DEVELOPMENT loudest guest commanding our choices and movements , as the host we must elevate into the position of control .
How to change your relationship with fear and stop it impacting your success
We all have fears , many of which keep us safe and well . Fear ’ s job is to warn us of danger and avoid risk . It wants us to avoid anything that would cause physical or social pain . But how much does fear restrict our good choices ?
THE EXPERT
Dr Amy Silver is a psychologist , speaker and author of The Loudest Guest : How to control and change your relationship with fear ( Major Street Publishing ). She is the founder of The Courage Club , the place to outgrow your fears .
Fear wants to keep us away from discomfort but if we listen to it all the time , does it steer us away from growth ? Or opportunity ? Does our fear of rejection , failure , exclusion , being different , having to change , being vulnerable or showing weakness limit what we could do or who we could be ? And as well as limiting us from gains we could make , fear also leads to distress and feelings of anxiety or worry . We may have a fear of missing out , fear of being overlooked , fear of being seen , of speaking up , standing up or even a fear of being taken advantage of .
What is fear ? There are biological , evolutionary , and social reasons why our fear is triggered . After all , we are simply animals . Learning how to override our fear is essential in helping us fulfil our potential . If left unchecked , fear can control everything we do . We become a bystander , commanded by the voice of fear as it triggers biochemical reactions that cause us to fight , flight or play dead . I think of fear as a guest at our party , and we are the host . We are the ones who should get to decide what to do , not fear . Even if fear is the
Is your fear telling you what to do ? To gain control we must first understand more about our current relationship with fear . When does fear get loud for you ? When is it difficult to ignore ? Understanding the way in which our body reacts to our fear voice , what our fear voice says and how it talks to us is crucial .
It is easy to be self-critical of our fears , anxieties and worries or critical of ourselves for having them . If we are ashamed of our fear a natural response is to deny or ignore our fears . When we do , we lose touch with some important self-awareness cues and may end up carrying some new hard emotions such as shame and guilt . If we approach our fear with compassion , we can change the relationship with fear and turn towards it to hear its messages .
Fear has wonderful things to give us — it gives us the gift of working harder and warning us of failure or rejection . But we want to learn when to listen to it and when not to . We don ’ t want to be blindly controlled by it .
How to get fear under your control We want to evaluate what to do in relation to our goals , not our fears . We must learn to evaluate the content so we can hear the message that the guest of fear is giving us without having to take on the drama and catastrophising . For example , we don ’ t need to listen to stories of the past or future that fear often uses to remind us of the dangers .
We want to tune into the ‘ now ’ so that we can truly evaluate the action that will serve our goals . We may also want to tune into what other important voices have to say , like hope , excitement , joy . We can control how we move our attention around these different voices using strategies such as writing or finding ways of letting fear travel through rather than getting caught up .
Professional success relies on learning when to listen to fear and more importantly when not to Becoming more courageous is easy when we ’ ve decided to build a closer relationship with fear . Making sure we are in control of fear is one of the most essential skills we can practice driving our professional success ( individually and as a collective ). We will be able to make deeper connections , influence decisions , act quicker , create more , have more fun , opt into not away from a challenge , be calm and have more fun . We are not our fears , we are the host . S
www . DrAmySilver . com
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