The worst advice ever is to tell someone or to be told not to be afraid. My four-year-old son is learning to swim. I took him for his lessons one afternoon and could already see the apprehension on his face and his body getting tight as we approached the swimming pool. I tried telling him not to be afraid but sadly my soothing words did not work on him. Of course, I knew they wouldn’t but I had to try. It’s what mum’s do. We have to constantly reassure our babies that they can do it. But think about it, at this stage, he is unfamiliar with water. He is still trying to figure out this floating thing. Definitely, he will be afraid. My job is not to save him from being afraid but to help him understand that he will be OK through his discomfort and if he keeps at it, this discomfort will go away.
One day, swimming is not going to look like the big deal it is today. I am currently attending a program in Dubai for entrepreneurship educators. Here, I have had the pleasure of meeting people who teach and coach entrepreneurs, a wide variety of topics have been covered. However, preparing people to fail (and to deal with the fear of failure) was in my opinion one of the most vibrant discussions. I talk about fear in the various Centonomy programs so this is particularly close to my heart. I could almost write a whole book about it.
Just like I realized with my son, I or anybody else cannot tell you not to be afraid. We are afraid of starting businesses, growing businesses, approaching clients, dealing with our money, facing our debt, pursuing different career options, annoying other people, retiring and so on. Sometimes just like my son, we are simply afraid of the unfamiliar. Other times, the thing we think we are afraid of is not even what we are really afraid of.
I watched a Ted- Talk in this class by a gentleman known as Jia Jiang who spoke about his fear of rejection. The incident frozen in his head was when he was a six-year-old boy and was put through something by his class teacher that humiliated him. The fear he still feels today (in his thirties) when he approaches people is that of the six-year-old boy he was because that is the experience that planted the seed. Many of us, if we dig deep enough, will also have a background to our fears. Somebody may have told you that you would never amount to anything. Despite evidence thrown in your face to the contrary, you still believe that and it bogs you down.
You may still feel insecure when approaching certain situations or people, you may have sabotaged yourself along the way and not gone after certain opportunities, or you find yourself continuously trying to prove that you are in fact good enough so you rush into things like buying a car you can’t afford.
How you deal with your fear may not be ideal but let yourself off the hook for feeling what you feel. As someone in this program put it yesterday, “our fears are rationale to us. They are valid to us.”
But again that doesn’t mean that we become prisoners to them. It is now the journey we have to take. Only you can decide for yourself that you are not going to succumb to the fear and many times it means you intentionally put yourself in situations where you have no choice but to master that fear.
I didn’t let my son leave the swimming pool just because he was afraid and currently screaming his way through his lessons. In fact, his swimming teacher went to the middle of the pool and released him so that he had to kick his little legs to get to the edge and hold the rail. If his teacher had tried to do this from the rail itself, it would not have worked because my son would not have let go. Letting him go in the middle of the pool gave him no choice but to simply try.
What’s that middle for you? In Jia Jiang’s talk, he spoke about how he put himself through 100 days of rejection like purposefully doing absurd things. He asked strangers for money, which of course got him rejected. There are many times when he was pleasantly surprised but his muscle definitely got stronger. The six-year-old boy slowly stopped controlling him.
We need to accept that this fear will not go away by itself. You, have to find your own version of putting yourself in the middle of the pool and do it consistently. Ask yourself, what is the next action I have to do in spite of my fear? Do it once, do it again and again and again…
You have to walk through the fear one step at a time. Do that budget, know how much debt you are in, invest, call the bank, approach the client, register the business, ask for money… But you must accept that it will be uncomfortable, especially in the beginning.
We need to let go of unhealthy attachment to results. Now, of course, we want results in our lives which is fine. But the problem comes in when we make the results our identity. That is how fear, particularly that of failure ends up controlling us. Just because something you did failed (or could fail) does not make you a failure. There is a difference between the act and the actor. An incident shouldn’t really take away from the core of who you truly are. You still have your skills, abilities, creativity, personality and most importantly you now have a valuable lesson under your belt.
We have been treating fear or failure like something bad that should not happen. We have been stigmatizing ourselves. So when it happens we hide and feel ashamed.
The fact that you will fail is not a surprise at all. Stop looking for inspiring stories of success and look for those of failure. You will then see that you can’t want success without paying the school fees. Stop thinking about fear and just let go of that rail.
There’s a lot more I look forward to sharing from attending this program in Dubai. I’ll definitely share more in the Centonomy Entrepreneur class, write to us through ruby@centonomy.com we’ll give you more details about it.
Waceke is the Founder of Centonomy. You can get in touch with her through waceken@centonomy.com Twitter@cekenduati