The challenge is that most of us don’t know what that fear is.
And most of the time, we don’t have much awareness of how it’s impacting our lives. But we do feel it manifesting in us in some way. Rapid heartbeat, anxiety, negative thought patterns, putting unnecessary, and sometimes punitive, pressure on ourselves.
Fear can be a key driver in our behaviours, and, yet we don’t ever ask someone:
“So, what’s your fear right now?”
I do wonder how it would impact our world down to the granular individual level. Would we all be more open and honest if we normalised conversation about fear? Rather than trying to normalise perfection?
Would it impact a person’s ability to be truly open and honest, if instead we replaced, hi how are you? with hi, how’s your fears right now?
… OK so maybe not the first question, but I have been reflecting on how I support my friends and family and I don’t think I’ve ever asked them, or I certainly don’t ask it enough.
And yet as a Coach I find myself helping others to address their fears quite openly. It can be framed in a variety of ways but ultimately doing meaningful and impactful thought work to support a resilient mindset and be a better version of ourselves is about addressing fears.
Especially the ugly secretive types. Let’s call it Unknown Fear.
The ones that you don’t know are present.
I have noticed that when we are inaction – not able to behave in a way that aligns with our values – this is just as powerful a signal as when we are in action.
It might sound obvious, but when we are inactive, unable to do the thing we really want to do – it’s because of an underlying fear, most likely Unknown, but if known, it’s probably keeping you awake at night, replaying in your head. The known fears are the ones that plague you.
You might know it’s there; but it’s there.
I remember doing the more advanced stages of my coaching training, I shared with my supervisor that everyone has a fear at any one time. The response wasn’t – yeh, that’s true or right. But it triggered the group and my supervisor to ponder that statement, or perhaps strong assumption.
Do people always a fear holding them back?
Do I have a fear holding me back?
Yes I do. If I was being truly honest with myself, I do have a fear, and most likely multiple along with the Unknown Fear. We know that there is a part of ourselves within our subconscious that only others can see, and there’s also a part of our subconscious that no one can see, including myself.
You might be familiar with the Johari Window – it’s a helpful way to bring self-awareness to the fact that we all have a conscious and subconscious and I see in you what you can and can’t see, and vice versa.
So what I see in others is a pattern when it comes to being inaction. Or inactive.
You’re holding back because your loving brain wants you play it safe. When I talk to people about improving skills, whether that’s in communication or managing people for example– it’s really about fear.
We hold back from communicating what we want to say – not because we are truly ‘bad’ at communicating. Yes, we might need to polish the delivery, content etc but we don’t choose NOT to communicate because we want to work on the content – we hold back because we are fearful about what happens next.
Maybe it’s their response.
Maybe it’s your response to their response.
Maybe it’s repercussions.
Maybe it’s about impacting a relationship…
The list goes on…
And fear drives us to hold back because what comes after the action sits inside the uncomfortable zone and uncertainty.
So what can we do when we can see we are holding ourselves back?
Firstly, let’s just get it out there: it’s OK. It’s OK to have fears, it’s completely normal and there’s no one hard and fast fix. Part of being human is being afraid.
One small dose of courage at a time and addressing these points can support you to take action:
- Don’t stay quiet: talk to someone about the issue and how it’s impacting you. It will not only give you an opportunity to release tension and adrenaline, but it’s also going to help you to get perspective.
- Align inaction to your values – does it truly reflect who you are?
- Ask yourself what am I really afraid of here? And sometimes it can be helpful to play out the worse case scenario. You might even want to enlist some help to play that out with.
My key message is please don’t suffer alone.
We are quite talented at masking our fears and over time the build up of inaction can be detrimental to our overall self-worth which can have a big impact on how we behave and carry out our day-to-day activities whether at work or in our personal life.
Be courageous to step into addressing fears as this is where most often than not – your answer lies.
