Yes! It is! I don’t have a long post today but I definitely want you to know that I’m FIRED UP right now. I’m annoyed!! Fear TRICKED me! It did something REALLY SNEAKY! And I’m a bit pissed at FEAR right now! And I have every right to be! Fear should not be allowed to use the sneaky tactics that it does! Here’s the story. Well, I can’t release all of the details just yet because the actual event has not taken place but I want to still share with you what fear did.
I have a partner that I am working on a joint venture with and we were discussing bringing other people in on the venture. My partner wanted to bring more people in and I did not initially want to do so. In my mind, more people would equal less attention on individuals. I went over our discussions in my mind and replayed the conversations and was sure that it would not work in the way that my partner said it would. It just didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Then my partner did it!! She slapped me in the face with words that I tell my own coaching clients. She rocked my world with my own words. She said, “Robert, if you’re going to do it, you’ve got to go BIG!”
The worst part wasn’t WHAT she said as much the fact that I heard something else. What I heard was, “Robert, are you chicken, bawk, buk, bawk, bawk, bawk!” Then it hit me. My partner was right! All of the rationalizations and things that I had been nursing were based in a fear that going big would flop. And maybe it might but I’d rather go BIG on this than analyze every reason why not. World of PERFORMANCE, Robert.
That’s it! That’s why I was mad at fear! I was mad because it snuck in. It found an opening in a placed where I thought I had it licked! It set me up and made me eat my words. But, you know what, that ok because fear has another thing coming. All it did was teach me to be more aware of me. All it did was make me more intense. All if did was strengthen my resolve. All it did was make me focus much more!!
Yip, fear is an F word!! As Jon Acuff would say….PUNCH IT IN THE FACE!!
Has fear ever snuck up on you? Tell me about it in the comments!
We fear failure on a daily basis. It has been stigmatized – if you fail, you are bad. Until we eliminate the FEAR of failure, we are nowhere. Imagine that this effort does fail…for a second…what comes out of it – POWERful learning on your part, and your partners. You will learn a lot from this either way – and really, you will not have failed at all (so what is there really to fear?!)
Fear and failure are like the two ugly stepsisters I think, but the princess is the learning that can come from taking a chance, flying in the face of fear! Imagine if this succeeds – then how proud will you and your partners be? OY! Hard to imagine how great that will feel!
Good luck!
Wait a second…..did you….just…….coach me?? :-). Thanks so much for your perspective on this Kirbie!! Yip, even while coaching, you discover new things every day. Life is an AWESOME journey, isn’t it?
Naaa…just speaking from experience 🙂 Life is an awesome journey. It’s that journey that gets me up every morning!