Top Tip: How to keep growing using the “Fear Bubble”
Mehibe Hill
Helping Global Mobility, Immigration & RMC managers become genuine, trusted leaders with impact by building resilience, confidence and leadership skills ┃ leadership and mindset coaching ┃ leadership training ┃ workshops
I spend a lot of time thinking about fear.
Whether it is related to my own fears, or it’s about me supporting other humans to face their fears in our coaching space.
Fear is everywhere.
It’s in conversations at work (or in the missing dialogue in the conversations at work).
It’s present in your relationships.
It sits in a corner of yourself, sometimes the elephant within you, hibernating.
Past. Present. Future.
It’s never going away.
And is that part of the objective??
To make fear go away?
If we sit and reflect in our fears – it can feel like an overwhelming rush of a blunt or sinking feeling. Maybe you experience it in the pounding of your heart. Or perhaps it’s that jelly-like notions that take over your legs.
I feel it in my stomach. It’s a dagger that sinks into the pit of my insides, heavy and all-consuming.
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I will never forget a group conversation between Coaching peers as I was advancing my training beyond just the ‘foundations’ of coaching skills. This Advanced Level was about taking the client deeper to face their ‘who’. Who do you want to be? Then, comes the – how do you want to show in your world, the ‘what’.
Going deeper into who we are is not easy. What does ‘going deeper’ even mean?
During this group conversation, I made a bold statement that we all sat with. This was October 2022. I said, “Every person has a fear. All the time. We are never without fear – and that’s how we can support our clients – asking them about what fear is holding them back.”
We all sat in silence for a moment. Joseph, my supervisor (now my employer as I am also a Coach trainer and mentor in the same organisation I trained with), turned his head slightly and said, “Interesting. I’ll have to think about that more coming out of today. So, every person always has a fear present in the coaching space.”
“Even outside the coaching space. We all have fears, even if we don’t recognise or understand them.”
Joseph smiled.
This moment stuck with me.
I had been coaching for a while by that point, and I realised in that moment that we don’t talk about fears very much. Perhaps because we are afraid to show our vulnerability, or we feel it’s a sign of weakness; or indeed, the flip side of that – being afraid of whether people will see you as weak and incapable.
And so my curiosity about fear has been a profound part of my coaching philosophy in The Power of Courage. If we allow our fear to lead us, it’s unlikely we would make a lot of progress. Our brain would keep signalling to us to stay where we are; it’s safe and familiar here – no need to step into that zone of uncertainty and feel discomfort or risk being hurt by others.
That’s vulnerability – being uncomfortable in the pursuit of being real and genuine.
We feel uncomfortable because we fear.
Fear of judgement.
Fear of getting it wrong.
Fear of failure.
Fear of conflict.
Fear of pain and suffering.
To make progress, we have to embrace fear. Use it like a fuel or weapon for our greater journey forward.
Earlier this year I read Ant Middleton’s incredible book, Fear Bubble, where he documents his eventful and quite astounding approach to his Everest climb (no preparation at all… but it is Ant Middleton after all.)
He shares how we can harness fear and live without limits. It’s fear that holds us back. Ant Middleton talks about using his fear bubble technique to place fear ‘in the moment’. If there’s no real fear, right now, you’re just wasting your energy and resources. Focus on positively harnessing fear in the present moment where it’s ‘real’ e.g. the conversation, sitting an exam, presenting - it’s the present behaviour you’re active in. Then use it as a positive force to propel you through the fear that is presenting itself to you in the scenario.
The doing of the action is tough but it’s our mindset, from where we start, that is our biggest challenge – it’s not about having years of experience or expertise in your field or even the fact that you’ve never failed before. For Ant Middleton and his colleagues – being in the Special Forces is about life and death – if you fail, you die. And from his accounts, just because you’ve done it before, doesn’t mean you have the confidence or the mindset to try it again.
And that’s where my coaching philosophy with ?The Power of Courage can support us to face our fear and use it to our advantage. Ant Middleton loves courage just as much as I do… it’s courage that fuels our self-trust to ‘do it’ or try the new, different or perceived unsafe thing we need to do.
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So how can we use the Fear Bubble to support us to keep trying which is essentially part of our own personal journey of growth?
I’ve been playing with a slightly different version of the Fear Bubble. One that is about defining the Fear Bubble and what defines it and then reframing it into an Opportunity Bubble and focusing on all the elements we have to gain, and all the costs associated with staying where we are – in the Fear Bubble.
The Fear Bubble represents a place of not trying or being held back by the fear. The fear controls us and we allow it to suppress our growth.
Whereas the Opportunity Bubble is about defining the drive to connect to courage and go for it – because there’s more to gain by noticing the benefits and opportunities if I choose to power through the fear. The fear becomes the fuel, the driver of determination.
One side is static. The other is dynamic.
Luckily for most of us, we don’t have to face the same kind of fears that the Special Forces do.
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But there’s a lot to take from the observation that Ant raises quite formidably in his book. As a society – we live in anticipatory anxiety. It’s not real.
Yet.
We use so much of our mind and energy in anticipating what feels safe or what might come up as unsafe or uncomfortable; we don’t live in the present.
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Here’s my Fear Bubble to Opportunity Bubble exercise.
I have developed and used with clients successfully to help them drive through fear to help them grow, and it could support you too:
First, identify the situation or scenario where you’d like to show up in a new way that supports you to courageous and practice vulnerability to support your growth and development:
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Reframing our fears is not easy. Fears are supported in strong belief systems we have and it takes a lot of courage to hold the mirror up and face what could be holding us back.
Along with courage, we need to connect into a lot of compassion and self-kindness and even the concept of identifying our fears can seem like a weakness.
But it’s not. It’s part of our vulnerability; all humans have fears.
It’s not about trying to eliminate the fear, but use it to our advantage, for our learning and our growth – and that’s what being human and truly vulnerable is about; being vulnerable, embracing the unknown and feeling our way through to what we hope is a better-feeling place with a more supportive outcome.
Fear is a part of our anatomy.
Fear means we are human.
I’m yet to meet a human who isn’t held back in some way by a fear. But knowing that we are all-in-this-together helps me to validate my fears – they’re not ‘real’, but the feelings it evokes and how it can hold me back from growing – is – very real.
Empowerment comes from knowing that there's a feeling of choice: “I can” take control and use my fear as a driver for my own better good. And that’s how the Fear Bubble to Opportunity Bubble can support us all. Even though Fear is scary - it's also a source of our empowerment.
FACE YOUR FEARS TODAY. START YOUR JOURNEY TO FEELING EMPOWERED IN YOUR GROWTH.
Follow this link and book in a chat with me today. What do you have to lose? ... What's possible in YOUR Opportunities Bubble?
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1 个月Thanks for sharing Mehibe this really resonated with me. I have noticed that on the occasions when I have accepted my fear and stepped out of my comfort zone (literally taken the plunge) is when I have felt most ‘authentic’ and ‘in flow’. - a peak experience! One example was me signing up to Become Coaching & Training to train as a coach in my 60’s and discovering an exciting new way I can use my experience to support others - I love it ?? even though I’m still anxious before each session. I am going to think about how I can support my clients with your tools and also bring them more into my own self development ???
Global Mobility Leader & Strategic Adviser | Relocation Program Management | Increasing Employee Satisfaction to Attract and Retain Talent | "I know what works & what doesn't in mobility!"
1 个月Mehibe Hill mentioning "fear of presenting" reminded me of what Joan Baez says about stage fright. It took her until she was fifty years old (and through lots of therapy) to overcome it. She started performing as a teenager!
This resonates strongly with me, and I love the idea of reframing fear using an opportunity bubble. Each year I commit to doing two things, one is to learn a new skill and the other is to do something that scares me - this helps me to reframe how fear shows up in my life, it can even mean fun ??