Stop Hiding From Your Fears

There’s work you need to do that makes you uncomfortable. You aren’t confident, and you’re not sure you can get the outcome you need. But hiding from work that makes you uncomfortable only ensures that you don’t get the outcome you need.

You have a major problem with a major client. If it isn’t corrected—and fast—it will jeopardize your relationship. It’s likely you’ll lose the client. Hiding from the problem only increases the likelihood you lose your client. It does nothing to help you or your client.

You need to do you prospecting work. You especially need to make phone calls. But you have other work that you can do instead, and that work will give you cover should inquiring minds ask. But hiding from your prospecting work only steals your time and increases the odds of you missing your number.

Turn and Face Your Fear

The reason you hide from your challenges and your obstacles is pure, unadulterated fear. You’re afraid of feeling some level of discomfort, some level of pain. It’s fear that prevents you from taking action, and it’s that fear you must face.

If you don’t face your fears, you’ll never conquer them. You’ll never get past the fear. And the longer you go without facing it, the more deeply the fear is ingrained in you. You can never produce the results of which you are truly capable without eliminating the fear.

More still, if you never face your fear, you never fail in the right way. It’s not great that you fail by not getting the outcome you need, losing your client, or not making your number, but those failures aren’t the kind of failures you need to grow.

To grow, you need to fail in an attempt to get the outcome you are afraid to try for. To get bigger you have to handle the nasty, potentially client-losing issue. Failing in an attempt to deal with your fears and challenges does two things for you: it eliminates the fear, and you it teaches you how you might do better. You learn from successes when you succeed in spite of your fears. And your failures teach you what doesn’t work, so you can do better on your next effort.