I will be going skydiving within the next few months. I have a mild fear of drowning, so I will be taking my brother white water rafting for his college graduation. I have a general social fear, so I will be taking ballroom dance lessons. I have a fear of speaking in public, so I will work toward Red Cross certification to be able to train my coworkers.
Each and every one of these will help build my self confidence and make my life better. I will gain some level of expertise in each of these areas.
Hey Matt, thanks for commenting! I really like your approach to how you are handling your fears, most people will accept it and not do anything but instead you are meeting yours face to face and have come with a solution for each one. I really admire that, you know what you want and you’re going for it! The biggest challenge is to now follow through with it, get someone to hold you accountable for these actions and encourage you to do them.
I would love to hear how you get on with all of these!
If it wasn’t for the fear, things would become so much easier to accomplish, because we would decide to do something and then there would be nothing but laziness holding us back.
So fear also defines and moulds character. It’s not so much about not being afraid, because discomfort or unknown usually produces a fearful response, however mild. But going past that fear, or accepting the fear and still charging ahead is the skill to learn.
You’re absolutely right Dolly, I think fear and laziness can sometime go hand in hand.
I think it’s just something that you can build on slowly, do one thing everyday that scares you approach would be a good place to start, but it doesn’t have to be big, it can be a small thing as long as you start somewhere.
If it wasn’t for fear, I would have had my blog up and running a few months ago. I was fearful that I didn’t know every single aspect of coding and designing a website to teach others how to do it and every time I began writing an article or thought of a concept, I’d second guess myself and push it to the side.
This is something that I have struggled with for most of my life, not feeling secure with my skills and abilities, but I have taken little steps to counteract the nagging, negative little voice in the back of my head by taking short breaks while I work so I can think clearly, writing down my thoughts or sketching them, and look for inspiration online.
There’s still a lot I have to do with my blog and fear is front and center, but I’m working on eliminating or at least reducing its presence.
hi,
This is absolutely right. Fear of failure is what holds people back a lot of the time. I know when I started I used to “worry what people thought” or, “I had better not share it there in case of this” but now I don’t. This is how we learn.
I think now you just have to dive right in and see what happens! (What ever does happen, it will not be as bad as you fear! – that i can guarentee)
Great post.
John