Self-Doubt

7 Ways Fear Holds You Back

When was the last time you felt fear? Was it worry about getting sick when so many around you have fallen ill? Was it the agonizing fear that you were going to be fired, your loved one would leave, your finances would tank, your investments fail, that you’d be found incompetent or a failure? Everyone feels fear. Sometimes, though, fear is the last emotion you want to dwell on. Here are some of the ways fear holds you back, along with helpful tips on workable solutions.

1.    Fear Keeps You Stuck

No one likes feeling stuck. If you’re unable to motivate yourself to get going, could fear be the reason for your inaction? Are you afraid to succeed or afraid of failure? Is this a new fear or a recurring one? Have you ever been successful before in defeating this kind of fear?

The only way to become unstuck when fear holds you back is to act. There is a way out of this. The key is to figure out what works best to push past this fear and get moving again.

2.    Fear Makes You Reluctant to Pursue Your Goals

What happened to the list of things you wanted to accomplish in life? What about your short-term goals, those things you hoped to achieve in the next month, 6 months, or one year? Is fear the reason you’ve put those desired goals on the back burner? If so, you’re dealing yourself an unnecessary blow. Not only are you letting your goals slide, but you’re also giving yourself subtle reminders that you don’t deserve to succeed.

Nothing could be further from the truth. You deserve to enjoy success. By working hard and refusing to give up, you’ll push fear to the background and get back to working on what’s important.

3.    Fear is Counter-Productive

The irony is that fear itself never helps you get past the crippling emotion. Also, the more you give in to fear, the less effective or productive you are in most situations. How can you solve a problem or decide if all you’re thinking about is what can go wrong, how ill-prepared you are, or that others will think poorly of you if you fail? Beyond being counter-productive, though, fear is also self-perpetuating. The more you wallow in fear, the more fearful you become.

Recognize fear for what it is. In dangerous situations, it’s a survival instinct that you feel fear. This helps galvanize you to take action to protect yourself and others. Otherwise, fear should not be allowed to keep you from living your life.

4.    Fear Makes You More Likely to Repeat Mistakes

It’s okay to be afraid. But if you haven’t learned from the mistakes you’ve made, fear will take over and certainly propel you into repeating those mistakes. Beyond mere repetition, however, mistakes can be compounded by fear. Making one mistake after another can result in a downward spiral that leads to a complete lack of self-confidence and a serious erosion of emotional well-being.

Take stock of mistakes you’ve made. Write down the lessons you’ve learned from those mistakes. These show that you’re capable of making progress. It’s called life. Everyone makes mistakes. There’s no reason to allow fear to convince you that you’re inept or incapable. You’re not either of those. Believe in yourself and give fear the boot.

5.    Fear Makes you Doubt Your Instincts

After succumbing to fear, or finding yourself unable to think about anything else, you’re not in the best mental state to trust your instincts. Even though you’ve made good decisions in the past, you’re worried that your judgment is now clouded. Worse yet, you allow fear to hijack your determination to move forward. Rather than trust your gut, you endlessly review in your mind all the reasons your instincts are wrong.

Humans rely on their instincts for more than survival. It’s an inner sense of what to do in a situation that has served mankind well for millennia. You do have good instincts. Try listening to them instead of discounting them.

6.    Fear Makes You So Afraid of Failure, You Avoid Acting

Ever hear of being so paralyzed by fear that you can’t do anything? Some people who have a diagnosed mental health disorder, such as depression or anxiety, are so plagued by fears that they cannot leave the house. Instead of interacting with others and functioning normally in society, they hide away and shun friends, family, and doing things that bring them enjoyment. When fear paralyzes someone to the extent that they are petrified of failure, they’re more likely to do nothing than take any action.

Remember that inaction is dead-end. By not acting, this is a choice that has profound repercussions. It will not solve any problems and will only worsen existing ones.

7.    Fear, Left Unchecked, Leads to Runaway Emotions

While some fear is normal, allowing fear to run your life is not. When you can’t function in everyday situations because your fear stands in the way, your life is out of control. This isn’t sustainable, either in the short- or long term. For one thing, life is less enjoyable. For another, your emotions, sparked by fear, begin to run rampant. You see danger everywhere. You’re less trusting of others. You also don’t trust yourself to make good judgments.

What kind of way is this to live?

Workable Solutions to Overcome Paralyzing Fear

There are, however, effective things you can do to get past the fear that’s holding you back and resume living a joyful life. To be successful, you must dedicate yourself to making healthy choices and take the risk to make changes in your lifestyle, modifying or eliminating unhealthy behaviors, and recognizing that mistakes do not equal failure. Try these tips to overcome fear:

Employ the 24-Hour Rule

No matter what makes you afraid, one effective solution is to use the 24-hour rule. If you’re afraid of an upcoming surgery, for example, think about getting through the next 24 hours and look at your situation then. You’ll be past the surgical procedure and on your way to healing. You just need to think about that 24-hour mark. This technique works in almost any situation. Can’t wait to go on vacation but you’re afraid of the flight? By the end of the 24 hours, you’ll have completed your flight or been well on your way to your destination. No matter how fearful you are, your fears are blown out of proportion. It’s not as bad as you thought. You can make it through this. Countless people do it every day.

Talk it Over with Someone You Trust

Discussing what you’re afraid of is an excellent way to deflate fear and reduce its hold on you. Keep in mind that everyone experiences fear. We’re human and fear is a human emotion. Listening to how others got past their fears can inspire you to do the same. What worked for them in surmounting fear could work for you also. Be willing to give their tips a try. If nothing else, talking it over with someone you trust is a time-proven way to feel like you’re not alone. This helps boost your self-confidence and encourages you to face your fears head-on.

Start With a Small Act

The only way to overcome fear is to act. If the problem is complex or complicated, start with a small act. This will get you going. There’s nothing like momentum to keep you motivated. Making some progress, even small will help boost your self-confidence and encourage you to keep going.

Keep a List of What Works

Even if this is a new fear, there’s likely to be an example in the past of something similar. That’s why it’s often helpful to keep a list of what’s worked before. It may work again. This may require modification to fit the present situation, but you’re up for the challenge. Besides, succeeding in this instance means you’re adding to your reservoir of resiliency. No matter what the situation, when fear rears its ugly head and threatens to derail you, know that you have a stockpile of techniques to use that will get you past the fear.

*  *  *

Are You Lonely Tonight? How to Combat Loneliness

5 Tips to Banish Loneliness

How to Help Your Child Banish Loneliness

My Best Ways to Deal with Frustration

How to Keep Frustration from Blocking Your Goals

How to Manage Your Anger

How to Start Making Plans When You’re Recovering From Depression

10 Health Benefits of Daily Exercise

10 Ways Nature Helps Your Well-Being

Self-Care: The Most Important Person to Take Care of Is You

To automatically get my posts, sign up for my RSS feed.   

Want to get my free newsletter? Sign up here to receive uplifting messages and daily positive quotes in my Daily Thoughts. You’ll also get the top self-help articles and stories of the week from my blog and more. I also invite you to like me on Facebook, follow me on LinkedIn,  Twitter,  Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest.

 

 

Finding Resilience in the Midst of Challenges

Photo from Picography

“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” – David Brinkley

One thing is certain, and that is that each day presents new challenges. It isn’t the fact that challenges occur that is most important, however, but how well an individual is able to adapt and bounce back from setbacks and go on to face daily challenges. The secret is resilience, yet a little known fact is that it is possible to find and tap into a wellspring of resilience even in the midst of challenges.

Are You Up for Today’s Challenges?

A common misconception for many people is to wonder if we’re up for the challenges today brings. For some, the go-to course of action is to do anything and everything to avoid what is happening today. More specifically, to avoid what responsibilities should be attended to today. The difference between someone who acknowledges, accepts, and rises to meet the challenges and one who shirks, denies, ignores, or blatantly refuses to take action may well be their attitude.

The good news is that this is one area where proactive steps can be taken to turn a negative outlook into a more positive one, thereby improving outcomes regardless of the challenge at hand. Hence, going back to the reservoir of resilience can produce dramatic results.

How to Deal With Difficult or Unpleasant Tasks

Many people find that they steel themselves to tackle difficult or unpleasant tasks experienced on a more or less regular basis. Another common behavioral tendency is to shy away from anything unknown. Why is that? For one thing, people often feel at a loss as to how to deal with the situation, not having sufficient (in their estimation) experience or knowledge to take on the task with any degree of success. For another, they may be afraid – either that they’ll fail at it or that they’ll succeed. Success may mean yet more challenges, and they may not feel all that up to the job just now.

What If You Have Depression or Other Mental Health Disorder?

This can be especially true for anyone dealing with the difficulties inherent in coping with a mental health disorder, such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and others. Often, in addition to the uncertainty and self-doubt the disorder creates, the individual feels ill-equipped to make sound decisions. There’s also likely a fear that a previously-used coping mechanism or method may be faulty.

Even so, consider the fact that there’s probably a wealth of lessons just beneath the surface of the various daily challenges encountered, whether one is dealing with a mental illness or any other daily challenge. By failing to pay heed to these lessons or automatically rejecting them as unworkable, too difficult, indicative of failure or not worth the effort, that does a huge disservice to the individual. By way of illustration, think of the last time paying attention to a truth that’s become apparent during the course of tackling a difficult challenge made a tremendous difference in the task outcome. By tapping into that residual memory, it’s not only possible to benefit from resilience but also to jumpstart it this time. The circumstances may be different, yet our inherent knowledge source remains constant.

Finding Resilience in the Midst of Challenges

As to actually being able to find resilience in the midst of these challenges, this is a skill that can be developed and built over time and with practice. It’s possible to somehow stumble on a way to discern what’s hidden beneath or train ourselves to find the good in everything that we do, whether it is a daily task or taking on something that seems complex, demanding and out of normal expertise.

What we’ll find is that we’ve got more going for us than we realized. There are strengths that we each possess that will serve us well, but only if we give ourselves the opportunity to put them to work.

Look at challenges that arise and figure out ways that to possibly tackle them, where to start looking for the solution, how to implement it, when, and where to ask for help or marshal resources.

The stronger the foundation of resilience is, the more strength and resilience there’ll be to utilize when something unexpected threatens to derail progress in working through challenges. Indeed, every action taken makes us stronger we get stronger – as long as we constantly strive to learn something from our efforts, successful immediately or not.

How This Works in Real Life

How does this work in real life? What is an example that we can all identify with? Suppose we’ve attempted a task and find that we run into a roadblock of considerable proportion? We’ve tackled something that really goes beyond our area of experience or knowledge and believe we can’t go any further. There are, however, ways to look at this. Granted, it could be marked as a failure. On the other hand, it is also possible to acknowledge what was learned in the process. That may well be that we have the strength to take on difficult challenges and not shy away from them, or we’ve learned when we need to step aside, possibly turn over the task to someone with more experience and/or follow by their side so as to learn how to do it ourselves.

What we can take from the experience is the fact that all of this adds to our residual body of resilience, knowledge, experience, and self-confidence. While total success may not have been achieved this time out, this should not deter us from tackling challenges again. In fact, we’ll likely find that we’re more hopeful than ever, given the fact that we’ve learned how to make use of our innate resilience to identify and pursue innovative and workable solutions to everyday challenges.

Suppose others are critical of our efforts? Those are neither true friends nor supporters of our goals. Keep attuned to giving challenges complete effort and focus, doing the best possible in the moment. What comes out of this is something profound in return, and that is a belief in our ability to succeed in the end. Remember, as humans, we learn when we act. The more we learn, the more we grow. The more we grow, the stronger our resilience reservoir becomes.

*  *  *

This article was originally published on Psych Central.

Why It’s Important to Your Mental Health to Deal Constructively With Self-Doubt

My Best Ways to Deal with Frustration

How to Keep Frustration from Blocking Your Goals

How to Start Making Plans When You’re Recovering From Depression

Self-Care: The Most Important Person to Take Care of Is You

To automatically get my posts, sign up for my RSS feed.   

Want to get my free newsletter? Sign up here to receive uplifting messages and daily positive quotes in my Daily Thoughts. You’ll also get the top self-help articles and stories of the week from my blog and more. I also invite you to like me on Facebook, follow me on LinkedIn,  Twitter,  Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest.

 

Why It’s Important to Deal Constructively With Self-Doubt

Photo by Gratisography

“I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure… We all have self-doubt. You don’t deny it, but you also don’t capitulate to it. You embrace it.”—Kobe Bryant

 

Everyone, no matter who they are, inevitably experiences self-doubt. Reading through the biographies and autobiographies of some of the most accomplished, celebrated, famous, talented and intelligent people reveals that each one of them has had their moments of personal doubt. Not only did they wonder if they had what it takes, they worried whether they could persevere despite opposition and setbacks, without support and encouragement, even if they were physically capable of continuing.

Self-doubt isn’t an automatic determinant or precursor to declining mental health. Nor is it the killer of goals or success. Giving up is, however, on both accounts. The key point to remember here isn’t that you doubt yourself, because you will, but what you’ll do about it will make all the difference between being proactive with your mental health and allowing it to deteriorate through inattention.

The first step to dealing constructively with self-doubt involves recognition. If you recognize that what you’re feeling is doubt, you can begin to take proactive steps to overcome it. While each person will need to find what works best, here are some general tips to help get past the crippling paralysis that self-doubt can bring about.

AVOID SELF-DENIAL

It makes no sense to deny what you feel. As with any emotion, when you try to shove the present emotion or feeling aside, it only goes deeper. Instead, acknowledge that you have doubts about yourself and your abilities or capabilities. That’s the first step in getting past it.

ACCEPT SELF-DOUBT AS NORMAL

It probably seems like you’re alone in this experience, especially when you’re right in the thick of it. However, when you accept that self-doubt is normal, that it isn’t unique to you, and everyone has it, this can make the experience less discomforting.

NEVER WALLOW IN THE EMOTION

Never give in to self-doubt. If you do, you’ll never accomplish anything worthwhile. Your goals will slip away, you’ll become bitter and disillusioned, perhaps become depressed, and life will seem less hopeful and productive.

STIFLE THAT HYPERCRITICAL INNER VOICE

When you’re worried you won’t measure up, that you’ll fail at the prospective task or endeavor or not be able to meet the challenge you’ve set for yourself, you’re engaging in the futile act of listening to your harsh inner voice and endlessly worrying about self-criticism. You know, the one that’s always warning you to be cautious, reminds you that your ideas aren’t the best, and laughs at your attempts to succeed. Stop and think, though. Did that hypercritical inner voice ever do you any favors when you listened to it? Can’t think of one, can you? So, tell yourself that you know better than that annoying, and utterly wrong, inner critic. That’s another positive step to deal constructively with self-doubt.

REMIND YOURSELF OF PAST SUCCESS

Now is a good time to recall that you’ve had doubts before and were able to rise above them. You found solutions and techniques that worked then and you will do so again. Reminding yourself of past success in similar situations is a great motivator when you encounter something that makes you question whether you have what it takes this time.

LEARN TO IDENTIFY SELF-DOUBT TRIGGERS

When self-doubt cropped up in the past, what were the triggers that you recall occurring? Raising self-awareness about self-doubt helps you understand what’s at the heart of the emotion, so you can reassure yourself that most of it is fear-based and not grounded in reality.

ENVISION A POSITIVE OUTCOME

While it might be tough to do right now, concentrate on a positive outcome. In fact, be hopeful of one. The dynamic of what happens here is that by capitalizing on your strengths and working to overcome your weaknesses, you’ll position yourself for success. This will occur despite the presence of self-doubt.

SEE THIS AS A GROWTH OPPORTUNITY

Granted, it doesn’t seem like it at first glance. Could it be that something you’re worried about is holding you back? Yet, look past your fears and regard self-doubt as an opportunity to grow. This current situation where you feel such anxiety and doubt didn’t happen without some warning. Were you as prepared as you could be? Does this show you that planning, practice and lining up resources is perhaps a better way to push past self-doubt?

FORGET WHAT OTHERS THINK

It’s understandable that everyone has opinions, yet not all of them are in sync with yours. However, the culture of sameness, where only certain ideas and sometimes only the opinions of certain people are entertained is not helpful to productivity, let alone trying to overcome self-doubt. You don’t want this for yourself or your future, so forget what others think. At the very least, don’t put too much credence into their criticism. You need to own your future. That means thinking for yourself and having the self-confidence to know that you’ll make good decisions.

EMBRACE SELF-DOUBT TO ENRICH LIFE 

Perhaps the simplest and most effective advice regarding self-doubt and your mental health is to embrace the emotion. By learning to embrace self-doubt and allowing yourself the experience of overcoming it, you will enrich your life in ways that may today seem unimaginable.

For example, once you’ve realized that you can overcome self-doubt, you’re no longer troubled by fears of failure. You recognize that you may stumble, yet you’ll learn valuable lessons in the process, emerging stronger than before, able to see past obstacles, ignore unwarranted criticism and the enmity of others. A pattern of success makes for greater self-esteem and self-confidence, both of which are integral in good mental health. While you cannot predict when things may go awry, you know that you’re fully capable of weathering the challenges that life presents. That’s another sign that you’ve dealt constructively with self-doubt.

*  *  *

This article was originally published on Psych Central.

Related Posts:

My Best Ways to Deal with Frustration

How You Can Be More Confident

Success May Be Elusive, But It’s Possible

How to Keep Frustration from Blocking Your Goals

10 Health Benefits of Daily Exercise

10 Ways to Express Gratitude

10 Ways Nature Helps Your Well-Being

To automatically get my posts, sign up for my RSS feed.   

Want to get my free newsletter? Sign up here to receive uplifting messages and daily positive quotes in my Daily Thoughts. You’ll also get the top self-help articles and stories of the week from my blog and more. I also invite you to like me on Facebook, follow me on LinkedIn,  Twitter,  Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest.