Life+Work

Fear is Your Friend

With all the "think positive" advice out there, what's a person to do with their fear, anxiety, worry and other “negative” emotions? Block them? Stomp them out?

I have found it useful for myself and my coaching clients to think of fear as a friend. All of our behaviors, beliefs and feelings have a positive intention behind them. Constricting feelings like fear and anxiety exist to keep us safe from something, like failure, embarrassment or pain. They broadcast loudly to get our attention. (Robert Dilts, an outstanding thought-leader in NLP, provides excellent detail on the concept of positive intention.)

What I do with constricting emotions like fear, worry and anxiety makes all the difference. If I let them hobble me and stop my progress, then I’ve missed their gift. If I stop and listen carefully to those emotions, there's always a useful message about what I want and need to feel balanced and take the next steps along my path. 

Here's some questions you can ask to do this for yourself:

1. What is something you keep feeling, thinking or saying to yourself that drains your energy or makes you hesitate to move forward?
   
   For example, I used to dread international travel. My thoughts and feelings before a trip were not excitement about going to a new country, they were all dread and anxiety about being trapped in a plane for 12+ hours. It took me enormous emotional energy to prepare for a trip when so much of me was in resistance to getting on the plane.
   
   
2. Ask yourself how this thought, feeling or image is trying to help you; for example, is it trying to show you a way in which you could be better prepared?
   
   When I listened more closely to the travel anxiety, I specifically kept imagining how uncomfortable I was going to be during the long flight. I saw myself not sleeping, feeling my legs twitch, my back ache. These are all things that happen to me regularly and would in fact keep me from being fresh enough to work effectively when I arrived.
   
   
3. What actions can you take to address your underlying concern and resolve the anxiety, worry, doubt or fear?
   
   I used my specific concerns to plan my trip better: book an aisle seat, look into mileage upgrade, consult with a Feldenkrais practicioner to find out how to sit more comfortably, get permission to fly in a day earlier, ask well-traveled friends what they did to fly comfortably. The result of taking all these steps was gaining a whole new set of useful travel strategies that continues to give me a feeling of complete inner calm before international travel. I listened to my anxiety and it no longer needs to broadcast loudly. The most amazing result? I've even learned how to sleep on a plane.
   

Here's a story based on a client's experience (name and details changed for privacy):

One of my coaching clients Peter had taught a couple of training classes at work and loved it. He knew he wanted to do more and hoped some day training would be a regular part of his role. When a re-organization at work gave him a new opportunity to train a class, he immediately said yes. The class was being sponsored by his new manager Teresa, who would likely be in the room observing him. He’d heard Teresa had very high standards and he found himself nervous about training with her at the back of the room watching.

Peter decided to take action and really brush up on his training technique. He had seen me train several times and admired my training style and presence, so he called me for some short-term coaching on how to be an even more effective trainer. We had a great first session, during which he enthusiastically committed to several follow-up steps. We made an appointment to meet again in two weeks.

At our next coaching session, Peter reported having a terrible two weeks. Every time he thought about training the class, all he could think about was his new manager Teresa sitting at the back of the room watching him. The more he tried to concentrate on preparing for the class, the louder his fears got. He began having nightmarish dreams about the training going badly—participants clearly bored or openly challenging his knowledge, completely forgetting what the class was about, having his words get caught in his throat. All the while with Teresa as a dark figure at the back of the room, staring at him as he failed miserably, taking notes on everything he was doing wrong. He was a wreck.

He was embarrassed to admit that he had not completed a single one of the follow-up steps. Yes, he thought they were all excellent ideas. No, it wasn’t that he had run out of time. “All I can think about is not being able to control Teresa’s opinion of me,” he finally confessed.

I observed that it sounded like his fear of training in front of Teresa had him paralyzed. "Part of that fear is really valid—you want to do well in front of her, you know she has high standards, and you were already feeling like your training technique could be better,” I said. “Do you know what specifically Teresa considers hallmarks of good training? It seems like not knowing what would work for her leaves you worrying that she could criticize everything you do.”

Peter was initially resistant to asking Teresa about her training standards. He worried that she would take his questions as a sign of weakness. But the more he sat with the idea, the more he realized that without specific information on what she was looking for, his mind was left to make up worst case scenarios.

We listened to his worry about talking with Teresa--he wanted to look confident, not weak. So we planned out questions that he felt confident asking, like "What would success look like for you with this class?" and "In your experience, what are great qualities in a trainer?" These questions felt less personal and more naturally professional for Peter to ask Teresa.

After talking with Teresa, Peter felt calm and relaxed. He knew exactly what to emphasize in his training and how to best leverage his trainer style to be successful in front of Teresa. The most useful result for Peter was that he remained calm and relaxed even when he hit a few bumps, which allowed him to gracefully course correct and continue on with the training day.

Move Toward Desire to Reach Your Goal

I woke up one day with 15 pounds on me that had never been there before. Do you know this one? I know I was there every day while it happened, but somehow it snuck up on me and I was living in a body that didn’t seem to be my own. I missed myself. 

Suddenly I was faced with the mountain of advice and struggle that so many people I know go through every day. For a year I struggled to pick out what might work best for me and give it a try. No results. A lot of money spent. A litany of reasons why I couldn’t work out today, why I couldn’t make more changes in my diet.

And then one day I cracked the code. “Was it diet or exercise?” a friend asked me excitedly, sure that the answer was in one of these pillars of weight loss strategies. The answer is neither. It is my mind, my internal state that has changed. It gives me free, easy access to both eating and living in a spontaneous state of actually craving what works best for me. I have effortlessly lost ten pounds and know that the next five to ten pounds will be just as much fun. Yes, I did just use that word: fun.

Here’s two critical things I do differently:

• Instead of looking in the mirror every day thinking “What a disaster!” and noticing how big I feel, I hold a vision of the body I want inside me. It’s more than just a picture in my mind. I actually imagine feeling that body, as if I had it already. “Be the change you want,” I tell myself. “Your body is getting lighter, stronger, healthier every day.”
• Instead of wrestling with myself every day about how I “should work out”, I set intention for wanting to do some kind of exercise or movement every day, then followed my natural desire. I ask myself, “What do I feel like doing today?” On days when I feel tired, it’s walking or yoga. On days when I have energy, I find I actually want to do something more active like a cardio routine, bike ride, or weights. I give myself permission to do even a few minutes of something.

As I focus on my desire, I am delighted to find that my body is now craving better food and more movement. I am no longer fighting myself, I am working with my natural desire and making progress continues to be effortless. 

These positive techniques are rooted in NLP, which I learned while I got my NLP Master Practioner and NLP Coach certifications. (I just burned a good hour trying to find a clear, succinct definition of NLP. Surprisingly hard to find. Here's a good quick definition, though I don't know anything about the training company behind it.) I found a number of specific weight loss techniques with NLP foundations that you might also find useful at HolisticOnline.com.

Developing Your Emotional Compass

An emotional compass can help you keep your mind and actions focused on positive forward movement towards a goal. So how do you develop a reliable compass?

1. Spend a few minutes thinking about your goal and where you are along the path to achieving it.
   1. Let yourself see the images you have associated with this goal, as well as any images you have of the actions you’ve taken towards your goal.
   2. Hear any sounds or audio track, such as your inner conversation with yourself or actual conversations you’ve had along the way.
   3. Now pause and notice what you are feeling inside, right now.
2. Take a moment and write down several adjectives that describe how you feel as you think about your goal and your progress towards it. Use words that describe what you’re feeling emotionally and physically. For example, you might be feeling anxious, stressed, with tense shoulders, clenched jaws. Or perhaps you feel happy, elated, with warm energy coursing through arms and chest, clear head, relaxed shoulders.
3. Now that you’ve checked in with your emotional compass, what do your feelings tell you about the direction you’re currently pointed?
4. What can you do to reorient yourself to face toward your destination?

Keep your emotional compass handy this week. Every time you think about or work towards your goal, notice how you’re feeling. Use your physical and emotional feelings as feedback on whether you’re heading in the right direction. Are you still focused on the refreshing beach or are you headed back to the desert? Make a conscious choice to redirect your thoughts on where you want to go.

Stay on Track With Your Goal Using Your Emotional Compass

We all have our good days and bad days, positive and negative thoughts. It’s part of being human. Staying on track with the right mind frame to accomplish our goals requires that we keep our focus on what we do want, not on what we lack or don’t want. One of my favorite teachers on the Law of Attraction is Dr. Robert Anthony. In his audio program The Secret of Deliberate Creation, he uses a wonderful travel metaphor to explain the importance of keeping your thoughts focused on your goal destination.

Here’s my version: Imagine you are taking a trip from your current state, let’s call that the desert in Arizona where you don’t have what you want, to your desired future state, which we’ll imagine is a refreshing beach on the California coast where you do have what you want. The journey to get from your current state to your desired future state takes time. If we are traveling in a car or a plane, it’s easy for us to understand how long the journey might take. But on a journey to accomplishing our goal, many of us get impatient with the time it takes. We doubt, we worry, we fret, and we turn our attention back to our starting point, to all the things we don’t have yet.

When you focus your mind and your actions on positive forward movement towards your goal, you’re heading towards your destination in California. Continually worrying that you’re not there yet, letting your mind spend a lot of time dwelling on doubt, anxiety, fear and so forth, is like constantly driving back to Arizona. It makes the trip take a lot longer.

Like using a compass to plot your route through difficult terrain, you have an emotional compass inside you that can give you feedback on whether you’re pointing your thoughts and feelings in the right direction to accomplish your goal. Positive or buoyant, energizing feelings like joy, confidence, deep desire, inner peace, feeling “on fire” with energy, wholeheartedness—these are all signs that you’re heading in the right direction. Negative or heavy feelings like doubt, insecurity, fear, anger, frustration, boredom—these are inner signals that you’re heading in the wrong direction. You need to pause, listen carefully to these inner signals to figure out what’s going on, then course correct.