Monkswood Associates Newsletter: March 2004
Topic for the Month: Fear and how to make the most of it

"We have nothing to fear but fear itself"
Franklin Theodore Roosevelt

Introduction
One of the major obstacles to increasing the bottom line, maximizing people's contributions and utilising assets is FEAR! You can ultimately attribute many behaviours to fear - insecurity, anxiety, concern, weakness, worry, inability, confusion, fear itself, depression, denial, shock, hysteria, panic, paralysis, anger, hate, rage, aggressiveness, bullying, violence and jealousy, to name a few. Fears can be subconscious and so although our underlying emotion is fear, we might react with anger or we might cry.
We can fear just about anything our imagination allows. Our most common fears are:

• Rejection (not having what we want in order to feel secure and happy)
• Failure (losing these things when we do have them)
• Death of a loved one
• Our own death (death, which means losing all)
• Illness and weakness
• Physical and / or emotional pain
• People and animals (others who might take these things from us)
• Change (the unknown that might make our security and/or happiness disappear)

Out of fear, we seek either to stay in our comfort zone or create some sense of security by ensuring that we have "sufficient" people, money, material goods, professional and/or social position, et cetera, in our lives.

Attributes of fear
Some fear is useful this happens when it triggers a person or people into constructive action. In addition, I think there are two main levels of fear. One I call primary fear as it is linked to survival – living, procreating and dying. The second level is associated with acquisition – getting what we want to have and/or holding onto it.

In fact, fears aren't meant to stop you; fears are warning signs. If you can imagine that when you feel the fear of rejection or the fear of looking stupid, it's actually just saying to you, 'Oh, by the way, you're taking a risk.’ Some may add ‘Congratulations!' Fear comes up when you are growing. When you're taking risks, you're vulnerable, and when you're vulnerable, fear's going to come up - that's normal. It's like the fear is there to say, 'Wait! You forgot to acknowledge yourself. You forgot to pat yourself on the back.' The minute you do it, the fear quite often goes away.

Former Navy Seal Richard Machowicz said:"Fear is not a true indicator of danger, evaluated experience is... It's a given that fear exists for every one of us. But never for a moment think that if you're afraid of something, that fear is somehow a warning and will save you. Good evaluation of past experiences makes for good decisions, period. And it's good decisions that will save you."

I think fear is there to gain your attention to consider the situation, rather than carrying on in automatic pilot.

Another attribute of fear is that it can drive you to be very persuasive, normally a skill which is seen as positive, yet on this occasion you are persuading yourself – and possibly others – to accept the reasons for inaction are valid, be it procrastinating or not even willing to try a particular approach or activity.

Fear will use everything you know against you including your intellect, education and spirituality in order to make you believe you are safe, sound and sane. Fear lowers self-confidence and takes away people's ability to risk. The bottom line is that fear is what stands between any organization and its ability to flourish. Imagine what your organisation could achieve without fear!

Making the most of fear
Managing fear uses a tremendous amount of your organisations energy, time and money. Since the source of 99% of fear is in your thinking, you can release yourself from fear once you know how, without anything having to change in the world.

What follows are some strategies for breaking through the barrier of fear in your life. When I remember to use one or more of them, I experience relief, extra energy and pleasure in my life – when I don’t, I experience various symptoms of fear – lethargy, lack of focus and undermining of my self-confidence. As I have been working on this newsletter I wonder how I can forget such useful tools!

1 Listing and reality-checking the inner voice “logic”
Speaking as someone who has stopped herself a good number of times, I have found writing down what my inner voice is saying to me does help. This enables me to assess how valid the reasons really are rather than just going round in circles or actually assimilating what my inner voice says without question. For example, I don’t like doing cold calling and now don’t do it. When I did this exercise, I listed the things that the voice inside my head had to say about cold calling - variations on:

• “I’m no good at it”
• “I hate cold calling”
• “It’s a waste of time / it doesn’t work”
  

Simply writing these things down as they came up enabled me to hear each thought without having to buy in to its message. In addition, using my and other people’s experience, I checked how reliable my inner voice was. On this occasion, I realised that the first statement was untrue, the second was true and the third was also generally backed up with evidence (I based this mainly on other people’s experience as I did not trust my own!).

This led to me feeling at ease with changing my approach to marketing my services and stop wasting energy in playing with cold calling. While I was in the grip of fear, I wasted time and energy worrying about doing insufficient work on cold calling.

2 What would I do if I weren’t afraid?
I like this question! You don’t have to try and work out why you are afraid, just what you would be doing if you weren’t afraid. Typically you will come up with quite a number of answers – just keep going until you dry up. When I was feeling fearful about doing my first 45-minute presentation at a regional exhibition and conference, I asked myself this question. The answers that helped free me from the debilitating aspects of fear were “I know that I can give a professional presentation” and “I will make it enjoyable for the audience and enjoy myself”. Suddenly I knew I could do it and, indeed these outcomes were achieved.

I think it is sometimes worth asking this question even though you may not be ‘feeling the fear’ – it still may be holding you back subconsciously. Therein lies the problem with the ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ approach! Most of us have found ways of avoiding fear or feeling it so we no longer know we fear something.

If you want to be proactive, choose any area of your life where you’d like to have a break through: for instance,

• Work/career
• Finances (including material wealth, physical environment and possessions)
• Relationships (family, friends, and other personal relationships)
• Leisure / travel / fun
• Personal growth /education/ creative self expression
• Health

Complete the sentence “If I wasn’t afraid, I would …” as many times as you can. You may want to give yourself a target, such as at least six completed sentences. Don’t worry about whether or not you actually are or aren’t afraid. Just notice your answers - notice which ones you want to act on and which ones free you just by being acknowledged.

When acting on any of these statements, I have with me images of my supporters, who will be there no matter what. I feel safe and cared for, approved and watched over. My supporters are my parents, family and husband – quite a few I know!

“Ultimately we know deeply that the other side of ever fear is a freedom.”
Marilyn Ferguson

3 Move it around
The following technique can be used when you hear your inner voice making generalisations and using ‘you’ rather than ‘I’: for instance, ‘you’re useless’ or ‘you’re not good enough’ or ‘who do you think you’re kidding’. The technique is to change its location. First of all you need to notice from where you are currently hearing it – whispering in your ear, screaming in the middle of your head, or from your shoulders!

Once you have located it, try moving it to the very centre of your throat, as if you were about to say it out loud. When you do this, sometimes the message changes from a ‘you’ to an ‘I’ – I have heard that some people report that they recognise the voice from someone in their past, although this has not happened to me. The final stage is to place the voice outside your body where you can dialogue with it from a comfortable distance. I suggest you do this technique in a private place!

I have added to this technique – instead of trying to locate it and move it to the centre of my throat, I either:

• say the generalisation out loud, using ‘I’ instead of ‘you’, or
• say it in my head, using ‘I’ instead of ‘you’ and use a way of speaking that takes the power out of the words eg a weak voice.

Either of these approaches brings home to me what a sweeping statement it is. If this is not enough I will move to the final stage. Once more I might call on my inner supporters.

4 Identify your hidden fears
This approach I learnt from another person’s newsletter, Michael Neill, and he gained it from the author Steven Scott (Michael Neill’s website is www.successmadefun.com ). It assists you in identifying those subtle and unconscious fears. Choose an area of your life where you feel stuck and ask yourself the following questions:

• What do I really want?
• What obstacle(s) stands in my way?
• What keeps me from confronting or attempting to overcome this obstacle?

For each fear that comes up in response to the third question, run it through the following questions to gain some valuable perspective:

• What's the worst that can happen if that which I fear came to pass?
• What's the best outcome possible for me or for others if I "felt the fear and did it anyway"?
• What's more likely to happen than either of those two things?
  

5 Give yourself permission
Sometimes all you need is permission, permission:

• to make mistakes
• to do things that are not perfect
• to be a so-called ‘bad’ person
• to use my intuition/gut feelings
• to rest

and then fear goes out the window. I have given myself permission to admit to delegates when I have lost track or when I am feeling nervous (especially true when facilitating ‘Train the Trainer’!). When I have done this suddenly the power of my fear has disappeared and my energy becomes focussed on the present. As an added bonus I am modelling behaviour I think they will find useful too.

Conclusion
In essence what all these approaches are encouraging you to do is to move from negative influencing emotions to a place of choice and authentic power based on such attributes as respect, self-esteem and co-operation.

You are welcome to reprint any part of this newsletter as long as you acknowledge the source, including full authorship, copyright, and subscription information.
  
Please ask any questions that the topic has raised, or share your thoughts and experiences with me, Helen Wade, at:


Monkswood Associates
Bankview, Shortwood, Nailsworth, Glos GL6 0RZ, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1453.835263
Email: helen@monkswoodassociates.co.uk

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