Escaping the Prison of Unrealistic Fears

I’ve always been fascinated by why people do what they do. When I see leaders do things that clearly aren’t in their best interests, I remind myself that if motivation isn’t rational, then it’s got to be emotional. We humans all too often imprison ourselves and limit our success through unrealistic fears.

When we were young, we all developed thinking and behaving habits to adapt to the environment we grew up in. As adults and leaders, we have much more control of the environments we put ourselves in, so some of those thinking and behaving habits don’t serve us well.

Here are three of the most common unrealistic fears I see in leaders and some ideas for how to address them:

·         The fear of losing control. You can’t scale up your business if you think that you must be in day-to-day control of every aspect of your business. You must build a team that you trust and that you can delegate to.

·         The fear of not having enough. It’s important to define success for yourself so you’ll know when you’ve arrived. Otherwise, you’re always worried that you don’t have enough, and this leads to obsessive behavior, lack of balance, and unhappiness.

·         The fear of not being universally liked. Being liked by everyone would be lovely, but it’s not a realistic goal. Some people aren’t going to like you solely because you remind them of someone from their past. There are other people whose approval would be worrisome and alarming if you had it, e.g. Adolf Hitler. We all need good relationships with others, but we don’t need it from every single person we meet.

List your greatest fears and then evaluate whether they are realistic. To guard against blind spots, talk to people you trust about this. For example, stepping in front of a moving bus is definitely a realistic fear…

Don’t be a stranger. (770) 993-1129. tdockery@TheResolveFirm.com