What is stopping you?

Tackle your fears and worries

You have this dream, this idea that you'd love to achieve. It's been in your mind for a while. Some days you start planning what you'll be doing, or you even do some work to move it forward. And other days, you're just stuck: can't get started, can't think. What's stopping you?

You.

We, human beings, are the best at creating obstacles to stop ourselves from doing something that we really want to do. These blockers can take different forms, and I’ll be exploring fears and worries in this article. There are a couple of other blockers that I came across:

Fears and worries

These two words look similar and we sometimes use them interchangeably. But they are different, and I want to spend some time looking into them before looking at what yours are and how to tackle them.

Worry is the thought that something bad might happen.

It is a slightly mild emotion that indicates a thoughtful dread. We allow ourselves to be preoccupied with something, and by doing so we create negative thoughts that waste our time. We tend to manufacture worries as a manifestation of the main fear that's hiding below the surface. When you worry too much, you can't stop yourself from listening to these negative thoughts and you use a space that could be used for problem-solving. These negative thoughts become so big that they overwhelm you and stop you from looking at your fears from a different perspective.

You can spot worries easily - they keep you awake at night, they are these circling thoughts in your mind. They sometimes take the form of a "what if..." question.

Fear is an unpleasant emotion that is caused by danger or a threat.

It carries the idea of being scared by something, to the point of terror. There is something irrational about it. It is a very strong emotion that tends to sit with us over time. We don't always know where the fear comes from, but it's there with us. Fear is associated with our survival: we protect ourselves from danger. Fear can be the manifestation that something big and exciting is happening: a transition, a transformation. We don't know what's on the other side, and our instinct tells us to stay in our comfort zone.

Tara Mohr, the author of Playing Big, shares an interesting perspective on fear:

Rabbi Alan Lew explains that in biblical Hebrew, there are several different words for fear.

Pachad is “projected or imagined fear,” the “fear whose objects are imagined.” That, in contemporary terms, is what we might think of as overreactive, irrational, lizard brain fear: the fear of horrible rejection that will destroy us or the fear that we will simply combust if we step out of our comfort zones.

There is a second Hebrew word for fear, yirah. Rabbi Lew describes yirah as “the fear that overcomes us when we suddenly find ourselves in possession of considerably more energy than we are used to, inhabiting a larger space than we are used to inhabiting. It is also the feeling we feel when we are on sacred ground.

If you’ve felt a calling in your heart, or uncovered an authentic dream for your life, or felt a mysterious sense of inner inspiration around a project or idea, you recognize this description.

We often conflate or confuse the two types of fear, and simply call what we are experiencing “fear.” But we can discern them more closely, and in doing so, more effectively manage fear so it doesn’t get in our way.

So, fear isn’t always bad. It can be associated with an exciting opportunity.

Four types of fear

Fear of failure is a common one. What will happen if I fail?

Fear of success is a less common one! How will my life change if I’m successful? It can be scary to become publicly visible or suddenly have more work.

Fear of what others will think is another fear I hear quite often. How others perceive us is always at the front of our mind, and usually it’s about the people that we care the less about!

Fear of discomfort or uncertainty is quite common these days! Not knowing what things will look like in the near or long-term future can be scary and will freeze most of us.

Strategies to manage your worries and fears

It's important to spend time looking at your worries and fears. They clog our thinking space and stop us from acting. Channelling them into something productive, to grow and move beyond them, is the way forward.

Here are some strategies to help you:

• Listen to your worries and fears: invite them in and accept them, see what they have to say, don't make an enemy of them.

• Be curious: see what you can learn from your fears and worries, explore why you have these worries and fears and ask yourself how do they serve you?

• Transfer your energy: instead of playing back your negative thoughts, get into problem-solving mode, open up to alternatives and look at the opportunities that you could create. Turn ‘what if’s into ‘how to’ and create practical solutions.

• Break it down: figure out small solutions that get you halfway through, rather than trying to come up with a big solution to solve it all.

• Embrace uncertainty: accept that things might not work out, that things are outside of your circle of influence.

• Let go: accept that you can't control everything and that you need to let go of imagined outcomes to find peace of mind.

An exercise to tackle your fears and worries

I’ve designed an exercise that will not only help you clarify what you are worried about and what you are afraid of but also get you thinking about what strategies and solutions you can design to tackle your individual fears and worries.

 Part 1 – the iceberg

List your worries above the surface and your fears below.

Part 2 – your worries

For each worry that you have identified, get into action-planning mode and find solutions to deal with them. Don’t forget that ‘accept & let go’ is an acceptable strategy, but requires conscious work to make it happen.

Part 3 – your fears

Answer a set of questions that will help you analyse your fears and find solutions to reduce the overwhelm and move forward.