My go-to guide for overcoming fear
Warning: Lots of inspirational content, quotes, advice and activities inside
‘Failure is the information you need to get where you’re going’ —Rick Rubin
Listen to the accompanying podcast episode here on Apple Podcast or Spotify
Often people come up with the most elaborate of stories to tell themselves and others as to why they haven’t started on their business/goal/dream. As a coach I’ve heard a lot of them over the years and have even used a few myself— I can’t afford it, now isn’t the right time, I can’t leave my day job, I’ll start in an year from now, I’m still researching, I don’t have enough time etc.
Here’s the thing, none of these are the sole reason as to why people don't taken action on their goals. In my experience, the number one reason is fear. Fear of failure, fear of not being good enough fear of what people will say, fear of losing it all, fear that someone doing it better than you, the list goes on.
But let me tell you, the pain of staying the same is much worse than the fear of starting.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou
My go-to guide for how to overcome fear—let’s begin
Here you will find a mix of mindset shifts, practical exercises, tools and resources I’ve used in my career to help me overcome the fear of starting and scaling my business over the last 10 years, yep it doesn’t go away.
This guide is for all the big dreamers who yet haven’t started, those who are ready to take it up a notch and those who have found themselves stuck and unable to take action. It’s likely you’ll experience fear multiple times along the way so I hope that you save this post and come back to it whenever you’re in need of inspiration to just start !
Before we go on, let me be clear that I will never advocate for anyone to disregard fear completely. Fear often shows up to keep us safe when we feel uncertain about what will happen next. It heightens our awareness and activates built in survival mechanisms that prepare us to take action incase of an emergency.
For each of us, the level of fear we are willing and able to hold in our body and mind is different and based on individual circumstances. Some people have a high tolerance for risk and uncertainty, while others have more to lose. Thresholds vary as to how much one is willing to venturing into the unknown at any given moment.
You must determine what risk level is right for you and be sure to take care of yourself in the process. Here is a simple exercises that I use to determine what is a real risk and what is a fear of starting.
Determining Your Level of Risk
Start by considering the basic needs that you need to met in order to feel safe, it could be paying bills to keep a roof over your head, doing a budget of what you need to earn to live comfortably, time that you realistically have to allocate to your idea while maintaining a balanced lifestyle. Take some time to determine what level of risk you are willing to take, not what someone else is doing or has done.
What risk are you comfortable with? How much time, money, resources are you willing to invest in your business, goal and dreams?
Research shows that if you take too big of a swing that is way outside of your comfort zone, you risk striking out early on. The fear will overcome you and you’ll activate the fight, flight or freeze response and there’s a chance that you won’t come back to try again.
But if you can find a sweet spot, out beyond your comfort zone just enough that feels a little exciting and uncertain enough that you can handle it, that’s where you want to start.
Let’s begin.
How bad do you want it?
“Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
―Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Humans have an incredible ability to overcome adversities. Whether we know it or not, we're a resilient species that are naturally drawn to life and living. Somewhere along the way we became complacent with a life of mediocrely, where we succumbed to going through the motions of a ‘normal life’ that keeps us safe and inline with societies expectations of who we ‘should’ be.
We stopped asking the question ‘who am I and why am I here?’ and instead surrendered our autonomy and our willingness to create the life of our dreams.
Starting your own business is more than the income it can provide. It also serves as a creative outlet, a way to take back control of your time and live in a way that inspires you to get up each day and love the life that you live.
If you start your business with a clear purpose and a strong ‘why’, you’re more likely to stick at it when the going gets tough. For me starting a business was about helping people to turn their passions into viable businesses as well as the freedom it would provide me to take back the reins of my life and reclaim my autonomy over how I spent my time.
Life’s too short to not do what you love.
Fear: It’s not the right time/I don’t have enough time
Be honest with yourself
It doesn’t matter how many inspirational books, blog posts, podcasts or articles that you read about how other people started, you may never do it if you don't take action. The one thing that the people you admire have in common is that they’ve figured out how to overcome the fear of starting and did it.
Not having time or it not being the right time is the best dressed disguise when it comes to excuses as to why people don’t start. Sometimes the timing really is off but only you can determine if it’s a legitimate reason as to why you’re not starting or if it’s a cosy excuse you’re telling yourself out of fear.
In order to figure it out you have to be honest with yourself. Here’s how I do it…
Make a list of all the things that are stopping you
What can you do to remove the blockages or mitigate the risks
What’s one small action you can take in the next 1-3 days that will move you beyond fear?
What You Focus on Expands
When feelings become the means of thinking, or if we cannot think greater than how we feel, we can never change. To change is to think greater than how we feel. To change is to act greater than the familiar feelings of the memorised self.”
― Joe Dispenza
In order to create a new reality you’re going to have to create a new state of mind. You can’t create something new from an old way of being. As you’re moving towards the unknown of a goal that you’ve not yet achieved it can will feel scary. But the beautiful thing about being human is that we have the ability to imagine a new reality before we’ve experienced it.
To get yourself more comfortable with living the future life of your dreams, you can begin to visualise and feel your success as if it’s already happened.
Learning a new skill requires focus, paying attention to new details and repetition in order to embed the knowledge or ‘how’ into your subconscious mind before it feels natural and easy. Similarly to starting a business, you’ll need to exert more energy to learn the skills required to take you to where you want to go before things start to flow.
Get comfortable with being uncomfortable and and keep your eyes focused on the end goal. Keep putting one foot in front of the other and eventually it will get easier and you’ll find yourself living your dreams.
Life gets in the way—make time and space
“One can waste years this way, systematically postponing precisely the things one cares about the most.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals
One thing that people don’t tell you when you start out is that the time required to do so doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. In order to bring your goals to life you’ll simply need to find the time to take action. Often we’re very good at filling every second of our day with tasks, some necessary and others a waste of our time.
Parkinson’s Law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" meaning that the time we allocate to get things done is what it typically takes.
No one is going to give you permission to carve out time to work on your dreams but you. It may require sacrificing parts of your exisiting schedule, having hard conversations with the people around you or require you work on your goals when no one else is working. But if you want it bad enough, you’ll find the time.
Listen to this Podcast— Focus Time and Motivation where I share all my tips and tricks for optimising the time that you do have available to work on your business and how to get the most out of it.
It won’t happen over night but if you keep showing up, it will happen.
Fear: What will people say/think?
Everything is feedback
The biggest lie we tell ourselves when shying away from starting is that ‘we’re not ready’. Here’s the thing, you will never be ready! You literally don’t know what you don’t know and the only way to find out is to START!
Stepping into a new arena can make you feel vulnerable and exposed. As you venture out of your comfort zone, you lose sight of your familiar reference points that typically help you to make sense of the world, who you are and where you stand in it. So it’s no wonder that we feel terrified when we lose sight of our known reality.
The best tip for overcoming this is to reframe your experience. Instead of focusing on what you don’t know and how amateur you may be feeling, tell yourself that this is an exciting opportunity to learn, grow and absorbs. Let go of the shame of getting it wrong, ask questions, try and see what happens. If it works or it doesn't either way you will learn something.
It’s not as scary as you make it out to be in your mind and once you start, it does get easier, I promise.
You’re the only one stopping you
It’s time to give yourself full permission to go for it. The moment that I realised I wanted to start my own business, I knew that things had to change in order to make it happen. I had a lot to learn and I would need to find the time to work on the business as a side hustle. At first it felt like standing at the bottom of a mountain and starring up at the massive climb ahead of me.
I felt excited and ready for the journey ahead but also overwhelm and uncertain about whether I had the fitness and skills to endure the challenge. I began by focusing on the first steps of the first leg of the journey and trusted that I’d figure it along the way. If I wanted to reach the top I had to start moving, no one was coming to save me, carry me or give me a short cut.
You may not know exactly what lies ahead on your journey but if you want something different you have to be prepared to do something different and that sole responsibility lies with you. So will you start today, right now with what you have?
A year from now, you’ll wish you started today.
Fear: I’m not ready
Make a Plan
‘Once a plan is formed, the need to search for means to reach that goal is shapely reduced. One needs only to watch for the already identified circumstances for implementing the plan.’ - (Webb & Sheeran, 2007)
Whenever you find yourself feeling out of control, not sure what to do next and on the verge of giving up, that is the perfect time to pause and make a plan. Often the fear of not feeling ready to take the next steps can be squashed with preparation. It may be that you just haven’t put enough thought into the next steps which is making you feel uncertain. Good news is that it can be easily fixed by taking time to stop, zoom out and figure out the practical next steps, no matter how small they may be.
It’s better to be moving in the direction of your goal, one small step at a time than standing idle which will lead to stagnation and at worse, giving up.
Get an outside opinion
This is one of the first things I did when I started my business and still do to this day, 10 years on. Having an outside perspective can help you to see the big picture, calm your nerves and point you in the right direction. It will ensure that you get started and can keep up momentum.
Personally I’ve had coaches since I was 10 years old. I played team sports as a kid and eventually went on to compete at the National Athletics Championships as a long distance runner. I couldn’t have imagined achieving the heights in my short sporting career that I did without a coach. Their job was to help me correct my form, design a training schedule and keep me accountable to achieve my goals. Same goes with starting a business, you don’t have to go it alone and I suggest you don’t.
Get in touch for 1:1 Business Coaching
Fear: I’m not good enough
What if it worked out?
Yes, a healthy amount of delusion confidence in yourself will help you overcome fear. The physical sensations of feeling scared can be strong and overbearing so you’re going to need to counter it with confidence and self belief.
I once read this quote that said ‘negative thoughts stick to our minds like velcro and positive thoughts slip off like teflon.’ We too easily focus on what could go wrong and prepare for the worse and very rarely allow ourselves to imagine and believe that things could go right and maybe it will all work out. Trust that if you have the idea in your mind and you want it bad enough, you are worthy of achieving your wildest dreams and you can do it.
Take time to visualise what your life would be like if everything went to plan.
How can I make this work?
Our subconscious minds stores a lot of information that can help us to solve problems, see solutions and invent creative alternatives that perhaps our conscious mind can’t yet see.
If you’re feeling stuck and unable to find a way to move forward, try asking yourself ‘how could this work?’ Go for a walk, journal or take your mind off the problem for a moment and allow your unconscious mind to reveal possible answers. Most of the time there is a way, you just have to be patience enough for it to reveal itself then be ready to take action when it does.
“If you’re procrastinating on something because you’re worried you won’t do a good enough job, you can relax—because judged by the flawless standards of your imagination, you definitely won’t do a good enough job. So you might as well make a start.”
― Oliver Burkeman
Grab a copy of our Just Start: A 5 Part Audio Series
Good luck and don’t forget to have fun!
Wow wow wow✨