Overcoming fear
This is a 2 step exercise that I have found useful anytime I am afraid of something.
Start with these 3 questions
This first part is about inquiry. I found this simple technique I learned about from Jim Dethmer to be highly effective. It originally caught my attention because of its simplicity. It involves asking yourself 3 questions.
First question: what do I want?
Second question: what do I really want?
Asking this a second time is important because it forces you to be brutally honest about your desire.
Third question: can you feel the fear underneath it all?
This is most powerful question of the bunch because it's designed to bring awareness to your fear. Dethmer puts it very eloquently in saying "the antidote to fear is not courage, it's awareness". The way to get over a fear of something is to first acknowledge that it exists.
Separate the facts from the stories
After you have identified and ackowledged your fear the next step is to separate the facts from the fiction.
To help break this down I decided to try another technique I learned about from Neil Pasricha which involves separating the facts from the stories.
Below is an example of this exercise I did when I was confronting a fear about switching career tracks back in 2019.
Breaking down your fear this way can be an eye opener. It helps to visually understand what is factual versus what is fiction. And it raises a salient point: the stories we tell ourselves are just that, stories.
When you focus on just the facts often times a lot of your fears started to melt away. They feel manageable. It’s just like solving any complex problem, you break it down into small, digestible chunks.
A meaningful outcome
These two simple exercises played a big role in helping me identify and overcome my fear of failure in the past. The awareness empowered me to confront and tame those paralyzing fears and channel my energy in a productive way.