When fears are holding you back

Whether we like to admit it or not; it’s oh so often fears that are holding us back from getting where we’d really like to be. It’s our fears that are holding us back from something new. Something we are supposed to be doing with the rest of our lives...

I have talked about fear earlier. Both in a couple of the episodes of Create Your Dream Career TV, and in earlier blog posts. But I can’t stop there. I have to address this black, scary, unseen thing called fear. I have to address it. Not just once or twice. But as often as possible, just so we at last can see that it wasn’t as scary as we thought it was...

Let’s talk about the fears when it comes to changing our career for something better.

First of all, if you close your eyes and imagine yourself as a 90-year-old you. You are about to say goodbye to this world. When you are sitting there in your chair, looking out the window, what would you tell yourself? What would you tell yourself about your fears, about the dreams you had back then?

This is a very powerful exercise. You see... Doing this experiment helps you see your life (and your fears) in a new perspective. Wow, how we need that from time to time!

Promise yourself that you will do this exercise. Close your eyes and imagine yourself as a 90-year-old you...

It’s normal to have fears

Having fears for the new is normal (AND healthy!). As a baby you weren’t afraid of the stairs (even if you couldn’t walk). You weren’t afraid of the traffic or the heat. Why? Because you didn’t have any experience with fear and you didn’t understand the consequences if something went wrong.

If you didn’t have your parents or other adults looking after you, you wouldn’t have made it!

As you get older you learn to fear the new. Even if you are a risk seeker you fear the new. It’s just that you get a kick of the risk by trying what’s new! (I’m a risk seeker myself. Not always a good thing)

But let’s go back to the fear of the unknown, the new... If you had been a little baby, you wouldn’t be afraid of the unknown.

But today you are... That is because of your obligations, your experiences, your values, your mindset (...and the list goes on and on).

So, what can you do? First of all, embrace yourself for having those feelings. They are like I wrote in the beginning; totally normal and healthy feelings.

Well, they are healthy as long as you don’t let them control you. They are healthy as long as they can be a warning sign for you, a warning sign that makes you take a minute to do the work needed around that fear. The minute you let your fears be in charge of your life, you are in big trouble my friend!

So, what can you do?

I have made a workbook on how to make your fears become your best allies. You can find it here.
Let’s take the steps that I explain in this workbook:

First, you describe all the fears you have when it comes to changing your career. All of them. You might need to go back to this one a couple of times to make sure you have covered them all.

Second, you start categorizing your fears. By doing this it becomes so much easier for you to know which fear to focus on, and which fears that are just some scary ghost in your mind (called mind blocks and procrastination if you want to look at them in a new light)

When you have done the work needed around your categorizing, you have some focus-fears. Some fears that you need to work on. Some real fears if you like.

For these fears you come up with 3 different solutions on how to handle them. This is powerful sh#t! (I don’t like that word, but in lack of good English words in my Norwegian-English vocabulary, that was the one I came up with that explained it the best... I’m really sorry if I offended you by writing it. Hopefully some of you know a better word to describe it!)

When you see the different solutions, the fears don’t look that scary no more. They don’t! It might seem a bit strange, but it’s true. It’s your mind telling you that this is no longer something unknown, something new...

Try it, I know you will love it!