How to cope with your fears and doubts

emotions Sep 30, 2021
Fear and Doubt

"Mental Health and Happiness is all about managing your thoughts and putting healthy coping strategies in place that empower, rather than hurt, you as a person."

How to tackle fears and doubts. 

  1. Step one - change your relationship to fear.
    A key point is to understand that you are not special. Everybody has fears and everybody has to learn how to cope and manage them.The bigger the project you're attempting, the bigger the fears. So basically, if you don't attempt anything difficult, then you will have smaller fears. Big fears are actually an indication that you're stretching yourself and trying to do something that is more difficult than what you've previously done. It is an indication that you are doing well if you are taking action despite the fears. The realisation that fears are a good thing, moves you in the right direction. 

  2. Step two - write them down

  3. Step three - analyse if any of your fears and doubts are actually based in a reality with proper perspective.
    (It is rational to fear sharks, irrational to think there is a good chance you will encounter one)

  4. Step four – Chunk it down.
    Once you've written it down, and it is a realistic fear, then you can start to think about how to look at it through a different Lens, from a different perspective. The fear of a big goal is viewed differently if you chunk it down into the small steps you will need to take on the journey to achieving the goal.

  5. Step five - lean into your fears and understand where you feel it in your body. 

Often fear starts with a feeling in the body before the actual thoughts and if you can identify where it starts in your body, you can cut it off with a rebalancing thought before it becomes a big fear. As you think differently this feeling in your body will subside.

Awareness of the following helps:

  1. When fear hits, take 3-4 deep breaths
  2. Monitor your inner and outer Tone of Voice
  3. Reassure yourself that you are fine, that some fear is normal – plus the excitement, nerves and fear is usually what attracts you to want to do the activity. 
  4. Rehearse how you will feel – lose or lessen the feeling in your body where the fear starts.
  5. If you have prepared well, relax and let things happen

It is imperative that you are smart when you are tackling real fears and set about creating a plan because part of managing fears is the building of a good action plan. 

As an example, if you're trying to become a very good tennis player, begin to chart practice and the progress that you are making to become a top tennis player. The fear of losing is offset when you know you are doing the work to get better and that progress is the goal with winning only a bi-product of the process of improving. 

Sadly, many athletes do the hard-physical yards and neglect the mental side of the development process, largely because it can only be measured subjectively and through feeling with no tangible way of plotting the progress.

It is very helpful to create your own subjective graph or measurement. Never underestimate the accuracy of feeling that is personally measured, which if done honestly can give you great confidence. Competence, more than anything, breeds confidence, so stick to the process of getting better.

There's a lot of work involved. It takes years to build the foundations, the skills that you need to become an expert at anything. 

The number one aspect here is not to fear your fears and doubt, but to accept them and then start to plan how you can take the actions that will help you become strong enough to no longer fear these fears or to at least have them at a very, very manageable level. 

Increased knowledge is a major antidote to fear. Once you clearly understand where you are and what you need to do in order to lessen or get rid of a fear, then it is far easier to manage in your mind and not become paralyzed. In a  Mindset College module we teach you how to plot on an “Infinity Change Cycle”.

The formula for coping with doubt doesn't change as you get better, because as you improve, you face stiffer resistance. The wonderful news about this, is that it means that the level that you are operating at is also higher, so it is proof that you have improved. 

The formula basically says that the higher you get, the tougher it's going to be, but conversely the tougher you are, so you are in a better position to cope. 

John McEnroe famously said the biggest jump he ever had to make was from number two to number one. This is because the higher you get, the margins become so small that you have to put in hours and hours of training and practice just to improve a millimetre. Whereas at the start, when you put in hours and hours of practice, you improve quite rapidly.

A common error is to think that the person you are in the present, who is afraid of a higher level, is the person you will be if you do the work to get there! 

If you honestly don't think that you're tough enough, think again because no one is tough enough at the start. According to the success formula, as you go up through the levels, you will become tougher and therefore as a person, mentally you will have evolved into a different mental animal, far more able to cope at that level. You cannot imagine being that much tougher until you are. 

A good analogy is if you go into the gym and you can squat 50 kilos and you look at a hundred kilos and think it's impossible for you to ever squat so much. Over time, when you get close to 100kg, it suddenly  seems possible. 

It is still heavy. The difference is you're just much stronger, so you can cope with that heaviness. In other words, the weight is the same as when you thought it was impossible to lift, so all change comes from within you from the work you do, not by magic. 

If you put maximum effort in and run a hundred meters in 15 seconds, you're going to be just as tired as Usain Bolt running it at 9.8 - the effort is the same, just the capability is different. The 100 meters Usain runs is not easier for him if he is putting in maximum effort. 

The lesson here is whatever level you are starting from, get into the habit of putting in maximum effort so that climbing the ladder never becomes a matter of effort, just the time it takes to get to each new level. 

Little mind trick - worry predicts a negative future – this is unfair:

If you stress, then your mind starts to predict a future that says that things will not go well. Doubt and fear happen and get worse when the mind begins to automatically assume the outcome will probably be negative. The bottom line is to statistically give yourself a fair chance. Give yourself a 50/50 chance of a positive outcome, rather than assuming the distorted low odds that stress, fear and doubt facilitate. 

For a deep dive into this subject and more consider taking a close look at https://www.mindsetcollege.co.uk/art-of-competing1 

 

Written by David Sammel