They say the word ‘Fear’ can stand for two things: ‘Forget Everything And Run’ or ‘Face Everything And Rise’.
Inner Leadership is a step-by-step guide for how we can make it mean the second, by using fear to make us stronger and more valuable.
Achieving this involves developing our abilities at seven key skills:
- The first is our ability to remain calm in a crisis: centred and grounded, connected strongly with who we are at our best, no matter what is happening around us
- ‘Fear’ can also stand for ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’ so the second key skill is the ability to make clearer sense of the situations we find ourselves in and to spot the mistaken assumptions we might make
- The third and fourth abilities are the ability to find the opportunities that exist, even in a crisis, and to choose the one that aligns best with our deepest priorities, even if the situation is unclear and the outcome is highly uncertain
- The fifth skill comes from knowing our purpose and values: these not only bring us long term direction and alignment but also short term focus, flexibility, and inspiration
- And the sixth and seventh skills enable us to articulate our chosen goals in ways that inspire us and the people around us to long to make them happen
When we look back through our lives, we can probably remember a dozen times when we felt afraid: our first day at a new school, our first driving lesson, our first date, our first job. But every time this happened, behind the fear there was also an opportunity for us to learn and grow.
If fear is keeping us stuck again today, we need to remember this. Because when we find what we most long to do, and when we learn to overcome our fear and inspire ourselves to do it, then even something as terrifying as riding a rodeo bull can simply become an adventure!
This is another step to becoming antifragile.
When did you last feel afraid? Would it be useful to know how to reinterpret your fears and turn them into joy and fulfilment instead? Face Everything And Rise.
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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(And remember: you can’t learn to swim just by reading about swimming, you also need to do the practice.)
Photo By Southern Arkansas University (cropped) via StockPholio.net