Fear is a strong motivator for all of us. I once heard someone say that all human interactions are motivated by two emotions: fear and love. While I don’t know if that is true or not, it certainly is something to ponder. And, when it comes to operating a business–especially a home-based business where we might not having others spurring us on–I think fear can be a real issue for us to wrestle with.
I think the first, and most important step in confronting and learning to work with our fears, is learning to recognize how fear presents itself for us. What stirs up feelings of fear, what are we afraid of, how does our body and mind react when we feel fearful? They say that acknowledging something is half the battle and when it comes to letting fear stop us from moving forward, I think that could be true. Once we are able to identify and acknowledge our fearful places, we can explore them more and learn how to use fear in our favor.
It is important to remember that feeling fearful in times of uncertainty, risk, stretching beyond our comfort zone, and change is really very normal. We’re supposed to feel scared and anxious. That doesn’t mean that we’re not supposed to move ahead anyway. I think one of the hardest things to learn is how to move forward even when our fear may be incredibly overwhelming. While we’re in that fearful place, we can think of a hundred reasons to stop and not take the risks. But, if we can change that self-talk to encouraging, “You can do it!” messages, we can push back the fear long enough to do what needs to be done.
Work is one of the place many of us adults feel fearful. We feel worried we might fail, not make enough money, our family will suffer, we might make mistakes and our reputation is at stake, we might incur debt–there are a myriad ways we can give into the fears that swirl around running our own home business. Instead, we need to acknowledge those fears, and keep moving anyway. We can’t let those fears keep us from doing what needs to be done and accomplishing our goals and dreams.
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