On Monday, I tweeted this bit of career advice. “When fear knocks on your door, answer. You’ll probably find that you are the only one there.”
This is true so often. We let our fears stop us from creating the life and career success we deserve.
I love the acronym for fear.
F False
E Evidence
A Appearing
R Real
All too often fear stops us dead in our tracks. We quit on ourselves. We don’t take advantage of opportunities to create the life and career success we deserve because of fear. Usually it’s a fear of failure or a fear of rejection that stop us in our tracks. However, sometimes we fear success so much that we don’t follow through on opportunities.
Tweet 46 in Success Tweets says, “Four steps for dealing with fear that can sabotage your career success: identify it, admit it, accept it, do something about it.”
Procrastination is the physical manifestation of fear. That’s why when I find myself procrastinating, I ask a simple question, “What are you afraid of here, Bud?” The answer to that question helps me and will help you identify what you fear and is step one in dealing with fear.
Once you’ve identified what you fear, own up to it. Admit it and accept it. It’s OK to be afraid. John Wayne, the American movie star once said, “Courage is being scared to death, and saddling up any way.”
You have to admit and accept your fear before you can take the fourth step in beating fear: doing something. Action cures fear. Inaction perpetuates it. Even if you fail, you have the opportunity to learn something from your failure. And as Mike Ditka says, “Failure is rarely fatal.” I like this idea because it makes a subtle point. You have to fail every once in a while in order to realize that it’s not the end of the world. Successful people fail all the time. Only they get back up and try again.
So the common sense career success coach point here may be counter intuitive but it is important career advice. When fear knocks on your door, answer. You’ll probably find that you are the only one there. In other words, you are your own worst enemy when you let your fears stop you from pursuing your life and career success dreams. The next time you find yourself paralyzed by fear, remember my four steps for dealing with and overcoming fear: 1) Identify what you fear. 2) Admit your fear. 3) Accept your fear. 4) Do something about your fear. When you apply this simple four step formula, you’ll find that your fears will no longer paralyze you into inaction, and you’ll begin creating the life and career success you want and deserve.
That’s my take on my career advice for overcoming fear. What’s yours? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us in a comment. As always, thanks for reading.
Bud
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