Fear often holds us back from reaching our full potential. The thing is, most of the best decisions you make are scary, if not terrifying. That’s because they push you beyond your comfort zone to the next level — the place where growth and development happens. When you step outside your comfort zone you have the bigger potential for growth. Step into your fear and use its energy to propel you forward.
So, how do you use your fear and let it push you to move forward? Here are 8 steps you can take to help you do just that:
Acknowledge the fear. When you feel fearful about something you should sit with it. Feel it fully. Why are you so fearful? Once you have identified this and sat with the emotion you need to work on accepting it.
Accept that you’re scared, accept that you are fearful. Let the “power” behind it guide you in committing to the change. So, accept that you’re scared. Even if you have to come out and say something like: “Well, this is a BIG one. This is scary and new, but that’s perfectly fine and completely understandable.” Now let it fuel your fire, now it’s time to fully commit and go for it.
Commit to change. When you accept your fear for what it is you will tend to notice it doesn’t scare you as much any more. This acceptance and commitment helps you to leave behind its energy. Now’s the time to commit to yourself that you’ll make the change — decide that you’re worth the effort required and make a plan.
Plan what you are doing next. Start planning the details of what you’ll need to do to make it happen. Make sure you break it up into manageable steps. This is often where people fail to make changes, because each step is too big and overwhelming, resulting in them getting unmotivated. Instead, make each step small enough to be achievable, yet big enough to challenge you, and that will keep you pushing forward to meet them. Now that you have a plan, look at how you should start to take action.
Take action. Do something everyday, as often as you can, to take you closer to your desired change. This daily action will help to give you momentum. It will prove that everything is totally doable, if you’ve planned your steps well. If you find yourself unable to commit to daily action, go back and re-plan. Make sure you have broken it down into smaller enough pieces. Momentum is everything and is MUCH easier to keep going once it’s started, than to build it back up repeatedly. With that being said, another great way to keep momentum high is to celebrate, even the small wins.
Celebrate your success along the way. Don’t wait until the end to celebrate, do it whenever you complete a step. This will keep your spirits up and also contribute to your momentum and drive. Also take this time to look back at the step and see what you have achieved.
Review. At the end of each of your steps, especially the larger leaps, have a look back at what you’ve done and reflect. Note what worked well for you, and what didn’t work so well. With this in mind, review your remaining steps and alter them, where needed. You should also review and alter your plan if anything about your situation changes. Nothing remains fixed, so it’s important to stay fluid and incorporate new information into your plan as often as you can, when it changes. Upon each review you will be closer to reaching your goal and you will notice that any fear that you did have has slowly turned into determination for completion.
Complete. If you have followed the steps above you should be to the end of your goal. Unless you have a good reason not to (e.g. a substantial change in your situation, etc.), see your decision through to the end. After all, if you felt it wasn’t worth seeing it through, you’d never have started it in the first place, would you?
You will feel so amazing knowing you beat your fear and pushed to complete your goal, even if there were any twists and turns on the way, you still did it. You’ve shown yourself that it is possible and that it was all worth the effort.
Fear is a very powerful emotion. It can be the one thing that stands in your way and stalls or even stops you from moving forward. Fear can also be the thing that pushes you, the adrenaline fuels you, let it be the reason for your growth not the hindrance.
The choice is yours.