So, I told everyone about my fears & this is what happened.
University of Queensland Business, Economics & Law Faculty, ‘Jobs now and in the Future’ Conference 2019
I was invited by the University of Queensland’s Student Employability Team to deliver a keynote to Business, Economics & Law Faculty students and graduates at the ‘Jobs now and in the Future’ Conference. It wasn’t that long ago when I was a student at UQ in the same position, hopeful yet uncertain about what my future career was going to be. What would I really want to hear before I head out into the real world? The hard truth. I would want to know all the real challenges I would have to face and how to find courage to face it, if and when it happens. What shows up for me when there is so much uncertainty and confusion about the future? Fear. So, in the spirit of getting a little deeper, I presented on The Gift of Fear & Letting it Go.
Understand your fears, but don’t identify with them
The future is inherently uncertain and most people are strongly wired to be intolerant of uncertainty and vulnerability. We often experience it as fear, pain, anxiety and doubt which makes us physically and emotionally uncomfortable. The feeling of fear is a gift because it protects us from danger. It gives us great strength to act in the face of an impending danger or real threat to life. However, humans also have this unique ability to create fear in ourselves even when there is no present or real danger such as when we experience ego-driven fears like the fear of failure, disappointment, rejection, judgment, change and looking bad. When we think we can’t cope with stress and pressure in the environment, our minds want to protect us from this discomfort.
Physically, our natural response to fear and excitement are the same: increased heart rate, sweating, tingling, heightened senses and tunnel vision. The difference is our thoughts on how we interpret the sensations and the way we react to situations. Our thoughts determine our actions so it’s important to recognise when an irrational fear is holding us back. More often than not, whenever we feel the ‘fight or flight’ sensation in the context of ego-driven fears, we retreat, stall, procrastinate, become non-committal, have anxiety and self-sabotage. But what if we push through and ask ourselves “why am I actually feeling this way?”
We need to dig deeper into the story we have in our minds about what we think will happen and then reality check whether it is true or not.
Letting go of fears
Fear is a very familiar feeling that I have experienced frequently throughout my career…when I decided to pause my career in law to start a business; the time where the business needed to pivot in a different direction; and when I started to share my photography online. Since working in innovation, there’s even more instances where fear shows up because any creativity, innovation or change requires vulnerability. It is vulnerable because the journey to creating anything new and attempting to disrupt status quo is riddled with challenges, setbacks, detours and failures.
Somehow, I manage to push forward despite the fear. In fact, letting go of these fears and taking risks on things I wanted to do has ended up becoming some of my greatest achievements in my career so far. We are all a work in progress and fear will always show up. Yet, once you focus more on how much you can grow and learn through an experience rather than avoid the fear of what you think might happen, things suddenly seem less daunting than your initial response to fear. When you adopt a growth mindset, every challenge taken becomes an opportunity to learn, and every mistake becomes a valuable lesson.
Fear diminishes when it is spoken
From the many stories of personal struggles sent to me after my keynote and those who were so brave to share in front of others, I know that this conversation must continue. It’s another one of those topics that is hard to speak about because admitting to what we’re afraid of is a fear in and of itself! It is very vulnerable to reveal what we struggle with, the limiting beliefs we have about ourselves, the inner critic, and even to speak about past experiences or source of our fears. When we take the first leap in talking about it, we bring awareness of the thoughts we have and realise the stories we have been telling ourselves about it. We can change the dialogue we have in our heads when we can reality-check with ourselves and with others. In my experience, I always realise the fears in my mind are far greater than the reality of the situation and as I talk through the likelihood of anticipated scenarios occurring, I often arrive at ‘Okay, it’s really not that bad. I can do this!’
Often when we share our stories with one another, we realise just how similar we all are in how we experience fear. As a friend, family member and community, we are responsible for creating a safe space for others to speak about difficult things and knowing what empathy is so that we can hold space for others. How are we making a conscious effort to learn how to have these conversations with each other?
Remember: you define who you are, who you want to be, and what you want to do. You are the author of your own story and I hope we can all make overcoming fear be our measure of success.