A simple way to overcome fear

There is a very simple way to overcome your fears. It is so simple that once I tell you, you'd laugh and be shocked at how simple it is. I'm shocked at how long it took me to recognize it. Now that I know, I feel so stupid because I do it for work every day...... and it's the way I do it that makes me and my team stand out from the other teams that do the same thing.

But before the big reveal, I think it's important to explore the self limiting fear that we've all experienced, which have held us back from completing simple tasks or held us back from performing at our peak. Actually, you don't even recognize this fear yourself because all through your life, you've told yourself the same story and made it OK in your brain. You literally trained your train to limit your own actions.

So, let's examine a simple example, one which we can all relate to at some stage in our lives. That crush we've all had but never made an attempt to ask them out. Or that guy or girl from across the hall, in the library, on the street, that set our heart fluttering. We all have one. Regardless of your relationship status right now, as you read this blog, that person is in the back of your mind and you regret not having said anything to them. I'm not talking about asking that person out, just a simple introduction. I have one. I don't remember exactly how she looked but I remember how she made me feel. It was coming to the end of summer and this was early in my career as a consultant. It was one of those rare days where I finished work when there was still daylight and I was on the bus home. I was still young, just out of university for a few years. Sitting on the back of the bus on the way home, I noticed her. She was sitting at the front of the bus on one of those rows of seats that face sideways (supposedly so that they could cram more people on standing up. She had brunette hair and unlike the photo trends of today, she looked like she was smiling even when she was not (I don't get the attraction of the resting bitch face but that's probably just a personal preference). The way she dressed, she must've been a university student. I remember saying to myself, if she gets off at the same stop, I'd go and introduce myself. I hadn't thought through what I'd say when my stop came up and I exited the bus, and as I turned to walk up the street, she had gotten off too. Yet I suppressed the deal I had made with myself. There were quite a few people who had gotten off the bus and were walking in the same direction as us. Then to my surprise, she turned right to cross the street at exactly the same point I crossed and walked up the same street as I usually do. I remember walking behind her (not stalking, we were a comfortable dsitance apart but heading in the same direction) thinking I should say something to her. There was nobody else around as we walked up the street. She knew I was behind her but didn't seem to be nervous. Like I said, I wasn't stalking. We walked up the same street for about 3 minutes. I had 3 minutes to say "Hi. I was on the same bus as you and I just wanted to say your smile is awesome". That was the line I concluded on. That was the line I was playing through in my mind. All I needed to do was walk a little faster, tap her on the shoulder and say that simple line. Almost two decades later, I still remember that line. AND, I still remember what I said in my head "she'll think I'm a weirdo and would want nothing to do with me".

Then she turned left into her apartment complex and was gone. I caught that same bus at the same time for the next few weeks and never came across her again. That's it, the opportunity was gone. As you can probably tell, I still remember this stranger. The what-ifs I have in my head, could've all been answered if I just said that simple line.

But the stupid reality is, if I could pause that moment and analyse it, I would have realized that the fear I had was baseless. Playing it out in the worst case scenario, if I had said that line and she told me to "f-off weirdo", what would I have lost? Absolutely nothing. Sure, my ego would be a little dented and I won't have the opportunity to get to know her. But I didn't know her to begin with so I would've lost nothing. Sure, it would be a little embarrassing if I saw her again after that, but as you know, I never got to see her again. Even with me deliberately catching the same bus at the same time for several weeks, which took deliberate effort on my part (as a consultant, leaving the office before it turns dark is not looked upon favorably - regardless of what the partners say about wanting to achieve work life balance). So now, two decades on, instead of perhaps laughing at what transpired with the worst case scenario, I'm left wondering what could've been.

And the stupid part is, as a risk management professional, playing out what the worse case scenario looks like is exactly my job. It's what me and my team do every single day. Instead of coming up with wild catastrophic statements (like the company losing its banking license), my team examines a projects, lists out things that could go wrong and then play them out to see what the worse case scenario is and whether it would really result in a fatal outcome. The reality is, 99.99% of the time, those wild catastrophic outcomes we form in our minds prove to be just fantasies. When you seriously think about what could happen, what will happen, the risks you end up with when grounded in reality become a lot less scary. And for the slightly scarier risks, our job is to determine what actions we can take so that those risks never have a chance of being realized. I am proud of my team, and the positive feedback we receive show two consistent themes: we ground the risks in reality so that the risk projections are pragmatic, and our recommendations are do-able because they take into account what can actually be done. The ironic thing is, one risk that always has the highest rating is the risk of doing nothing at all. And as my own scenario played out above, the risk of doing nothing proved to be the highest risk of them all.

And that is exactly how I kicked off this myCorporateDiary. I had thought about it for months on end. Each time, I would come up with reasons to not do it. Yet one day, I sat down and worked through just what it would take to kick-off myCorproateDiary. I went through the worst case scenario. What if nobody comes to my site, what if my content is rubbish, what if it'll cost me too much money. Yet, as I wrote down the risks and applied reality to them, I realized even with the worse scenario, I would've lost nothing. I didn't have a site to begin with, so even if nobody came because the content is rubbish, it wouldn't impact me that much. Sure, hosting the website costs money, but it's within my capabilities, and the cost of buying all those books to review, I would've bought them anyway. Once I worked through the risks, I realized, there was really no risk at all. And now, I have a site I'm proud of (regardless of who reads it), awesome core contributors, and a channel with which to share my thoughts and hopefully help others in the same boat.

So next time you have a good idea you want to pursue, an action you'd like to take, or a crush you'd like to meet, before you stop yourself, sit down, take out a piece of paper, and write down just what realistically could go wrong. Then with each risk, ask yourself..... "so what". You'll find that in 99.99% of the time, the worse case scenario is just a fantasy and your biggest risk is in not doing anything at all!!

For scientific backup, check out the Hidden Brain Podcast - WOOP There it is, that talks exactly about this topic. I'm not just making it up. It's backed up by science.