Fear: Five Ideas to Help Slay Your Dragons
Have you ever been overcome by fear to the point where you think you cannot slay your dragons?
All of us reach that point on occasion in our lives, as well as in today’s challenging print industry.
Slaying your dragons in this context means overcoming our fears.
Fear holds many people back from achieving the kind of life they dream of, and from realizing the results of the God-given gifts with which they have been blessed.
There are many ways that we can overcome our fears.
Here are five ideas to help you overcome your fear, slay your dragons, and reach your potential:
Name Your Fear
Why would we want to do that? Once we name the fear we expose it, making it less powerful. Just naming it alone will help you realize it is not as overwhelming as you thought.
Define the Most Likely Outcome
Consider what is most likely to happen with the specific fear you are confronting. If you think about items you feared in the past, probably 95 percent of them—or more—never happened or did not happen on the scale that you feared.
Once you define the most likely outcome you will gain confidence in starting to confront your fear and develop a plan to move past it.
Discuss Your Fears with Others
This is one of the most cathartic actions you can take to overcome your fears. When we discuss fear with others we name it, we put it out in the open and make it less powerful.
We will also receive feedback as to how we can overcome the fear and begin to feel progress in moving forward to nullify any impact your fear may have.
Develop a Plan to Make Progress
Once you have named your fear, defined the most likely outcome and discussed your fear with others, you will have the calm determination to develop a plan to overcome your fear.
With your plan, you will be able to slay those dragons and make progress. Keep the end goal in mind and see your fears as the obstacles but with the end goal in mind you will move through them.
Help Others Face Their Fears
When we help others face their fears, we help them realize that there are ways to overcome what they fear. It is natural for us to see solutions the other person cannot see because they may be too close to the situation.
As we help others face their fears, our confidence grows in our own ability to confront and overcome what we most fear.
Overcoming fear is a common challenge for all of us. If we develop a process such as the five steps above, we can slay our dragons and no longer be as distracted by them.
What ideas and processes do you utilize to help you slay your dragons?
Photo credit: Shutterstock
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I think that your third idea is one of the most important in regards to facing fears. Talking about them with someone is cathartic as you stated, but the person we speak with also has the ability to see those fears in a different light/from a different angle. They can give us insights and help us in our plans to face them. Thank you, Bill!
You’re right, Melissa. They can give us insights and sometimes even make them seem less scary. We all live in our own brains and it’s helpful to get that outside perspective.