Transforming Fear
Transforming Fear
Marie Curie
Perhaps you have heard that if you fear something “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” That advice can be helpful to a point, but it has one very significant drawback: The fear is still there.
So if you have a fear of cold calling, or a fear of failure, or a fear of success, or a fear of rejection, or – even more likely — some combination of all of these fears, summoning your personal power and acting in spite these fears is a brave thing to do, but as exhausting as running uphill with bricks in your pocket.
A better option is to ask yourself what you could do with your mind instead, so your path to success is as easy as rolling downhill or as pleasurable as floating downstream on a raft on a beautiful summer day.
Is it possible to find an easier path to success than blasting through your fears? It certainly is.
When I was a little girl, the thing I feared most was the Tokolosh! I grew up in South Africa where the Tokolosh was used in witchcraft. He was an evil creature of enormous power.
I was the youngest of five girls and my mother had to work very hard to keep us under control. One day when my mother was at work – she owned a toy store downtown — my sisters and I decided to have some good clean fun by playing a game of chicken. We would dare each other to do brave things. Whoever wimped out would be called “chicken.”
We lived in a large two-story house with a red Spanish tile roof. And we thought that going up to the top of the roof and racing to the edge would be an exciting dare. So we climbed to the top of the roof and hauled our bicycles up there.
At the time I was too little to ride a bicycle, so my sister Adrienne helped me get my tricycle up to the top.
We lined our wheels up in the groove of the red tile. We would pedal as fast as we could. Whoever came closest to the edge of the roof before stopping would win the game. In case of a tie, the kid who got there first would be declared the winner.
But just as we began playing our game, the neighbours spotted us on the roof and called my mother, who hurried home She was so angry that she brought home the Tokolosh. He was the scariest creature I had ever seen. He had a humanlike skull and the body of a reptile. No flesh on his face –just flaming red eyes that stared at you wherever you stood.
My mother told us how the Tokolosh knew everything. Nothing that we could say or do would ever escape him. She described some of the punishments the Tokolosh meted out – including eating bad little children. She said she had made a deal with the Tokolosh and from now on he would be watching us.
Every time I saw that creature, I was paralyzed with fear and my heart pounded like crazy.
Simply by mentioning his name, my mother could get me to confess to anything — whether I had done it or not.
As I got older, I developed a healthy curiosity about life in general and I especially loved mystery. One day when I was cleaning out a closet, I came upon the Tokolosh.
At first sight, I shrieked and threw it on the ground, my heart pounding. For a couple of moments, I stood there feeling stupid — but that did not keep me from being paralyzed with fear.
Finally, curiosity got the better of me. I started to wonder: How come I was not afraid to do something as dangerous as riding a tricycle on top of a roof at high speed, yet I was terrified of something whose power I had never seen? What was the Tokolosh really? How did my mother get to be such good friends with it? I wondered how it felt, how it smelled, what it looked like from up close. How could I really know the truth?
I couldn’t stand the suspense, so I took a deep breath, then went over and picked up the Tokolosh. Then I saw it for what it really was — nothing more than a lifeless plastic toy.
Isn’t that the way most fears are when we finally face them?
Before we explore them, fears seem so big and terrible we cannot face them. But once we do, we laugh at the power they used to have over us.
The easiest way to make yourself face what you fear is to become incredibly curious.
We know instinctively that curiosity rules human consciousness because it is the first trait a child shows.
In fact, a child switches back and forth between experiences to satisfy curiosity and experiences to placate fear.
Have you noticed how you can’t be curious and afraid at the same time? That’s because they are two physiologically opposite reactions.
I recall a surgical nurse describing how she whispered in patients’ ears while they were being anesthetized, “When you wake up from this surgery you will have a big appetite, and feel very hungry.”
Why did she say that? Because post-operative nausea is a real problem for many people, and since you can’t feel nauseated and hungry at the same time, she used the highly suggestible state her patients were in to program them to feel hunger instead of nausea after the surgery.
Fear and curiosity are the same way. You have to pick one or the other.
Courage and fear are not opposites. Courage requires that you have fear — otherwise you wouldn’t know you were being brave!
Courage is really just fear turned on its head. For fear to go away, and stay away, turn on your appetite for useful information. Notice that I said useful information, not trivia.
Some people distract themselves from their fears with minutia and trivia. Say you have a fear of success and that fear is keeping you from writing your novel, so you turn on “Access Hollywood” because you wonder what Julia Roberts is wearing these days – that is not curiosity. That’s distraction. Curiosity would motivate you to ask yourself, “How can I write three paragraphs of my novel today, and enjoy the process? How great will it feel when I am reading an excerpt of my book at a book signing at Barnes & Noble?”
When I advise you to use your curiosity to acquire useful information, I mean outcome-oriented, solution-focused thinking that puts your attention on what you want, keeps your attention on what you want and generates creative ways to get there from here.
There is a secret way to rivet your attention on what you want and find out more ways to get what you want.
Even better than this, there is a way to find out how to get what you want and enjoy the process.
Here’s how: Learn to ask the right questions!
A Hindu parable says the Goddess of Knowledge and the Goddess of Wealth are both in your heart. And the secret to being wealthy is to pay attention only to the Goddess of Knowledge because the Goddess of Wealth will be jealous and constantly lavish you with attention and riches.
This story provides a very useful metaphor.
How do you acquire knowledge? By learning. How do you learn? By asking questions!
But what are the right questions to ask? What can you say, what should you say, so instead of cringing feelings that erect a barrier between you and the success you want, you develop a fascination for the result you want and a hunger to find the easiest, most pleasurable, most direct path to that success?
Want to know how?
Ask a “how” question.
A client of mine who was terrified of public speaking conjured up some “how” questions to address her fear.
She asked, “How can I become excited and enthusiastic about talking in front of an audience? How do I look at them and realize they are just like me? How can I know they are rooting for me? How can I dazzle them and get them to love me? How can I do such a great job that I receive a standing ovation?”
These “how” questions helped her develop a specific plan of action that she followed through on. Offering seminars to the public is now an integral part of her business.
If your fear is that you’ll be rejected by that big prospect, ask yourself, “How can I make an offer so compelling to this prospect so that she will not only sign a deal but will thank me enthusiastically?” How can I structure this proposal to make this offer even more irresistible?”
If referrals are important to you, a good follow-up question might be, “How can I arrange things so that she enthusiastically sends referrals to me, and is grateful for the privilege of doing so?”
When I use the word “fear” I am referring to that cringing feeling that keeps you from doing the things that will help your career — the fear that is limiting you the most right now. This might be fear of things not working out, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear that your spouse will be disappointed with you, fear of your boss yelling at you. You know which fears I am talking about. That is the feeling that curiosity will completely replace.
Your brain generates answers all the time. It’s as if you have a string of unconscious questions directing your attention and your actions. Now here is the key to making the questions send you in the direction of your goals: Use “how” questions that specify the kind of experience you want.
In other words, remember your adverbs! In case you have forgotten, adverbs are the words that tell how you feel about the action you are taking.
There is absolute magic in noticing the adverbs in the way you speak and think.
You might have a mental movie of a little dog walking over to an elderly woman. But if I say, “The little dog walked happily to the elderly woman” the movie in your mind changes. If I say, “The little dog walked ecstatically to the elderly woman,” the picture changes even more! Notice how there is no effort — the language itself modifies the picture that your mind automatically creates. Now, notice one other thing: In these three sentences, did the image of the elderly woman change?
I didn’t mention any changes in her, only in the actions of the little dog. But did that cause a shift in the mental picture of her reaction?
By the way, since the adverb is the word that tells you how you feel while doing what you are doing, can you imagine how powerfully this will improve your goal setting?
If you have your goals written – and I strongly urge you to get your goals on paper if you haven’t already done so – then imagine adding specific adverbs to the intentions you have set. Which do you like better? “I am making $24,000 a month in commissions” or “I am joyfully making $24,000 a month in commissions”? Feel the difference?
“My husband and I visit Egypt this year and ride camels” or, “My husband and I easily afford and happily visit Egypt where we ride camels and have a wonderful, romantic time”?
Okay, on that last one I added a couple more things than the adverb, but you get the idea.
And remember that the way you reach your goals literally affects the way others will respond and encourage you in reaching your goals. Remember the image of the elderly woman!
Ask specific questions that get your mind thinking in the direction of reaching your intended goal in the happiest, easiest, most pleasurable way possible.
Remember the key to making curiosity work is to actively wonder what the answer might be.
The next exercise, after the summary, is a process you can use to literally switch the feeling of fear into the feeling of curiosity. The first time you do this exercise; pick a fear that is moderate, so you can build confidence in your ability as a curious conqueror. As you build your skills and confidence, you can take on bigger opponents.
Important Points to Remember:
• Fear, like all human emotion, has a useful purpose in the right circumstances. It aids in the survival process, reminding us to flee from dangerous situations.
• Many of the things we fear, however, do not fit into this category –and those fears become obstacles that prevent us from fulfilling our potential.
• Most fears are rooted in one or two specific incidents. Your central nervous system responds to a traumatic event (or an event that is interpreted as traumatic) by triggering an emotional response.
• These responses can be triggered by simply thinking about the event. Sometimes auditory, kinesthetic or visual stimuli can trigger the same emotional response.
• The unconscious mind generalizes from a specific event and consequently triggers the same emotional response to a whole lot of similar situations.
• You can defuse this type of emotional reaction by:
1. Defusing the unconscious emotional reaction at the root cause.
2. Consciously creating the opposite physiological response when you experience the irrational, emotional response.
3. Curiosity is the opposite physiological response to fear. It is the first instinctual trait a child shows. In fact, children switch back and forth between experiences to satisfy curiosity and placate fear.
• Courage presupposes the continual existence of that fear.
• The easiest, most effective way to develop curiosity is to change your internal dialog. More specifically, change the nature of the questions you ask yourself.
• Use “how” and “I wonder what would happen if” questions to stimulate curiosity.
• “What if” fear-based questions can be softened by humor and erased using a variation of the trauma eraser you will use in this class.
Examples of internal questions that create fear:
What if I get up in front of the group and I make a fool of myself? What if I get lost? What if I fail? What if he says no? What if he leaves me?
Internal questions that stimulate curiosity:
• In what creative ways can I get myself excited about the talk?
• I wonder what would happen if I discovered some new interesting place today.
• How can I learn from this?
• I wonder what would happen if he said yes.
• I wonder how much better our relationship can get.
Transforming Fear - To learn more about this author, visit Mandy Bass's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”
Marie Curie
Perhaps you have heard that if you fear something “Feel the fear and do it anyway.” That advice can be helpful to a point, but it has one very significant drawback: The fear is still there.
So if you have a fear of cold calling, or a fear of failure, or a fear of success, or a fear of rejection, or – even more likely — some combination of all of these fears, summoning your personal power and acting in spite these fears is a brave thing to do, but as exhausting as running uphill with bricks in your pocket.
A better option is to ask yourself what you could do with your mind instead, so your path to success is as easy as rolling downhill or as pleasurable as floating downstream on a raft on a beautiful summer day.
Is it possible to find an easier path to success than blasting through your fears? It certainly is.
When I was a little girl, the thing I feared most was the Tokolosh! I grew up in South Africa where the Tokolosh was used in witchcraft. He was an evil creature of enormous power.
I was the youngest of five girls and my mother had to work very hard to keep us under control. One day when my mother was at work – she owned a toy store downtown — my sisters and I decided to have some good clean fun by playing a game of chicken. We would dare each other to do brave things. Whoever wimped out would be called “chicken.”
We lived in a large two-story house with a red Spanish tile roof. And we thought that going up to the top of the roof and racing to the edge would be an exciting dare. So we climbed to the top of the roof and hauled our bicycles up there.
At the time I was too little to ride a bicycle, so my sister Adrienne helped me get my tricycle up to the top.
We lined our wheels up in the groove of the red tile. We would pedal as fast as we could. Whoever came closest to the edge of the roof before stopping would win the game. In case of a tie, the kid who got there first would be declared the winner.
But just as we began playing our game, the neighbours spotted us on the roof and called my mother, who hurried home She was so angry that she brought home the Tokolosh. He was the scariest creature I had ever seen. He had a humanlike skull and the body of a reptile. No flesh on his face –just flaming red eyes that stared at you wherever you stood.
My mother told us how the Tokolosh knew everything. Nothing that we could say or do would ever escape him. She described some of the punishments the Tokolosh meted out – including eating bad little children. She said she had made a deal with the Tokolosh and from now on he would be watching us.
Every time I saw that creature, I was paralyzed with fear and my heart pounded like crazy.
Simply by mentioning his name, my mother could get me to confess to anything — whether I had done it or not.
As I got older, I developed a healthy curiosity about life in general and I especially loved mystery. One day when I was cleaning out a closet, I came upon the Tokolosh.
At first sight, I shrieked and threw it on the ground, my heart pounding. For a couple of moments, I stood there feeling stupid — but that did not keep me from being paralyzed with fear.
Finally, curiosity got the better of me. I started to wonder: How come I was not afraid to do something as dangerous as riding a tricycle on top of a roof at high speed, yet I was terrified of something whose power I had never seen? What was the Tokolosh really? How did my mother get to be such good friends with it? I wondered how it felt, how it smelled, what it looked like from up close. How could I really know the truth?
I couldn’t stand the suspense, so I took a deep breath, then went over and picked up the Tokolosh. Then I saw it for what it really was — nothing more than a lifeless plastic toy.
Isn’t that the way most fears are when we finally face them?
Before we explore them, fears seem so big and terrible we cannot face them. But once we do, we laugh at the power they used to have over us.
The easiest way to make yourself face what you fear is to become incredibly curious.
We know instinctively that curiosity rules human consciousness because it is the first trait a child shows.
In fact, a child switches back and forth between experiences to satisfy curiosity and experiences to placate fear.
Have you noticed how you can’t be curious and afraid at the same time? That’s because they are two physiologically opposite reactions.
I recall a surgical nurse describing how she whispered in patients’ ears while they were being anesthetized, “When you wake up from this surgery you will have a big appetite, and feel very hungry.”
Why did she say that? Because post-operative nausea is a real problem for many people, and since you can’t feel nauseated and hungry at the same time, she used the highly suggestible state her patients were in to program them to feel hunger instead of nausea after the surgery.
Fear and curiosity are the same way. You have to pick one or the other.
Courage and fear are not opposites. Courage requires that you have fear — otherwise you wouldn’t know you were being brave!
Courage is really just fear turned on its head. For fear to go away, and stay away, turn on your appetite for useful information. Notice that I said useful information, not trivia.
Some people distract themselves from their fears with minutia and trivia. Say you have a fear of success and that fear is keeping you from writing your novel, so you turn on “Access Hollywood” because you wonder what Julia Roberts is wearing these days – that is not curiosity. That’s distraction. Curiosity would motivate you to ask yourself, “How can I write three paragraphs of my novel today, and enjoy the process? How great will it feel when I am reading an excerpt of my book at a book signing at Barnes & Noble?”
When I advise you to use your curiosity to acquire useful information, I mean outcome-oriented, solution-focused thinking that puts your attention on what you want, keeps your attention on what you want and generates creative ways to get there from here.
There is a secret way to rivet your attention on what you want and find out more ways to get what you want.
Even better than this, there is a way to find out how to get what you want and enjoy the process.
Here’s how: Learn to ask the right questions!
A Hindu parable says the Goddess of Knowledge and the Goddess of Wealth are both in your heart. And the secret to being wealthy is to pay attention only to the Goddess of Knowledge because the Goddess of Wealth will be jealous and constantly lavish you with attention and riches.
This story provides a very useful metaphor.
How do you acquire knowledge? By learning. How do you learn? By asking questions!
But what are the right questions to ask? What can you say, what should you say, so instead of cringing feelings that erect a barrier between you and the success you want, you develop a fascination for the result you want and a hunger to find the easiest, most pleasurable, most direct path to that success?
Want to know how?
Ask a “how” question.
A client of mine who was terrified of public speaking conjured up some “how” questions to address her fear.
She asked, “How can I become excited and enthusiastic about talking in front of an audience? How do I look at them and realize they are just like me? How can I know they are rooting for me? How can I dazzle them and get them to love me? How can I do such a great job that I receive a standing ovation?”
These “how” questions helped her develop a specific plan of action that she followed through on. Offering seminars to the public is now an integral part of her business.
If your fear is that you’ll be rejected by that big prospect, ask yourself, “How can I make an offer so compelling to this prospect so that she will not only sign a deal but will thank me enthusiastically?” How can I structure this proposal to make this offer even more irresistible?”
If referrals are important to you, a good follow-up question might be, “How can I arrange things so that she enthusiastically sends referrals to me, and is grateful for the privilege of doing so?”
When I use the word “fear” I am referring to that cringing feeling that keeps you from doing the things that will help your career — the fear that is limiting you the most right now. This might be fear of things not working out, fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear that your spouse will be disappointed with you, fear of your boss yelling at you. You know which fears I am talking about. That is the feeling that curiosity will completely replace.
Your brain generates answers all the time. It’s as if you have a string of unconscious questions directing your attention and your actions. Now here is the key to making the questions send you in the direction of your goals: Use “how” questions that specify the kind of experience you want.
In other words, remember your adverbs! In case you have forgotten, adverbs are the words that tell how you feel about the action you are taking.
There is absolute magic in noticing the adverbs in the way you speak and think.
You might have a mental movie of a little dog walking over to an elderly woman. But if I say, “The little dog walked happily to the elderly woman” the movie in your mind changes. If I say, “The little dog walked ecstatically to the elderly woman,” the picture changes even more! Notice how there is no effort — the language itself modifies the picture that your mind automatically creates. Now, notice one other thing: In these three sentences, did the image of the elderly woman change?
I didn’t mention any changes in her, only in the actions of the little dog. But did that cause a shift in the mental picture of her reaction?
By the way, since the adverb is the word that tells you how you feel while doing what you are doing, can you imagine how powerfully this will improve your goal setting?
If you have your goals written – and I strongly urge you to get your goals on paper if you haven’t already done so – then imagine adding specific adverbs to the intentions you have set. Which do you like better? “I am making $24,000 a month in commissions” or “I am joyfully making $24,000 a month in commissions”? Feel the difference?
“My husband and I visit Egypt this year and ride camels” or, “My husband and I easily afford and happily visit Egypt where we ride camels and have a wonderful, romantic time”?
Okay, on that last one I added a couple more things than the adverb, but you get the idea.
And remember that the way you reach your goals literally affects the way others will respond and encourage you in reaching your goals. Remember the image of the elderly woman!
Ask specific questions that get your mind thinking in the direction of reaching your intended goal in the happiest, easiest, most pleasurable way possible.
Remember the key to making curiosity work is to actively wonder what the answer might be.
The next exercise, after the summary, is a process you can use to literally switch the feeling of fear into the feeling of curiosity. The first time you do this exercise; pick a fear that is moderate, so you can build confidence in your ability as a curious conqueror. As you build your skills and confidence, you can take on bigger opponents.
Important Points to Remember:
• Fear, like all human emotion, has a useful purpose in the right circumstances. It aids in the survival process, reminding us to flee from dangerous situations.
• Many of the things we fear, however, do not fit into this category –and those fears become obstacles that prevent us from fulfilling our potential.
• Most fears are rooted in one or two specific incidents. Your central nervous system responds to a traumatic event (or an event that is interpreted as traumatic) by triggering an emotional response.
• These responses can be triggered by simply thinking about the event. Sometimes auditory, kinesthetic or visual stimuli can trigger the same emotional response.
• The unconscious mind generalizes from a specific event and consequently triggers the same emotional response to a whole lot of similar situations.
• You can defuse this type of emotional reaction by:
1. Defusing the unconscious emotional reaction at the root cause.
2. Consciously creating the opposite physiological response when you experience the irrational, emotional response.
3. Curiosity is the opposite physiological response to fear. It is the first instinctual trait a child shows. In fact, children switch back and forth between experiences to satisfy curiosity and placate fear.
• Courage presupposes the continual existence of that fear.
• The easiest, most effective way to develop curiosity is to change your internal dialog. More specifically, change the nature of the questions you ask yourself.
• Use “how” and “I wonder what would happen if” questions to stimulate curiosity.
• “What if” fear-based questions can be softened by humor and erased using a variation of the trauma eraser you will use in this class.
Examples of internal questions that create fear:
What if I get up in front of the group and I make a fool of myself? What if I get lost? What if I fail? What if he says no? What if he leaves me?
Internal questions that stimulate curiosity:
• In what creative ways can I get myself excited about the talk?
• I wonder what would happen if I discovered some new interesting place today.
• How can I learn from this?
• I wonder what would happen if he said yes.
• I wonder how much better our relationship can get.
Transforming Fear - To learn more about this author, visit Mandy Bass's Website.
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