In this video, we discuss the second step in my six-step technique to master fear.

First, a quick review –
Mastering fear doesn’t mean you don’t have fear. It means you know what fears you have and you’re in control of them instead of them being in control of you. When you don’t have control of your fears, you may feel stressed, anxious, frustrated or overwhelmed. Most fears fit into four general categories that we refer to as the “big four fears”: fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection and fear of selling.
The six steps 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.

If you ignore or run from your fears, you actually feed your fear with fear, increasing the amount of fear you have.
In this video, we share how to embrace your fear and why it’s important.
Enjoy and learn by watching the video below or reading the transcription.

Kim: We are going to be continuing our series of mastering your fear.  Could you please remind us of the big four?
TC: The big four fears are fear of failure, fear of success, fear of rejection and fear of selling. And fear of selling includes products, services and one’s self and one’s ideas.
Kim: And could you remind our audience who didn’t see the first segment. What was the first fear?
TC: If it’s ok I’ll give the whole six-step process. In this series we’re going to do the six steps. So the first step is to identify your fear. The second step is what we’re going to do today which is to embrace your fear.
We spent two sessions on identify your fear because most people don’t identify the fears that they have. I wanted to give some good tools, because we talk about stress and frustration and all these different emotions that actually have a fear base but we don’t identify them as fears.
When we can identify fear then we actually learn to master the fear and those feelings of frustration, stress and overwhelm go away. But you can’t deal with them directly, you have to deal with what’s underneath them, that’s why we’ve spent so much time there.
Ready to do embrace?  A lot of people want to run from their fears and hide. But the reason to embrace the fear is this – If I’m afraid to look at my fear, if I’m afraid to embrace my fear, I’ve actually added fear to my fear. What an ugly cycle that becomes. I’m feeding fear with fear. So now my original fear has gotten bigger because I’m afraid to even look at it.
It’s a real important step to identify your fear and then secondly embrace the fear. In longer workshops I’ll often have people take crayons or pencils and draw a picture of their fear, label it, or give it a voice. I remember one person said the voice of their fear was their grandmother.
When I was in Costa Rica a couple of years ago I worked with all the leaders of the central American Western Union office and we did this exercise. We had people draw out their fears. This is a picture that was drawn out by one of our participants so I thought I’d share it with everyone.
If you remember the show “Lost” with the smoke monster. This is the smoke-monster on Lost. When he [one of the workshop participants] pictured his own fears, the fears that he was working with in the workshop, that’s what he saw.
So now you’ve got a picture, you can put your hands around it. Once you’ve got that, then you can do something with it. You need to really identify and embrace your fear so that then you can begin to master it. Does that make sense?
That’s it on step two. It’s very important to embrace the fear and not run from it because you’re actually feeding fear with fear when you run from it. Stop, pause, identify and embrace.
Kim: Excellent. Thank you so much and I look forward to doing step three with you.
TC: Me too, Kim.
Kim: If you would like to bring TC North in for a keynote, workshop or seminar, please contact me, Kim Tracy through MaxwellJames.net. Thanks so much!
My speaker agent Kim Tracy at the Maxwell James Agency produced this video. Please contact her at www.maxwelljames.net 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.