What is that you say? The other four letter word? Yes, and the implications are far more damaging, debilitating, and degrading than the original. Yet, almost every individual and business person faces a daily battle with this beast. The beast? Fear in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace and world.
Ever changing software, social media platforms, rapid technological advances, fluctuating skill requirements, a highly competitive job market, and a lack of job security are just some of the fear-inducing realities of today’s workplace. Fear creates a lack of focus and productivity which bleeds into low morale and generates into limited aspirations. These are but a few of the side effects.
“If you allow fear to prevent you from undertaking an action, the only thing you will create is a missed opportunity”, asserts Tim S. Marshall, author of The Power of Breaking Fear. In his book, Marshall offers personal experiences, insightful life lessons, and real-life techniques to break the chokehold of fear.
WHY WE DON’T RUN FROM FEAR, EMBRACE IT INSTEAD
How do we embrace fear? Imagine fear was something we could detach and put under a microscope. Well that’s not quite embracing it, but in order to bring something in we need to understand what it is. Then we can embrace it. Fear for most of us is failure. Failure is the lack of success in relationships, business, money, and life. It encompasses everything, is everything. Let’s look under that microscope for a minute, but now we’re looking for something specific. We’re looking for our goal. Embedded in that fear is the goal of what we want to achieve.
We have to establish a measurable goal. How to do that? We need to dissect what success looks like and then determine the necessary steps to reach the target.
The best way to plan is to look at the experts. Newsflash . . . You are not the expert. If you were, you wouldn’t be swimming in fear or reading this forum. Immerse yourself completely in research about those that are successful, surround yourself with people who have achieved your measurable goal, and learn from those that have failed. We (YOU) must be cognizant of potential pitfalls. That doesn’t mean we plan for them. It means we are aware of them so we can avoid them.
Consider a large ship. Maybe you’d like to build one someday. A lofty goal, but potentially attainable. The first thing is to determine how the ship is designed both functionally and aesthetically. Does it have the perfect ambiance? Does it seamlessly glide on the water like a knife through soft butter? You research all types of ships. You learn and you immerse yourself completely. Along the way, you reacquaint yourself with the tragedy of the Titanic. You remember this ship was built from the dreams of people. It was in fact billed as the “greatest ship ever built”. Yet, it sank. A ship built from the hopes and dreams of thousands lies on the floor of the ocean. There is no greater resource for success than the lessons from catastrophic failure. Today, thousands of ships sail with ease across the ocean because of the lessons learned from the Titanic tragedy. The knowledge gained from this single tragedy is immeasurable. When establishing our goals, we must consider the tragedies of our predecessors. We live in an age where neither the wheel nor the ship need to be recreated, we just need to make it better, sturdier, more durable.
Ideas create growth. Growth inspires creative thinking. Creative thinking creates opportunities. Opportunities create success.
Your life and career must be able to float through calm seas, uncharted waters, and rough storms – FEARLESSLY. It must stay afloat AND have a direction. Do not anchor your fear to the bottom of the ocean and expect it to reach land. Live outside your comfort zone, embrace your fear, examine the underbelly of the beast, do the research. Fuel yourself with better ways to communicate, to deliver your message, to filter and file the good vs. the negative information. Learn more about your product, service, and/or your customer so that you become the greatest resource, the greatest salesperson, the greatest friend. This is the true definition of being at your best: This is the Power of Breaking Fear.
