Transforming FEAR

FEAR. We all have fears.  Often the fears we openly talk about are the mostly socially acceptable fears – fear of snakes, fear of spiders, fear of crazed murderers.  How often do we spend time pondering on our deeper emotional and psychological fears.  These aren’t as socially acceptable and are closer to our heart which makes them more difficult to express.  All entrepreneurs have fears and some of those fears keep them from moving forward to achieve their dreams.

The Acton Foundation for Entrepreneurial Excellence has produced a helpful guide for entrepreneurs called Deconstructing Your Fears.  In this publication, entrepreneurs are encouraged to face the “boogeyman” and shine the proverbial flashlight under the childhood bed to find those nighttime monsters.

“For entrepreneurs, like most people, fear is the subtle saboteur. It lobs self-doubts, what-if’s, and paranoia from behind the bushes along the trail. Fear thrives on secrecy. The less defined it is, the more deadly its attacks. While entrepreneurs are highly adept at naming goals, they are less sophisticated at clarifying their fears.  

This learning experience will help you focus on the fears you have about pursuing your dreams. By naming your fears in detail, you will diminish their power. You’ll gain a further advantage if you act on your fears by creating a plan for mitigating your risks and bouncing back if all else fails. 

Like a child who shines a flashlight under her bed at night, you might find that the boogeyman never existed at all. Perhaps there was nothing to fear, after all. Are you ready to shine a light on your nightmare business scenarios?”                                    ~ Deconstructing Your Fears by the Acton Foundation for Entrepreneurial Excellence

Entrepreneurs are often great at expressing their goals and the steps necessary to achieve them; however, they are much less likely to express their fears and the steps necessary to address them.  Sometimes our greatest fears are figments of our imagination and by going through this exercise of self-exploration we can discover each of our deepest fears about starting a business, determine if the fear is based on authentic risks, determine how to mitigate those risks, and have a plan on how to recover from a worse case scenario related to that risk. In this exercise, we can also determine which fears are figments of our imagination or require simple mitigation to minimize their risk.

The activity is a simple one.  Start with a piece of paper and divide it into three columns.  In the first column list your fears as they relate to starting a business.  In the second column, list the strategies to mitigate the risks related to each fear.  In the third column, list the plan to return to the status quo should a worse-case scenario become a reality.

By acknowledging our fears, pondering the details of each one, how to mitigate it’s affect on our business and our life, and then putting together a plan for recovering from those affects in a worse-case scenario, we can begin to shine the light on our fears and see them more accurately.  When we address our fears, talk about them, ponder on them, and write about them, they lose their power over us and begin to transform from fears to stepping stones on our path to success.