Overcoming Fears With Action.
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“That’s what life is about: about daring greatly, about being in the arena.” ~ Brené Brown
Strategy and planning are essential in creating the life you want.
However, there is no point in making any grand plans when fear inhibits you from acting. The simplicity of getting into action, and the experiences you gain once you decide to act, erodes those fears you have built up over the years.
You can also overcome fears by getting out of your comfort zone. This makes you more confident and your abilities more diverse. It further allows you to look at fears as mere stepping stones to your goals, rather than as stumbling blocks that constrain your progress in life.
I’m the strategic type, and I can tell you from my experience that all my big wins have come when I have discarded the procrastinated planning stage and set out to act on my goals. By doing this, you create the strategy to match your actions with the constant realignment that the actual doing helps to clarify.
This way, you don’t have enough time to think about your fears because you are constantly in action.
I’m not saying we should be gung-ho and not even plan, but in this age of fast and furious, simplicity is key. There is nothing simpler than having an intention and acting towards it, rather than focusing on a detailed plan and getting confused about what to do next.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” ~ Clare Boothe Luce
I recently attended a self-motivation event led by Tony Robbins called Unleash Your Power Within. If anyone epitomizes what I mean by getting into action, it’s Robbins. He treats the whole concept of fear as if it were a mere inconvenience we must carry with us as a weapon to face any goal.
It’s true that there is a lot of hype surrounding the event, with high-fiving and fist-pumping almost compulsory, and you are often left wondering if you have just arrived at a rave party in Ibiza.
However, you ultimately leave with an incredible feeling and a knowing that anything is possible.
Here is a guy who gets into action by not only preaching motivational practices but by actually using those practices to enrich the quality of his life. He has built a business empire by being entrepreneurial and investing smartly, and not just by selling books and ideas on how to do so.
He espouses how you can unleash your energy from within, and then he goes on stage and proves it, by performing for 10 hours non-stop.
I learned many things at this event, not the least how physiology can impact attitude. But the main lesson for me was how getting into action and getting out of your comfort zone impacts your life, and not in a linear way, but in an exponential way.
His anecdotes alone were worth the entrance fee, as he demonstrated to us that until we take a leap, and unless we get out of our comfort zone and face our fears directly, little can be achieved.
One particular story that remains with me is how he learned through NLP to cure phobias in six months, and how he had to wait for another 18 months before he could be certified to treat anyone.
He then proceeded to go live on radio and claim he could treat phobias for free, and set a time and a place to do so. He got a call from an angry psychiatrist who lambasted him about his outlandish promises and challenged him to cure his most difficult patient.
He then proceeded to cure the psychiatrist’s patient in five minutes, in front of 500 people.
I agree that we are not all blessed with the self-confidence, hunger and willpower of Tony Robbins, but here was a man who believed in himself, set big audacious goals and simply acted on them. The more he tested himself and got out of his comfort zone, the more his fears subsided.
Just after my Tony Robbins event, I had a great opportunity to test this out for myself. Through an inexplicable chain of events, I found myself as one of the main speakers on TEDx Talks in Accra, with only three weeks to prepare.
Finally, I was going to fulfill one of my dreams, and yet I was filled with such trepidation that I wanted to withdraw many times during those three weeks. However, I made a decision that I was going to step up (using Tony Robbins’ mantra) and I told myself that I was going to do this.
Here was an opportunity sent to me from the heavens, allowing me to step out of my comfort zone and be big enough to conquer my fears.
I speak regularly in front of people, but this was TEDx and the talk was very personal, as I would bare my soul in front of everyone. I was speaking on how I had finally found my aliveness and begun leading a more authentic life.
I was telling my whole community what was behind all the tears and laughs for the past eight years. The stakes were never higher for me.
As the day grew nearer, my sleep was getting more erratic. I would remind myself every morning that I had made a decision and I was committed to it, and I was going to give my best.
I practiced my talk as if my life depended on it. I repeated the talk five to six times. I made my family listen to me practice, and then I went to work and forced my employees to hear me out as well. The more I practiced, the less fear I held.
On the big day, many things went disastrously wrong.
My talk was delayed for two hours, and as I walked up on stage, everything went into a blur and I was getting stage fright. I remembered to breathe well and told myself to relax, and I started to get into my rhythm.
Suddenly the screen showing my presentation slides went blank, then the timer screen to my right, which acts like a guide so I could pace my talk, also went blank.
I faltered for a few seconds, then took another deep breath and told myself I was going to do this and that the worst had passed. All my preparations kicked in, and I continued without needing the slides or the timer. At the end, I got great reception and big round of applause.
The icing on the cake was when Patrick Awuah, the founder of Ashesi University in Ghana, and also named in Fortune’s Top 50 leaders in the world for 2015, approached me to say he was inspired by my talk and wanted to help the kids I have in my foundation so they could get a scholarship into Ashesi University.
I wanted to cry there and then, when I saw my daughter just coming towards me, and I gave her one of those million-dollar hugs. I thought to myself, I did it.
If you are true to your dreams, if you want it badly enough, and if you are willing to step out into that arena, then the Universe is listening and will give you more than you ever wished for.
The following few days I was filled with a sense of relief I had never experienced. The weeks that followed have seen my belief, confidence and energy levels rise to a level I never knew I had. I had overcome some big and inhibiting fears by simply getting into action.
I also found that this whole experience made me grow so much, and that it really was an exponential growth rather than a linear one.
One step into darkness is equal to a thousand steps into the light.
*****
Mo is an entrepreneur and a born-again writer. He finally gets that he’s a spiritual being having an earthly human experience. Mo loves Hemingway, Hesse and Buddha. He’s a soon-to-be yogi, and runs when he can sense the rain coming down. Mo has powerful conversations with anyone and everyone, reminding them of the story “The Death of Ivan Ilych” by Tolstoy where, on his deathbed, he says: “What if I lived all my life wrong?” Mo writes everyday when the clock strikes 6 in the morning, and has recently been published by both Rebelle Society and Elephant Journal. He also blogs regularly at Mo-Issa.com.
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