Five Fears
Motivation Factor Index
Five Fears
I once heard someone say that the "employee mentality" is one where a person trades their time for the stability of a paycheck, while the "entrepreneur mentality" is one where a person trades their time for a lifestyle.
I knew the lifestyle I wanted wasn't the 65-70 hours per week I was putting in when I was handling SEO clients and working as a business coach. It probably isn't the lifestyle you want either. What I wanted was to live life and that meant putting in between 30-35 hours per week.
But how would I get to a place where the 30 hour work week was possible?
I had to face my fears, stop making excuses and do something about it.
I now live the 30-35 hours per week lifestyle I had always wanted, and I want to help you do the same. Allow me to illustrate the five basic fears and share with you what you can do to move past those fears that could be holding you back from your own success.
Yeah, you read that right, YOU may be keeping yourself from your own success.
You may not have every fear listed below, but you will most likely have more than one...
Fear of Loss:
The fear of loss begins with great awareness: knowing what you have and knowing what you want. You fear that if you risk what you have in order to get what you want, you may lose both. And as ridiculous as this sounds, instead of taking that risk, you stay put where you are and keep what you have so you can be "safe" yet still miserable.
Your tendency to play it safe often makes you lose out in the end. You have an ongoing sense of "urgency" within you that keeps you in a state of panic. This state of panic is always telling you "hurry up," but you never get where you want to go because you are easily distracted. You could be someone who is quite anxious and difficult to communicate with.
What To Do:
Use your Business Journal and create clarity of thought through goal setting. Slow down. Remove projects or items in your life that are non-productive or non-revenue generating. You must concentrate on clearing your head and what you have on your plate. By doing this it will allow you to focus more clearly.
Fear of Failure:
The fear of failure stems from your need to be a perfectionist. No matter how good something is it is never good enough to you. For example, when you receive a compliment on your work, you immediately criticize it for being sub-adequate.
The voice inside your head says, "Do better, do better, do better." Because of this, you feel that you have to know everything about a project before you can start or you won't succeed. You always need to feel completely prepared for every situation, but your over preparation often leads to failure as there isn't enough time to actually accomplish the project to the quality which is expected.
What To Do:
Time management is critical, you must get a grasp on it and do it well. Your Business Journal can be a critical tool too. With your Business Journal, do a brain dump of your tasks, all of them, and list a step-by-step process on how you are going to overcome your current situation or finish your project. Then plan your attack in full step-by-step detail. Leave no detail out. This will help satisfy your "knowing everything" hunger yet stay on a path of accomplishment.
Fear of Criticism/Rejection:
The fear of criticism/rejection comes from the desire to please people. And not just a few people, nearly everyone you meet. You live to make others happy; therefore, your life lacks the substance you need to feel happy yourself.
You believe that anything you do for yourself is selfish and bad. You freely give away your time, energy, and talents without asking for anything in return. But when you don't get anything in return, you feel hurt and rejected. Isn't that odd. You give and give, ask for nothing, but when nothing is delivered, you feel you got the shaft.
You are afraid to and don't know how to say "no" to others, even if it is just an unwanted interruption or a false crisis. You also don't have the capacity of asking for help, and delegation is a major weakness. You constantly feel you or your project will be rejected or criticized. And you know deep down that no one can do the project as well as you can, therefore, only you can do it.
What To Do:
Get back to the basics of what you like, not what others like, but what you like. Seek after those things that you have a passion for. Go back to your core values, and remember that the things you neglect will go away. For example, if you ignore a relationship, it will go away. If you ignore your car payment, your car will go away (repossessed). So focus on what is most important.
Fear of Future/Change:
The fear of future/change is a mental state of mind. You are stuck, but you may or may not realize it, it is only being stuck mentally. The voice in your head is telling you to "Be strong and move forward" but you cannot bring yourself to change. You are never satisfied in your head and cannot seem to get enough. Addicts fall into this area; not just substance abuse, but all types of addiction.
What To Do:
Just get things done. Plain and simple. Do something different, and get a change of scenery. Drive a different route to or from work. Take your laptop and work in the public library. Shake things up. You need change and to get out of the routine that you're in. Add a little kick or variety to your life to help you become more comfortable with change.
Fear of Success:
The fear of success often comes from the voice in your head saying, "Something is wrong with me," "I am flawed," or "I am not liked enough." You believe the reason you cannot succeed is because of your flaws. Guess what? Everyone has flaws. You are not unique in that area.
Often, what this state of mind does is create a "glass ceiling" where you are capped at a certain level of income. You may have a breakthrough idea where the payoff would be in the mid-six figures, but you stop and don't push forward. The reason? You stop to think, "I've never made more than $50,000 a year in my whole life. This is all I can do. I can't do more."
This is also similar to the thin rope around the elephant's leg at the circus. As a baby, the elephant has a heavy chain to restrain it. The baby yells, pulls, screams, fights to get loose, and can't. It finally gives up. As an adult, a thin rope replaces the chain which elephant could easily break. Why does the elephant not break free? Because it has been programmed to think it can't get free, so it doesn't even try.
If you have fear of success, it is because you have been programmed to believe you can't succeed. It is time to break out!
What To Do:
Use all of your tools (Business Journal, time management, to-do list) to create a clear plan of action, and then put your plan in writing. Follow through, focus on achievement, and believe in yourself.