There are many types of fears, some of the most common fears are of demons and ghosts, the existence of evil powers, cockroaches, spiders, snakes, heights, Trypophobia, water, enclosed spaces, tunnels, bridges, needles, social rejection, failure, examinations... but the most important, that we often tend to not understand is SELF-FEAR.
The reason for this could be any of the following :
Past experience about something
Assuming or calculating the risk involved.
Negative thoughts that tend to stop an individual from taking an action.
Too much of Deep thinking about something
In my opinion, facing yourself or your fears are the first things that you need to learn... and I don't think many people are told to achieve this first and then think about moving towards other achievements....
Overcoming self-fear is a step towards success. As soon as this is in control, all other things will gradually start falling in line on it's own.
Let me share with you some useful points that I think has helped me overcome "self-fear" and achieve bigger things and things that I could have never imagined. In the end, I will also share a model that you can use and has helped me overcome my fears.
This seems to be pretty much hard and complicated !! I 'm not sure if I will be able to do it !
If you've ever come across this thought then it is pretty much normal, we all have faced this situation at least once in our lifetime. Some of us are able to beat the demon but there are still some people who are not able to move ahead and face difficulty in accepting the "Harder things in life" and going through them.
In this case, you need to trick and train your brain to accept and work on hard things.
Let me share an example with you :
When I started my career as a software developer and was working on a client project, I always knew that there is going to be someday when I will have to present something to the client, all by myself. And I cannot explain how afraid I was of giving "Presentations"! It was easy to figure out through my voice that I must be trembling. But the day when this thing came and I was going to give my first presentation to the client, I did the following to make sure everything goes smooth :
Since I always knew that this is going to happen someday, and the day when this was handed over to me, I simply sat down to catch my breath!
First thought - I cannot say no, because I was new to this enterprise world and saying "no", can cost me my "Reputation" or could affect my performance in the team. So "No" was really not an option.
Second thought - For a second let's forget about how I will present and let's focus on "What"!! What exactly do I have to present ? What is the content? - "I gathered all the required data"
Third - What is the client expecting out of this demo ? Why are we doing it ? - I reached out to my lead and learned about "What is client's expectation" - Because for me it is important to frame the presentation as per the expectation, to avoid too many questions!!
Since my today's task was to prepare for the presentation, I requested my lead and manager to not assign any other task and allow me to focus on the quality of the presentation!. - Only because my reasoning was correct, I was granted this permission :)
I started writing every single word that I would say on each slide.
Took a meeting room and started rehearsing the front "Cam" opened.
Result -
The presentation went smooth and there were hardly any questions .
It was recorded and when I saw the whole presentation, I could see my hard work showing up just as I planned.
I started doing this more often and one day, I thought of starting my own "Educational" youtube channel.
This is how I turned my fear into something that is my "Strong point" today.
BTW, Here's the link to the channel :) : https://bit.ly/3cx19sn , Please SUBSCRIBE !!! :)
Self-fear is indirectly proportional to "Self-Confidence"
The more you "fear" about something! The less you have the ability to conquer. As I said, this is normal but what is "not" normal is the "planning" that most people aren't doing to overcome this problem.
Low self-confidence can stop some great things from happening. We all have the potential to achieve bigger things and help others to accelerate as well.
Change yourself and the world around You will change.
Change is the only "constant" thing in the world. We all have evolved from "apes to human" for a reason. Our ancestors accepted to change and the world started shaping on it's own,
And that is exactly how we can become better in every possible way - by bringing a change in ourselves.
Read self-help books (like - The Code to extraordinary mind by Vishen Lakhiani, The 5 A.M club by Robin Sharma etc...)
Exercise or find out new ways to workout and keep yourself fit.
Meditate and feel the good things around you.
Think of few good things about yourself before you go to sleep - Start appreciating yourself for your accomplishments (even if it is a small one)
Most importantly, for a while forget about the world and talk to yourself.
Do all this and you will start noticing a considerable difference in the way you interpret your life and the way you have been looking at things around you.
Self doubt is much better than having self fear
By self-doubt here I mean to self retrospect and find out if there is a better way of doing something that you are working on already.
Go have conversation with your senior at work and share how you think you should grow in future and if possible share your plans too.
There must be something better out there, adopted by the world but somehow ignored by you! Something that is helping others to accelerate in career and personal life both.
This helps to lower down the fear of going wrong !!
Small model that can help you overcome self-fear (it has helped me for sure).
Let me share with you a small model (a flow) that has helped me time and again to overcome this problem.
Let's consider the problem that I shared about myself (Afraid of giving a presentation).
I hope I was able to share some useful ways for overcoming self-fear. In the end, I would really like to thank my wife Surabhi Gokte for giving this idea of writing some lines around this topic.
If you have some great things to share or any story that you would like to share to inspire others, do share them in the comment section below.
Thanks.