Dropping in….. Embracing fear.
Over the past three weeks, I’ve asked you some big, core or key questions. Call them what you will..
When addressed in order these questions have the potency to help you better understand your current reality as well as your approach to life, leadership and performance.
To recap the three questions were:
This week I’m going a little deeper into energy. More specifically, embracing the emotion of fear.
Fear comes to visit me quite regularly yet it’s no longer the ‘loudest guest’, as Dr Amy Silver metaphorically refers to fear in her latest book.
I used to ‘push down’ fear not wanting to accept the concept of it in case it made me seem small, weak or vulnerable.
Then I came to realise that rejecting fear isn’t particularly effective as a strategy, so I started ‘pushing through’ fear instead.
That’s the meaning I used to put on “feel the fear and do it anyway” to quote Dr Susan Jeffers.
When that didn’t work, I did all sorts of things to ‘break through’ fear.
I sailed around the world, climbed mountains, started cycling long distances, running marathons and then ultra-marathons for, what I now recognise to be, all the wrong reasons.
It took me a long time, and a lot of deep work, to recognise the impact of the performance patterns and life strategies that I had adopted simply to ‘avoid or overcome’ fear.
My 10-year-old daughter, Saffron, is currently embracing and experiencing fear through skateboarding.
Over our Easter holiday, she learnt about ‘dropping in'. She is fully padded up and helmeted by the way.
She experienced the full spectrum of what it takes to ‘drop in’ and learnt that mostly it’s about building the courage to face your fears.
From a mechanical perspective ‘dropping in’ is simple.
In one smooth and swift process, you simply shift your weight from both feet to the majority of your weight being on the front foot, at the same time as dropping your forward-facing shoulder down, which is essentially a very steep slope.
The mechanics may be simple, but add in the emotional energy it takes to get into action and the formula changes.
Dropping in is not a ‘natural’ process.
At first, every one of the fear triggers in your brain is telling you it’s not safe. This can cause you to hesitate until you learn to tune into what is actually true and tune out the ‘noise’.
Assuming you have an element of balance the truth is, it’s hesitation and lack of full commitment that causes you to crash and burn, not the mechanics of the process.
If you don’t fully commit to the whole experience your weight will naturally remain on the back foot, causing the board to slip from under you.
The only option to ‘drop in’ and not end up in a heap on the floor is to fully commit.
“Dropping in” is like many aspects of life, leadership and performance.
You need to fully commit.
It’s useful to accept that fear exists and that it’s a real and natural part of the human experience.
Yet it shouldn’t be the thing that holds you back. Especially when you’re doing new things or exploring boundaries.
EVERYONE FEELS FEAR. Even the ones you might imagine don’t... They do.
Nobody is immune.
It’s just that different people are better at embracing different fears that emerge in different contexts.
The ones who choose to embrace these fears and live ‘through’ them (i.e. as fear is a natural part of the process) will be the ones who continue to evolve and grow.
Tracking your emotional energy is a great way of noticing when fear emerges because the more you can understand fear, as well as the other emotions you experience on a daily basis, the more you’ll be prepared to embrace how you might need to approach or face a situation differently.
When was the last time you intentionally did something that made you really scared?
What did you learn? and
How can you apply this approach more broadly to different aspects of life, leadership or performance?
