9 tips for those who want to stop being afraid and start taking action

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

It is normal and even beneficial to be afraid. The key is to handle your anxiety correctly.

What would you do - no matter if it’s life or work - if you weren’t afraid of anything? Such a simple question awakens countless fantasies, desires, and regrets.

If your fear of failing or appearing to be a complete idiot has ever held you back from what your heart called for, some very important advice from business consultant Sandya Bruegmann will come in handy. There is no need to fight fear. Just accept it and don't let your feelings slow you down on the path to your dream.

We usually view fear as an unpleasant emotion that we do our best to avoid colliding with. Fear literally paralyzes, so instincts, willy-nilly, switch to survival mode. Alas, this behavior can lead to actions that have nothing to do with the movement towards our goals.

Sandja Bruegmann Business Consultant

In other words, if you let fear rule you, you can forget about success.

This is especially dangerous for entrepreneurs. Doing business is quite frightening and exciting in itself: here you have to take on financial obligations, and communicate with annoyed clients or subordinates, and the realization that the decisions you make affect not only your well-being, but also the lives of other people.

On the other hand, says Bruegmann, fear is an emotion inherent in humans by nature. You won't be able to get rid of him once and for all, and you don't need to.

We are not faced with the task of curbing fear and preventing it from occurring in the future. Our goal is to understand what he is, and learn to act, relying on willpower and not burying our heads in the sand.

Richard Branson phrased the same idea in a slightly different way.

Fear sometimes makes you wet yourself, but courage makes you act even in wet pants.

Richard Branson entrepreneur, founder of the Virgin Group

The metaphor is not the most elegant, but it conveys the essence absolutely correctly: do not give up dreams because of fears, just accept them as part of life. Here are some tips to help you stop being afraid and start doing something.

1. Accept your fear

"What if I told you that your fear is a gift?" - asks Brygmann. Pain and tension help us fill our lives with true depth, because without all this, it would be boring. Fear indicates the direction of growth and ultimately helps you understand who you really are. When we view fear from this perspective, it evokes curiosity or even gratitude.

2. Control your instincts

When faced with something intimidating, people usually exhibit one of the following behaviors: trying to fight, running without looking back, or falling into a stupor. If you have noticed this with yourself, know: instincts guide you. They make us trust fear to make decisions. What will come of it? Nothing good for sure.

3. Treat each situation as your choice

Entrepreneurs know that things often turn out the way you never planned. As Eckhart Tolle said, "Whatever the present moment brings you, treat it as your own choice." For both you and your team, this is the most humane way to deal with what has happened. By fully accepting the current state of affairs, you rid yourself of various forms of emotional resistance, including fear.

4. Give your work everything you have

This is not about savings under the pillow, I mean the ability to immerse yourself in work as fully as possible. This is how easily you engage with coworkers and activate your thinking abilities to look at a problem from a non-standard point of view and find creative ways to solve it.

5. Be positive about objections and criticism

“If you’re doing something truly new, be prepared to be hostile to traditional thinkers,” says Bruegmann. By creating something that did not exist before, you are challenging the status quo. Some are frightened by innovations, while others are forced to feel ashamed that they themselves have not thought of it before.

You can measure your success by the amount of criticism you receive.

Sandja Bruegmann

6. Make Fear and Failure Work for You

If, like most people, you are afraid of failure, make fear your helper. What is needed for this? Sandja Bruegmann advises rethinking the very definition of failure. "Failure for me is not the exact opposite of success, failure is what happens if I don't get out of my comfort zone."

Look at any business from this angle, and the fear of failure will force you to act.

7. Don't let unnecessary thoughts take over

You will never be able to control everything that happens, but you are free to choose how to react to it. When something bad happens, we tend to look for the cause of it in ourselves.

For example, you worked for a long time on the launch of a large-scale project or negotiated with an intractable client, but in the end everything went to pieces. Does this mean that the project or idea was so-so? No. This does not say anything about you as a person at all, so do not exhaust yourself with reflection in vain. Think better about what the next step towards achieving your goal will be. And remember, your path to success is by no means tied to just one particular person or opportunity.

8. Learn to hear your fear

Try to recognize the signs of fear as early as possible and understand how it affects you. Yes, it's not that easy. Sandja Bruegmann believes that clarifying who we really are is one of the most difficult tasks. The biggest lie, in the truth of which we believe ourselves and make others believe, is the idea of ourselves as an integral and unchanging person.

In fact, we are made up of many subpersonalities. Our task is to thoroughly study each of them, finding positive features and those that are worth correcting. There is no room for condemnation. This is just the path to growth, change, the ability to curb fear and make informed choices based on your inner strength.

9. Find Peace in the Heart of the Storm

“Find a stable and balanced position within yourself and stay in it as long as possible,” advises Sandja Bruegmann. This is the point of your self-confidence, this is where you can draw strength in order to follow the goal during periods of ups and downs at work and in your personal life.

If your well-being, peace, and happiness depend solely on external factors, your stress levels will be too high and eventually become an obstacle to your success.

Let go of your event orientation. This way you will be able to follow the chosen course for as long as you like. You will gain the ability to make the right decisions and stop postponing them for later, justifying yourself with fear and the tension generated by it.