Dealing with fear is not really the biggest strength of human nature. Who likes to be scared! Everyone wants to run away or eliminate these feelings as fast as possible.
But what if I told you that listening to your fears can change your life for the better? What if you can even use your fears to strategically improve your blogging performance?
How we clip our wings with fears
Fears have huge impact on our lives. In most cases, though, not in a positive way. They tend to make us smaller and weaker in what we think, in what we feel and – most importantly – in what we do.
I didn’t have a good start with my own fears either. Trust me, in terms of blogging and my early days in this business, there were many things successfully scaring me:
What if I choose the wrong business model? What if I follow the wrong people’s advice? What if my individual strengths are useless in this business? What if I choose the wrong niche? What if I am exposed to too much competition? What if I invest heaps of time but can’t manage to make decent money from blogging?
I guess there are endless things that can easily scare you while trying to master life in general or, in our case, blogging business.
Fact is, as soon as fear appears, it dominates our behavior: We back away from it. We avoid situations that caused that fear, hoping the little party pooper will never come back.
By that, we do exactly the opposite of what really helps us to overcome our fears, or even better, to use them to our advantage.
What we get wrong with fears
Our fears like to play tricks on us. They say “STOP, if you do this, something very bad or very painful will happen to you!”
Of course, in some cases, they are right and save our lives (jumping out of a plane without a parachute is indeed not a good idea, for reasons).
In many cases, though, they act the big shot, although there is absolutely no reason for being afraid. Or to say it a bit more drastic: Our emotions tell us we are in a life threatening situation while in reality it’s only about talking into a camera. Or recording our voice for a podcast.
When to follow your fears advice?
So, in many situations of life, you can and should rely on your inner alarms while in others it’s best to do just the opposite of what they tell you. Difficult to handle? Believe it.
“Life threatening” is actually a very helpful attribute, to see through your emotions game. We have all kinds of challenges in blogging life. Bigger and smaller ones. But all of them have one thing in common: They are most likely not life threatening.
Knowing that even the very adventurous activities within blogging business can never make it to be life threatening, should cause relaxation on your side.
What’s the worst thing that could happen in doing feared things? The worst thing that could happen is making new experiences, of which some are maybe not so nice, but definitely not as bad as killing.
The most vital thing in this context is experiences through taking action. Even (or especially) the bad experiences will bring valuable learnings into your life. I can tell that from my own experiences.
Why fear is actually a good thing
“Fears need to be turned off. Eliminated. Ignored.”
If you handle your emotions that way, you pretty much ensure them to come back bigger. Maybe they even take over other areas of your life you were used to handle fearless. This happens when you treat your fear with fear.
Seeing this negative spiral of fears, it’s hard to believe they can have huge positive impact on your life, too. Yes, fears can really contribute wonderful value to your life.
To benefit from this great value, you first and foremost must allow your fears to visit you. Stand eye-contact with them. Look at what (upcoming) undertaking they are attached to.
And finally, instead of fight-or-flight response, you say: “Thanks for stopping by! Thanks for pointing me to that topic! Seems like there is something important or at least interesting related to it. Let me see what it is. I’ll check it out now.”
Good deal for you. Bad deal for your high-toned fears.
Give your fear a new role
The deal for you is to give your fear a new role. It’s not a monster you have to fight. It’s your guide. Telling you what thing (you are scared about) to do next.
I mean it. You have never ever produced a YouTube video before and are scared like hell to do it? Go and do it. Why? Because your fear tells you it means something for you.
I just lately watched an interview, I think it was at eventualmillionaire.com. Pat Flynn from smartpassiveincome.com was talking about doing new things in business. He very much spoke from my heart by saying that fears seem to cling to things that touch us or have a certain impact on us.
I have made that experience with my individual fear challenges over and over again. Fear is often related to things that attract you in some sort of way.
Why bother with doing all these things that fear us? Because it unlocks the full potential of you. You may not find a hidden talent behind every fear you have. But I’m pretty sure that doing things that scare you reveal lots of strengths you never knew you had.
Just don’t let your fears “protect” you from your own potentials, like Chris Ducker says in his brilliant post about 5 new words for entrepreneurial fear.
Think about all the celebrated actors who suffer from stage fright. They once made the step to do acting, although they died from fear. Some of them even suffer from this fright all over their career. Do they stop acting? No. Are they good at acting? Yes, outstanding good.
How introverts do extrovert things great
Are you an introvert, afraid to speak in front of others? You’re in good company. Do you know how many mega brand creators are introverts? Do you know how charismatic they are on stage, because they are introverts?
This is not about turning every weakness into a strength. But some apparent weaknesses are by far not as weak as we think.
Many of us live with some strengths they were brave enough to explore. A lot of our individual capabilities, though, remain undiscovered, because our emotions or fantasies about them kept us staying away from them. With the “Thank’s fear, I’ll go and check it out myself”-policy, you can get access to this unknown wealth inside of you.
Don’t limit your scope in business
Blogging business is a great playground to change your way of dealing with fears. There are so many strategies and tools to try and test in this business. And so many benefits you can carry away from actively networking with peers and from interacting with your audience.
I can only encourage you to take action and make all these experiences. They will not only reveal some of your hidden talents. They will very much improve the quality of your actions and, even more important, of your outcomes!
Now I am really curious to hear your thoughts on dealing with fear! Do you have moments where your fear keeps you from doing steps that might be essential for your business? And what happened after you have overcome a fear?
I would love to hear your story, please share it in the comments below!
To your happy blogging!
Vera
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