🏋🏽Exercise: Make progress through fear
If you lead a team or a family in any capacity, you will face situations where you need to make hard decisions.
These decisions often fill us with fear - and leave us unable to make progress.
Here is a simple exercise you can use to work through the fear. I coach a CEO who uses this almost daily - and he kindly shared an example of how he uses it below.
I personally use this by getting a clean sheet of paper and writing my response to a scenario out in full by answering each question in sequence.
Over time you will feel more confident that despite your fear, you can work thru it to make progress in almost any situation.
Good luck and feel free to share your examples and experience in the comments!
Exercise: Make progress through fear
1. What am I afraid of?
2. How likely is it to happen?
3. What is the worst case scenario?
4. What would I do in the worst case scenario?
5. How would that make me feel?
1. What am I afraid of?
”I need to speak in front of a large audience at a conference and I might freeze as I will be speaking in my second language”
2. How likely is it to happen? (low/medium/high)
”Medium. I have not spoken at a conference for some time in my second language”
3. What is the worst case scenario?
”I freeze, forget what I am going to say and embarrass myself”
4. What would I do in the worst case scenario?
- take a deep breath and pause
- refocus on my 3 main messages which I have practiced repeatedly
- look out for friends in the audience who said they would support me
5. How would that make me feel?
- re-centred
- calm
- ready to proceed and keep things simple