Eliminating Fear & Worry
by Kathy Ruckman

Fear and worry are two of the biggest challenges impeding your success. These 2 emotions can easily cripple your achievement and put a serious dent in your enjoyment of life. Both emotions will delay or even halt your progress. Both often cause you to take the exact opposite action (or inaction) that is required for success.

First, let's dissect the emotion of FEAR. I often use the acronym F.E.A.R for False Expectations Appearing Real. Fear can be dangerous to your health, wealth, and your overall happiness. Many of us think that fear is healthy and natural because it cautions us about potentially dangerous situations. Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not. It’s not healthy or natural and one of your goals should be to get rid of fears that hold you back. Fear creates an insurmountable barrier between where you are now and where you want to get to. In order to achieve your goals, you will continuously encounter things you fear. The only alternative is to give up on your dreams and goals … and hopefully you're here because giving up is not an option you would consider.

To succeed in this business, or anything else in life, you will constantly be undertaking new things, encountering new challenges, and experiencing things that you have never experienced before … things that are out of your comfort zone. The only way to make progress is to step out of your comfort zone. Think about a baby's first steps. They try and try and try, always out of their comfort zone, until they ultimately succeed. Is it a little scary? Of course, but if we all let out fears overwhelm us, we would still be crawling around on all fours.

Now, don't get me wrong. I’m not saying it’s impossible to accomplish what you want and still hang on to your fears. I'm sure it happens for a minute segment of the population. It just takes them a whole lot longer to get where they want to go .... mainly because they have to take so many detours along the way. These detours are caused by fear of the unknown . Can you imagine if Christopher Columbus allowed the fear of the unknown (can you think of a bigger fear than falling off the end of the earth?) prevent him from setting sail in 1492?

Now, let’s talk about worry for a minute. Understand that there is an important difference between fear and worry. Fear is event related. It’s the reaction to the worry. It usually causes a physical reaction like adrenaline flow. Worry is mentally created. It involves imagined events that haven’t happened yet. Worrying is mental, it’s the most counter-productive emotion, and it is a complete waste of time and energy. Nothing positive ever comes out of worrying. It’s focusing on something that might occur in the future. And since you only have the power to control what happens right now, here in the present, it’s a ridiculous waste of time. It’s inaction not action. Inaction doesn’t produce, create, or change a thing. 

It generally involves some kind of loss, loss of life, health, money, love. The list of things you could worry about is virtually endless. Worry and fear are basically different sides of the same coin. Worry includes negative thoughts about what might happen, while fear is your body and mind’s reaction to what is happening. Both are destructive. Worry can and will: