Feel the Fear and Do it anyway by Susan Jeffers

Now this book is all about conquering your fear. A lot of the times in society we have this idea that we can just bypass fear. That we do not have to face the fear. We do not have to feel the fear in order to be successful but that is absolutely not the case. What Susan Jeffers is saying is that in order to live a great life, in order to live a meaningful life, in order to live a life of purpose, a life of doing great things as an ambitious entrepreneur, you are going to have to go and feel the fear. You are going to have to face your fears and still in the face of those fears, you are going to have to do the thing that you want to do. So let us jump into the big ideas of the book.

First key idea of the book is that there are 3 levels of fear. And a lot of times because of the language we use with ourselves, we do not even allow ourselves to understand why we are really scared. So for example let us say, you need to go and talk to someone, you need to approach someone, for something about your business or your personal life or whatever it is. The level 1 fear that you have is that you are just scared of talking to that person. Now you may never dig deeper. You just have this fear of talking to some person because you have never talked to them, they are new, and they are a stranger, whatever it is. So you just tell yourself, I am scared of talking to that person and that is the story I have, that is it so I will not take the next step. But what if you were to ask yourself, why am I really scared? What is it that scares me about talking to that person? Well when you come to the level 2 of fear which is just the inner state that you are trying to avoid. You are trying to avoid feeling that you got rejected by this person. You are trying to avoid feeling like a failure in this situation. You are trying to avoid this emotional state that is going to come about if the outcome does not happen as you wish. You are scared that somehow you will be in a tough situation. The level 2 fear is an emotional state. But what Susan is saying is that if you really dig deep now and try to understand that maybe I will get rejected, maybe I will fail in this endeavor. But so what? And here comes level 3. Behind this level of fear is the real fear that we feel we are not enough. We feel that we cannot handle it and that is the ultimate depth of all your fears. When you are trying to avoid a certain situation. What you are really telling yourself is I cannot handle what is going to come out of this situation. I cannot handle if this situation did not go well. If let us say in your business you have to make a sales call to this big company in order to sell a large volume of your product. However, you keep on delaying it. You keep on not taking action on it. What you are trying to do, the level 1 story you keep telling yourself is well maybe I’m not prepared, maybe I’m not ready for this call today. The level 2 fear really is that you are scared of failure, you are scared of getting rejected by this client. So you keep on thinking that once I’m perfectly prepared, then I can go in for it. But the deepest fear behind your level 2 fear of thinking that you are going to fail that you might get rejected is that the level 3 fear which is that you cannot handle this rejection. You cannot handle being rejected by this big client of yours. You cannot handle what would happen if you fail at this big endeavor. So that is the challenge for yourself. And what I have found in my own practice I try to use this methodology is that as soon as I ask myself, can I handle what happens as a result of what I am about to do? Can I handle this failure? Can I handle my life if this failure was to happen? If everything I have made up in my mind were to be true, if all the negative things I have made up in my mind were to come true, would I be able to handle that situation? Would I be able to stand tall in that situation? And a lot of times the answer is yes. So a lot of the times, fear can be managed if you can expose it to the light. If you can try to understand why you are feeling fearful and really get to the bottom of it. Really understand that finally, all the fear is telling you or questioning is can you handle what is going to come out of this. Can you handle this worst case scenario?

Now let us move on to certain truths about fear. Certain very profound realities about fear. Because whenever it comes to fear, there is no way around it and I am going to talk about three really important truths of fear. The first of it is that it is common humanity. All of us feel fear. Every one of us feels fear no matter how great that human being is. No matter who they are they feel fearful in different situations and scenarios but they are scared. The difference between them and us is that they are taking actions despite that fear. Now let me give you a story of Bruce Springsteen. We know him as one of the greatest musicians of our time. What we may not know about Bruce Springsteen is that before every performance he gets really nervous, anxious, and fearful. And he says to me that is the indication, this is the time to give my very best. So I have the fear, I’m sweating my palms are sweating, bullets of sweats are coming out of all my pores and I am like almost ready to throw up. But I am like this is the moment when I have to go and perform my very best. If Bruce Springsteen having done this for more than 40 years still feels the fear, then it is probably natural that all of us feel fear in whatever it is we are trying to do. It is part of our human condition and the sooner that we realize that everyone is feeling that, it is no big deal, the better it is for us because once we realize everyone is going through it, it is time for us to move on and take action because nothing is going to happen. We are not suddenly, nothing special is going to change, what is going to happen in this world. You are going to have to take action no matter what. The second truth about fear is that fear means growth. If you are in a situation where you feel fearful, you are expanding your comfort zone. You are going beyond where you are today. You are trying to become a bigger person. A more powerful person. You are trying to grow your business, yourself, and your relationships. Whatever that might be, when fear comes into play, you are expanding your comfort zone and as a result you are growing. So realize that growth is a result of facing your fear and doing it anyways. Growth does not come from not facing your fear and running away from it. Growth will only come when we face this fear and when we challenge our comfort zone and we pass it. That is where growth is. That is where our freedom is. We have to keep on expanding our comfort zone. If let us say today your comfort zone is the size of a ¼ circle. Today you take action to go pass this fear that you have, your circle widens to a 2 feet diameter circle. Tomorrow again you take some action you go pass that now it is 3 feet diameter. You keep on expanding the circle the zone of comfort that you have and you keep on living a bigger and bigger life. But remember, without facing that fear, you cannot grow and you cannot expand your comfort zone. The third truth about fear is the idea of just do it. The Nike slogan. Feel the fear but do it anyways because no matter what, how much fear you feel, your job is to do what is required in front of you. Because only when you do what is in front of you will you actually start to feel good. Your passed to feeling good in the face of fear is not running away from fear because as you continue to run away from fear, that fear has a strangle hold on you. That fear runs your life. But as soon as you confront that fear and you go and do the thing that is when you have freedom. And that is when you know, now you own this problem rather than this problem owning you.

There is an exercise in this book that is really fascinating called the pain to power continuum which is saying that if we were to draw a linear scale from 0 to 100, 0 being the place of ultimate pain and 100 being the place of ultimate power. Pick any area of your life, let us say pick your area of entrepreneurship wherever you are right now, let us say in sales or in marketing, or whatever it is you feel this fear, you are stopping yourself. Where are you on this continuum from 0 to 100? Let us say today you are a 30. You do not necessarily have ultimate pain but you do not have power either. Now she says what action do you have to take to move from 30 to 31 or 40, what action can you take today? How can you move yourself from this place of fear, this place of pain that you are in today to the next step of your growth, to the next step in this continuum from pain to power? This is a really powerful exercise. I found it really valuable once you start to plot it out once you start to think in terms of numbers. And you say maybe today I am a 35. How about I do this tomorrow in order to get myself to 37? How about I take this specific exercise or this specific step? How about if I pick up the phone tomorrow and call this prospect that I have been avoiding calling and go from 35 to 40 on a scale of 0 to 100, 100 being power and 0 being ultimate pain? So it actually forces you to think about how you can challenge yourself, grow yourself, confront your fear and win over your fear.

Do not try to run away from fears. Do not try to stop these fears. Feel them, but do the thing that needs to be done anyways.

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