Rock Your Impact Series - Know Your Fear Words

Know Your Fear Words

Welcome back to the Rock Your Impact blog series where we are taking on five steps to have more impact as a leader. If you missed the first step in the series check out Know Your Impact. Now, on to fear. Do you want to build a legacy? Do you want to lead people into a vision beyond what currently seems possible? Do you want to set an example of going beyond where you normally stop? Do you want to share more of yourself with the world? Glad to hear it. And it will be helpful to know what your fear words are. 

Fear is clever. For example, let's say one day you wake up and realize the direction your team/company/vision/life is headed is not what you intended. At some point you got off course. If you are like me and have fits of inspiration and epiphanies at random moments (like 4:12 AM when you were sound a sleep just mere minutes ago), you might start jotting down your ideas, vision, the course correct you see. It is glorious. You bound into the day with great enthusiasm. 

Then as the day goes on you start to notice thoughts like "this isn't realistic", "how would we even do that", "I should just be happy with where things are at", "this will be one more thing that doesn't work out" ... and on and on. On the surface these seem like perfectly reasonable thoughts. And your fear will congratulate you for coming to your senses. Your fear will talk you out of your own inspiration and vision.

The challenge is that you may not realize that it is fear.  Remember, fear is clever. Instead of saying "hey, you are afraid you are going to be a big failure", fear might show up as "that does not seem very reasonable right now". A few clever disguises of fear include:

How.

Realistic.

Reasonable.

Logical.

Rational.

Not a good time.

I will when I have ____. 

Comparison.

Easy.

We tried that before.

No one wants to hear what I have to say anyway.

Who am I to ____.

Should.

The list could go on and on. What are your predominant fear words? Which ones do you notice keep you from moving forward? Which ones do you notice minimize your impact?

The more we talk ourselves out of things, the longer we stay stuck. The longer we stay stuck the less impact we have. You have far too many dreams, gifts, and differences to make in the world to not be moving forward. Up for a challenge? Pick one of your fear words and practice removing it from your vocabulary this week. 

With Mad Love & Respect,

Sarah