Yesterday morning, my lovely Labrador, Oddie, had a mini freak out!
I’m very lucky where I live, I walk to the bottom of my garden, open a couple of gates and I’m in a nice, big park.
They do a lot of sports there over the weekend and this one was no exception. Someone had put road cones upside down into the holes used during rugby season for goal posts to make an extra football pitch.
Well, Oddie took one look at that and lost her tiny little mind.
Hackles up. Very aggressive barking.
Going forward a few steps at a time and stopping to let this invader know she was there and not putting up with it!
She was seeing something she didn’t understand. Something that didn’t belong there.
And her brain didn’t like it. At all.
What happens when our brain encounters something it doesn't like?
Fear enters.
Fear plays an incredibly important part in our lives. It’s there to tell us something’s wrong.
It’s there to keep us alive.
But fear stops us from making changes we want to make all the time as well.
Changes we know we need to make. Changes that will make our life better, easier, happier.
I’ve spent time yesterday working with a client who has a big decision to make in her life and the clock is ticking.
Decisions usually come easy to her. But not this one.
This decision affects a lot of different areas in her life, so fear has popped up around all of those areas and put her in a state of freeze.
What do we do when fear starts to overwhelm us? Especially, in a situation where we need to act quickly?
Here’s a great trick I’ve learned from my coach – hold a board meeting.
Imagine yourself going into a boardroom with all the key stakeholders already there.
You walk in and look around the table to find fear, ego and your inner critic.
But you also see your higher self, dreams, intuition, heart and reason.
As soon as you walk in, fear’s going to start.
There will be shouting. Banging on the table. Fear will go on and on and on, not giving anyone else a chance to speak.
When fear does finally shut up, ego’s going to start in. Just as loudly and persistently.
Followed by our inner critic telling us all the reasons we’re too useless to say yes to this choice.
And that is usually as far as we go when making a decision.
We listen to fear, ego and our inner critic. Since they’re the loudest and the first to make their presence known, no-one else gets a look-in.
In other words, we only listen to the bullies in the boardroom!
You have to consciously ask for input from your dreams, intuition, heart and reason.
You must give those quite voices a chance to speak up as well.
We can’t make healthy decisions from a one-sided argument.
You can’t let fear be the boss. It takes control, telling you what to say, how to act, who to be.
It makes you into a prisoner.
We’re actually all open to change.
YOU are open to change.
To making change easily, with confidence.
To playing big.
To making a decision without catastrophising all the possible outcomes.
To believing in yourself.
When we listen to the right voices.
If I were to ask you to be brutally honest with yourself, will you find somewhere in your business or life where fear is stopping you right now?