Men and Fear

Human beings, particularly us men, we try to hide our fears, but we can’t; I’ll share with you it’s a foolish endeavour.

We fear beginnings, we fear endings. We fear change, we fear staying stuck. We fear failure, we fear success; you’d be surprised just how many men fear success.?

We fear being alone and we’re fearful about what others think…

We fear living, we fear dying, we fear rejection and irrelevance.

But ultimately how effective you are at managing your fears is directly proportional to how well you manage and leader yourself, the quality of life that you live and the legacy you build.

If you’re full of fear, you’ll undoubtedly stay stuck, not just in your head, but in your life too, whilst conversely, if you ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ as author Susan Jeffers prescribes, you’ll vastly improve your ability to handle any situation life throws at you and have the ability, at will, to progress your life.

If you’re ready to move from a place of paralysis by analysis to a place of innate personal power, read on.

I often share with my clients and in keynotes that we’re taught what to think, not how to think, I’ll expand and explain.?

But before I do, did you know:

We’re only born, evolutionary speaking with two pre-programmed two; a fear of falling and a fear of loud noises.?Every other fear, is learned, taught, and conditioned into us by from parental figures, media and wider society.

This happens because in our formative years, ours brains are like sponges. If you’re a parent or guardian, have noticed how impressionable your own children are? Well, once, many years ago, you were young and absorbent too, and even though you've grown and matured, the chances are, your fears have scaled too.

What I am about to share comes from a place of personal experience:

If you don’t move past the darkness and fears in your mind, and into the light and spacious place of fear free mind, it’s highly probable you won’t be enjoying the life you’re living and in later years, that you’ll be riddled with regret.

I want to help you progress; I want to help you move from a place of subtle, self-inflicted fear to a place where you feel empowered to progress your life.?

Here's a tried and tested process that has enabled me to get out of my own head, out of my own way, and into the driving seat of my life - if it worked for me, it could work for you too but remember, your mind is like a parachute, it only works when it’s open.

1.?????Manage your self-talk.?

Most of us have a running dialogue with ourselves inside our heads.?The constant chatter we experience is mostly mind-noise.? It’s where we’re interpreting the world we’re in by cross referencing it against our past.? Generally speaking, if we’re fearful or anxious, our self-talk will be negative and replaying these unhelpful messages in our mind which will only fuel our self-restricting state.

2.?????Identify the gap.?

When you feel the fear, whether it’s trepidation or terror, the first think to do is to immediately get out of your head by managing your self-talk.? The next proactive measure is to write down where you believe the fear is emanating from and if you can, labelling it.? As an example, ‘I am fearful of pitching my presentation to the board tomorrow because I am doubting my own abilities’, this is a common example for those that experience imposter syndrome.

3.?????Get accountable.?

Instead of choosing to stay stuck in the gap, state what you’re going to do to progress yourself from a place of fear to a place of courage. When you’ve worked out what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it seek support; enlist someone you trust, invite them to keep you accountable to the actions you’ve identified that you need to deliver against - and then keep your word, follow through.

4.?????Just say yes.?

If you’ve been living in a fearful state, be it conscious or subconscious, it’s likely that conditioned yourself to say no and to create seemingly logical reasons to stay exactly where you are, even if you’re not happy.? The most effective way to avoid the long term discomfort of stagnation and fear is to make yes your default answer.? In doing so, you’ll be letting go of internal resistance and taking ownership of yourself.? I believe saying yes is the antidote to fear.

5.?????Do the thing.? Take the action

A few years ago, I came across a phrase that I believed to be too simple to be true.? It was, ‘do the thing and you will have the power’.? This challenged my overthinking, overactive mind; could it really be that bloody simple?? Three years later, I know now that it is.? Say yes, do the thing, take the action required and your life will transcend what you once thought was your celling and you’ll be living a completely different life, inside and out.

Having read these steps, you might be thinking, ‘that doesn’t sound too bad, I could do that’, and you’d be right, you can. It all starts with a willingness to take responsibility for your life because the truth is, you are in control, you are in total control of your entire life.

As I summarise, there’s a personal truth around my own experience of feeling the fear and doing it anyway that I want to share with you, it’s this:

For as long as you continue choosing to advance your life, the fear will never go away; you'll just get better at managing it.

For context, my learning came to me because as I started to become more proficient at employing the steps above and progressing past self doubt, the fear of failure or rejection I naively thought that I had become fearless.

Of course, I hadn’t. The very next time a took (another) step outside of my comfort zone, I was greeted by my old friend fear but his time our encounter felt different, 'he' wasn't in control anymore, it was me.

Everything you want in life is on the other side of fear and the only thing stopping you is you…