The Fear and how to use it to your advantage

I think this is a post we can all relate to by Susan Giurleo – What do when you’re scared sh**tless about building your business

She talks about The Fear. The fear that if we leave our jobs, we’ll fail. The fear that there aren’t enough clients that want to pay us. The feat that we’ll screw it up, fall flat on our faces and everyone will laugh.

I’ve had it, I still get it. I’ve had it right from the beginning. Way back when it finally dawned on me that what I should be doing with my life was practicing psychotherapy, I was afraid I’d never get on a training course. But I did. And what’s more, my intuition was proved right, it was what I was meant to be doing because I took to the training like a duck to water.

Then came the fear that I’d never get a clinical placement…I’d get overlooked for applicants who had better experience or who already came from mental health backgrounds. But I got clinical placements. Then I started to get great feedback from my clients, clients asked if they could work with me once their contract was finished. They wrote me thank-you letters which made me cry. They are among my most treasured possessions because they remind why I do the work I do when The Fear is stalking me.

The Fear also comes along when I hear too many “can’t's” – other professionals telling me “you can’t run a business that way” or that psychotherapists “can’t have blogs, can’t be on Twitter, can’t engage with social media”. In these situations, I take a step back and try to work out whose fear it really it is and more often than not it’s their fear and not mine. They are afraid of change, they are afraid of or don’t understand new technologies and decide that “I can’t” when in fact they don’t want to, which is so different.

But something I’ve realised is that I’m OK with The Fear…it reminds me that I really care about what I do. I never felt this way when I was a salaried employee, I cared about my work but in a very different way. The difficult decisions where someone else’s responsibility.

What I like most about having the fear is that with a few deep breaths it’s possible to take that energy and turn it into bravery. And I love my new found courage. I’ve dared myself to do things I never would have done when I was on the payroll. I’ve pushed out of my comfort zone and made some great stuff happen, not just for me but for other people too.

What about you? Do you get the fear, what are your strategies for handling it? Post your ideas in the comments below.