Stress, anxiety, nervousness, worry and frustration are part of most of our lives. Did you know that there’s usually one underlying cause for all of these? There is — it’s fear. Here’s a six step process to put you in control, to help you master fear.
Many kinds of fears affect our well-being or ability to perform well under pressure. We can put most of these fears into four categories and in this “How to Master Fear” series we’ll refer to as the “big four fears”: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection and fear of selling.
How does a salesperson move through fear and step into confidence? How does an executive blast through fear and lead her team through risk into great success? How does a teenager overcome the fear of rejection and ask someone out on a date for the first time? They master their fear.

Mastering fear doesn’t mean you don’t have fear. It means you know what fears you have and you control them instead of them controlling of you.

Entrepreneurs, salespeople, high-level executives … actually everyone I know wants to feel happy and successful, and mastering fear is important in attaining these emotional states. In this “How to Master Fear” series, you’ll learn how to: identify your fears, master them, and focus on attaining what’s important to you that the fears were blocking.
The series will take you through my six-step technique to master fear:

  1. Identify your fears.
  2. Embrace your fears; being afraid to face fear feeds your fear with fear.
  3. Disidentify with your fears; they aren’t you.
  4. Understand your worst-case scenario.
  5. Do a reality check, with the probability of your worst-case scenario coming true.
  6. Have a fearless focus. Once your fear is under control, you can set it aside and use the energy to create what you want.

Join me by either watching the video of the interview (produced by my speaker agent Kim Tracy) or by reading the edited text below.
[vc_video link=”https://youtu.be/7bj4aopTD8k”]
Kim: You are a coach who works with high performing sales executives and executives. One of your specialties in coaching is helping your clients release blocks to success. What is the number one block?
TC: I have some amazing techniques that work with both the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The other group I work a lot with is entrepreneurs as well as sales people, high level executives and corporations. And there is one fear that has many faces but is pretty ubiquitous in our culture.
I have a question for you that I’m going to ask before I answer your question, if I may? For all listeners, I want you to answer this question. I realize the answer is pretty obvious but I’m going to ask it anyway. Do you ever experience anxiety or nervousness stress or worry, frustration or all of the above at a time in your life?
Kim: Absolutely. On a daily basis.
TC: Pretty much the same answer I hear from everyone. But Kim, what do you think is underneath all of those emotions? What other emotion is at a more primary level? Do you have any idea?
Kim: My guess is fear. Fear of rejection, success, failure.
TC: Very good. I know you’ve listened to all of my fear recordings, so I thought you might have that answer. You get an A+. When I started working with fears and doing recordings, writing about it, I started asking people to list all of their fears. I came up with a good group of about thirty- three, as I recall. And then I asked “What’s the unifying pattern?”. We broke them into the big four fears. These four fears may not cover everything but they cover about 80-90% of the fears we all experience in one way or another.
The big four fears are:

  1. fear of failure,
  2. fear of success – which is a great topic someday. It’s way more prevalent, a bigger part of our lives than we realize,
  3. fear of rejection and
  4. fear of selling.

Of those big four fears, since we’re having conversation, do any of those hit home with you as something you either have dealt with or are currently dealing with?
Kim: Absolutely. One is definitely fear of success and fear of rejection is the second one.
TC: Good. Most people, especially entrepreneurs, have a big fear of failure and sales people too. They feel like their family is going to end up under a bridge somewhere if they fail. Most people have a fear of selling, even people who are selling. There are different levels of fear of selling.
The beginner, for example, once the beginner gains some confidence they lose that initial fear of selling. But then they may have a different level of fear of selling at a higher level or to a different type of person or situation, or selling to a team etc. And then the other piece of selling is selling one’s self. So even if I’m not in an entrepreneurial position or a sales position or I’m not selling a product or service, I may be in a corporate setting selling my ideas all day long. I’m selling my ideas to my team, my peers, my boss, maybe a team above my boss.
There’s always this selling of ideas and people don’t think about that necessarily as selling but it is definitely a selling process. Fear of selling is one of the big four fears and it includes fear of selling products services or self.
Kim: That is very true and I hear a lot of people say “I’m so uncomfortable selling”. And I always respond back, “Are you married?” and if they say yes then my response is “well you just succeeded in the biggest sales job of all. You got someone to commit their whole life to you”.
TC: Isn’t that the truth? Love that. Great example. I’d love to share very quickly the six steps I’ve developed over the past thirty years. When people are in my office I have some magic juju to make this more effective. It’s also very effective in trainings, workshops and even keynotes.
Often even in a very short amount of time, this technique can be very helpful to people. Today we don’t’ have time to really process it in-depth, but I want to give the steps.
The six steps are:

  1. Identify your fear. Because we label fears with all these other adjectives and kinds of emotions. But to resolve it you have to understand it as fear.
  2. Embrace your fear. People tend to run away from fear. When you run away from it you’re feeding fear with fear. Think about that. When you feed fear with fear your fear just gets bigger, uglier and stronger.
  3. Dis-identify with fear. The fear is not you. You weren’t born with it. Now there are a few innate fears (fear of spiders, heights etc.) and those are in our DNA. All other fears we make up because of life experiences.
  4. Identify the worst-case scenario. If you really take your worst case to it’s end point it’s usually not as bad as you think.
  5. What’s the probability of the worst case actually happening? In most circumstances it’s lower than we anticipate. With this step if identify the probability and it’s too high for your tolerance then you have to work on something else so that the probability of your worst case scenario is actually decreased. For example: Say an entrepreneur changes his/her whole business strategy and lets go of all the clients they have to try and get a whole other set of clients. If it doesn’t work, then their company fails and they’re in big trouble. In that worst case, when they look at and find the probability is 30-35%, that’s probably not a good risk to take. Maybe if it were 2-5% it would be a risk work taking. That’s why the probability needs to match up to the worst-case scenario. When you’re done with those 5 steps and you’ve focused on the fear then you’ve begun to master your fear and can set it to the side. Now you’re ready for step 6.
  6. Have a fearless focus. You’re ready to ask “what do I really want that the fear was getting in the way of? How can I attain it?”. Focus on what you really want. Start imagining yourself attaining that. Develop a process, an action plan on how to attain it.

Kim: Nice. So as we wrap this up, what is a tip for the viewers in terms of when they’re identifying a fear, what does it actually look like to them?
TC: When you’re identifying a fear you’re going to go through some of those emotions we talked about. Next time you feel anxious or nervous, stressed, worried or really frustrated take a moment and step back and ask yourself, “What’s really underneath this? What fear is causing this emotion?”. Once you’ve identified the fear, now you’ve begun the process of mastering it. But identifying is the very first step.
Kim: Perfect. If you would like to bring TC North in for one of his exceptional workshops or seminars please contact me, Kim Tracy through MaxwellJames.net and don’t forget that his book “Fearless Leaders” is available to you on amazon.com. Thank you so much for doing this with me today.
My speaker agent Kim Tracy at the Maxwell James Agency produced this video. Please contact her if you’re interested in having me deliver a keynote, workshop or webinar on mastering fear. Or contact me at www.TCNorth.com if you need more in-depth personal work to resolve your fears.