Part 1

If you’re anything like me and every other human on the planet, you’ve had your fair share of encounters with fear.

I used to be deathly afraid of speaking, even to individuals, much less to an audience full of people. It’s a huge fear I had to overcome to do what I do as an inspirational speaker. Now, I feel at home on the stage, as you can see.

Some fear is quite healthy, yet most fears are detrimental and debilitating. To get a better handle on fear and the ways it presents, I decided to post this list of The 9 Faces of Fear. These are the most common ways I’ve seen fear present itself in my own life and in the lives of countless other folks I’ve coached and trained.

It doesn’t really matter how your particular brand of fear presents itself, there’s only one solution. I’ll give that solution at the end of Part 2. It is, hands down, the only thing I’ve ever witnessed that works every time.

Today I’m posting Part 1 of this article, which covers the first 5 Faces of Fear. Tomorrow’s post (Part 2) will feature the next 4 Faces of Fear, along with the proven solution. Here we go:

Face #1: Resistance

By and large, resistance to doing what’s best for us is just another form of fear. What’s resistance? Resistance is a pattern of engaging in thoughts and behaviors that pull you away from what you say you want or that keep you stuck where you are. You have goals. And you want to reach them. The good news is: you can, and probably a whole lot easier than you think. The bad news is: you’re probably resisting your own success. Why would you do a thing like that?

Because you fear the unknown and where you might end up. You don’t know that place. You know where you are now, and you do things to stay right there, even though you claim you don’t like it. It’s a human proclivity to be resistant and wary of the unknown.

Which leads to the second face:

Face #2: Procrastination

Am I stepping on your toes yet? Don’t feel bad, I am a recovering procrastinator too. What I now understand about procrastination is that it is based in fear; fear of success, fear of failure or fear of change. We know that when we take inspired action, something is going to change. When it does, our life changes. Since we’re not quite sure how the whole thing will play out, we delay taking action.

Face #3: Self-sabotage

Okay, I know I must be stepping on your toes with this one. Anyway, I’ll speak from my own experience. I’ve sabotaged myself more times than I can count. It’s been horrendous. I’ve been right at the finish line and came up with a reason not to cross it. In those instances, I didn’t collect the gold, though I’d worked hard for a long time.

What’s worse, I didn’t even recognize what I was doing. Later I’d complain that I almost had the prize, but then ‘something’ happened.

This face of fear is tricky. You won’t always know when you’re sabotaging yourself. Fortunately, there are clues. One big clue is this: ask yourself how many times you’ve almost gotten what you want, but didn’t. How many close calls have you had, where you were right at the finish line, but didn’t cross it to collect the gold?

Chances are, if you’ve had this experience more than once or twice, you have a pattern of self-sabotage. It’s a nasty little habit, quite insidious and capable of keeping you stuck where you are for years.

Face #4: Low Energy, Tiredness or Sudden Sleepiness

This may seem an unusual one, but it presents more often than most of us realize. How many times have you been in a position where you knew there was action you to take, perhaps to grow your income or your business, and when it was time to take the action, you got tired. You wanted to take a nap. You were suddenly sleepy.

The particular group of people I’ve seen this ailment afflict is business owners who work from home. If you’re in this group, it happens like this: just when it’s time to do something that really matters, that’s truly important to the growth of the business, and would take you in a new and higher direction, you get tired.

This is another face of fear: it’s nothing more than a mental shutdown that results in feeling tired and sluggish. It is an energy zapping thought pattern that yields inactivity and low productivity, and results in not reaching your vast potential.

Face #5: Disorderliness & Disorganization

Papers flying everywhere, not being able to find what’s important, valuable time wasted looking for items, feeling and acting disheveled, being late and harried are all aspects of disorderliness and disorganization. These are two of the biggest killers of success. Remember this well:

Where there is no order, nothing good can unfold.

Which is a paradox, because chaos often produces order.  When I speak of order, I don’t mean neatness. There’s a difference. I’ve seen offices that were not neat, yet they were in such order that the owner knew immediately where each item was and easily reached for it when needed. There was an underlying order though the space didn’t appear to be neat.

You don’t have to be neat to be in order. And not every neat person is in order. (Many times, neat freaks are people who are so afraid of taking forwarding action and huge risks that they spend most of their days fixing things up and telling you how sloppy you are. For your own good, don’t mind these people or let them get under your skin.)

When I speak of order, I am speaking of an underlying energy of coherence which reflects high thinking processes, a coming together of parts and ingredients to form harmony, a proceeding that unfolds in a step-by-step process, and/or the ability to move according to a defined plan of action. All these aspects are necessary for high success.

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Do any of these apply to you? If so, keep reading tomorrow when I’ll post the next 4 Faces of Fear and the trusted and proven solution to move past it all…

See you tomorrow!

Rich blessings,

Valerie Love