How to overcome your fears – Step 4 – Disassociate
You are not your anxieties
Everyone has fears. If you’re stressed, anxious, frustrated or overwhelmed, you likely have conscious or subconscious fears of which you don’t have control. The process of overcoming that which panics you doesn’t mean you’re without fears; it means you’re in control versus them being in control of you.
We summarized more than 30 sources of fear into what we call the “Big Four:”
- Fear of failure
- Fear of success
- Fear of rejection
- Fear of selling (yourself, your ideas, products or services).
In this fourth article in the series, we discuss the third step in my six-step technique to overcoming your fear.
Here are the steps to master fear:
- Identify your fears
- Embrace your fears rather than running from them
- Disassociate with your fears
- Understand your worst-case scenario
- Do a reality check, with the probability of your worst-case scenario coming true
- Develop a fearless focus. Instead, go after what you want
Disassociating with your fears means:
You aren’t your fears.
The good news is that if you created your fears, you can learn to overcome and master them. Fears come from your life experiences and how you interpret them. But your thoughts, beliefs and fears are all temporary unless you reinforce them.
Take a moment to recognize your irrational fears as a set of beliefs that create an emotion.
I’ve worked with a number of people who say, “I’m a worrier.” That sounds like a permanent state, doesn’t it? But it’s not. This is a state of being you develop throughout your life. If you have a parent who has high anxiety, you tend to learn that. But you can unlearn it.
Your irrational fears are not in your DNA, you can learn to master and control them.
When you notice one of your irrational fears – Imagine your fear not as something that’s outside of you. Release it.
Disassociating with your fears is the third step in overcoming fear. If you ever want in-depth help in overcoming your fears, feel free to reach out to me here.
