Read Seth Godin’s commentary today on fear
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Tag: Motivation
Ripping the Shirt Off of Fear
It’s July 10, 1999 and in Pasadena, California Team USA and China are battling for the Women’s World Cup Soccer Championship in the Rose Bowl. This is the largest attended women’s sports event in history. At the end of regulation play, the score is tied and it goes to overtime. In overtime, Brandi Chastain intently lines up for a penalty kick. She sets herself, runs up to the ball, and launches it into the upper right corner of the goal to score and in her now famous celebration pulls her shirt off in mid-field. A win and championship for Team USA!
Tell me, what do you think was going through her mind? Was Brandi thinking about how she was going to blow it?
Pointing to Success
Going back further, in one of the greatest sports moments of all time, George Herman “Babe” Ruth of the New York Yankees steps up to home plate in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. The score is tied 5-5 and the Chicago Cubs players on the bench have been riding the Babe mercilessly. As Ruth steps to the plate, he makes a gesture that many believe has him pointing to the center field wall after taking strike one from the pitcher, seemingly declaring his intention. He did it again after strike two. On the next pitch, the Babe mightily smacked the ball deep into center field and over the fence for a home run! It is estimated the ball traveled 490 feet! The Yankees went on to win the World Series in a four-game sweep.
Whether you believe the intent of the gesture or not, do you believe for one minute that Babe Ruth, who not only held the record for homeruns but also for strikeouts, focused on what would happen if he didn’t deliver?
The difference in success and failure is often a matter of how we handle our fears. Dr. Heidi Halvorson, co-author of the book Focus: Use Different Ways of Seeing The World For Success and Influence, says that handling that fear effectively is often a matter of mindset. It’s all about where we focus our attention. According to Dr. Halvorson, we have a choice of one of two mindsets when faced with accomplishing a goal or meeting a deadline or performing during a critical moment. We can have a what she calls a Prevention Focus; where we concentrate on the negative aspects of the situation. The concentration is on NOT messing up. We do this in our daily lives and with others. When a parent tells a child who wants to help set the table,
“Okay, but this is our best dinnerware, don’t drop it!”
With instructions like that, you might as well trip the kid yourself. Or a manager tells an employee,
“it is very important that you don’t blow this account.“
Best example I can think of is the story Zig Ziglar tells of the 1982 football playoffs between the Dallas Cowboys and the San Francisco 49ers. With Dallas ahead and less than a minute left on the clock, Dallas implemented the Prevent Defense. Joe Montana dropped back and threw a pass deep into the end zone that appeared to be sailing for out of bounds when Dwight Clark jumped up and made a fingertip catch for San Francisco to win the game. Later, someone asked Cowboys owner Tex Schramm about what made the difference and he said,
“The Dallas Cowboys were determined NOT TO LOSE the game. The 49ers were determined to WIN the game and that made the difference!”
So prevention focus centers on trying not to lose the game.
The opposite then is Promotion Focus. In this mindset, you are focused on what you have to gain when you are successful. “If I complete this project on time, our company will collect a big bonus from our customer.” Promotion Focus centers on the win, always opting for growth, willing to take the risk to see the reward, and quick to take action.
Promotion Focus people tend to have better and more consistent results than Prevention Focus people. You have a tendency toward one or the other but the good news is that it’s not born in you. It is something that has been learned, placed into your brain by the attitudes of people to whom you bonded, other people influential in your life, and combined with past experiences. So, if your tendency is towards the cautious, risk avoiding, and tentative nature of Prevention Focus, the good news is you can change. It is a matter of changing your mindset.
Start by imagining a change you wish to make or project you wish to start. List all the possible positive outcomes from successfully making that change or completing the project. Don’t downplay it, but also don’t go overboard. In most cases, you aren’t going to be a guest on The Ellen Degeneres Show because you completed a proposal package ahead of schedule for a client. But you will likely make a favorable impression on the client, which can lead to award of the project and potential future projects.
- You may get referrals to other clients and generate a significant increase in business income and grow your business.
- You may be able to hire staff and afford to take vacations.
- You can build your reputation within the industry.
- Your self-esteem goes up.
Imagine every possible positive outcome of making the change and WRITE IT DOWN! Then, every time you start feeling fearful, bring out the list and read it to yourself over and over again until you feel more in control.
Determine for yourself to Play to Win instead of Playing Not to Lose.
Action Plan
- Take Dr. Halvorson’s FOCUS Diagnostic assessment to see whether you have a Prevention Focus or a Promotion Focus. Warning: be prepared to list about 12 attributes you would like to possess.
- Think about one big thing you want to accomplish; it can be a current project or a dream, particularly if you have been feeling a lot of fear over it. Write down all the possible positive outcomes of accomplishing it and post it prominently. Set a start date.
The Basis of Fear
According to Psychology Today, fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger. If we didn’t feel it, then we could not protect ourselves from legitimate danger. Life and death can hinge on our fear and our reactions to it. Our survival rate would be extremely low if not for the fear that helps us to regulate our behavior during moments of crisis. Fear is not our problem.
Natural Functioning of Fear
Our problem comes when the fear engine kicks into high gear, often due to past experience. Almost all fears we have of situations that are not life-threatening are what psychologists call “conditioned response“. Something happened somewhere in our past that now triggers a fear response in us. On a basic level, for example, an experience I had with a snake has led to a dislike and sometimes fear of snakes. I don’t shriek and run the other way, but I am also not likely to approach it. When I go camping with our Boy Scout troop and I happen to spot a snake, someone will invariably ask me what kind of snake it is. My response is always,
“I don’t know, I did not get that close!”
On another level, past experiences with risk situations that led to devastating results can create conditioned responses in us that lead to fear. People with Reactive Attachment Disorder develop an overwhelming fear of bonding relationships with people because of past experiences where trusted relationships betrayed them or took advantage of them or abused them. Others, on a lower-level, have a past romantic relationship that ended badly and avoid future romantic relationships. An employee encounters a boss who berated them or humiliated them when they came up with a creative idea and develops the fear of making a contribution.
Unnatural Fear
Even more so, our mind has a natural tendency to protect us in every situation, even to the point of creating scenarios that don’t even exist just to keep us from placing ourselves into potential danger, whether real or not. Fear and resistance build up. Every time we go to stretch ourselves – to push out of our comfort zone, to take a risk – we start to imagine all the things that will go wrong. We will be publicly humiliated. The newspapers will carry front page headlines documenting our failure. Our boss will fire us. Our family will disown us. Our friends will make fun of us. We will sit on the curb broke, destitute, with no future prospects and no hope. This one failure will destroy us!
You see where it goes. The more we focus on it, the more our fears run away with the perception of what will happen. Many like to reassure people by saying that FEAR is simply
False Evidence Appearing Real
While not entirely accurate, it’s a good start towards working on our fears. When we understand that often our fear is based on situations that are imagined, we can begin to put them into perspective. Once we regain perspective, it becomes easier to work past the fear and take the risks we need to take to succeed in life. So the key is not to conquer fear, because we can’t. Fear is a natural part of our body’s system and we cannot get rid of it. What we can do is learn to manage it, to work with it, and work beyond it.
In the posts the rest of the week, we will examine ways in which we can manage our fears and be productive.
Action Plan
- What are some ways you deal with fear now? Post your comments here so you may be able to help others.
The Business of Being Unique
There is an old kid’s joke:
Q: How do you catch an unique rabbit?
A: Unique up on him!
Silly, but perhaps it has some value for us. For small businesses, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs, there is a big emphasis on finding your niche – the market that is almost exclusively yours. The principle behind it is that if you try to market to everyone or try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone. In the highly competitive marketplace today, especially with the explosion of entrepreneurs, it becomes important to target what you do to a specific group of people. That group becomes your tribe or niche that can be yours and you can dominate that market much more effectively IF you know how to talk to them so that your message resonates with them and presents a sense of urgency.
What I see happen a lot with small businesses is aptly described by Marketing Coach Robert Middleton as trying to run their small business as if it was a big business. Trying to compete with the marketing and organization. It can’t be done. You don’t have their budget or their resources.
The Unique Solution
So stop trying to be a big business. Instead take advantage of what you have as a small business. Part of what you have is the unique culture of your organization. Whether you are a solopreneur or have 50 employees, there are things that are unique about you and your organization. Maybe even a little bit weird. Instead of trying to hide that, celebrate it. Emphasize it! Go out of your way to point it out to your customers and friends. Integrate it into everything you write and say about your business. There are distinct advantages to doing this:
- You stand out from the crowd. In the competitive marketplace, you can’t afford to fit in or be one grape in the bunch. You need to be the lone banana.
- You become more appealing to your niche. They don’t want cookie-cutter, they want someone with character who will be as devoted to them so they can become devoted to you. They want special!
- You will connect better with people, customers and friends alike. There is a whole generation out there that values authenticity. The more you and your organization embrace who you really are, the more people will relate to you and trust you.
So how do you catch a unique market?
Unique up on it!
Action Plan
- What is it about you or your company that is unique? What makes you a little weird?
- In what ways is that appealing to your target market? What are some possible dangers?
- How can you leverage that to connect better with your clients?
- How can you integrate it into every communication with people inside and outside your company?
Strange and She Likes It
My daughter Liza, young teen that she is, loves to occasionally sing the lyrics to a song that was made popular on one of the kid channels on TV.
Come to think of it, she sings the whole song.
Come to think of it, she is ALWAYS singing some song, but more on that later. The song she sings was sung by an artist named Skye Sweetnam. You can see the video here:
The chorus goes like this
I’m strange
And I like it
That’s just the way I am
I can’t change
I can’t hide it
That’s just the way I am
Might as well get over it
But don’t try to understand
I’m strange
And I like it
That’s just the way I am
This may not be your style of music; certainly isn’t mine.
Celebrating Unique
What I like about it, however, is the celebration of being who they are. If you interpret it into adult-speak, the song basically says that yes I have idiosyncrasies, yes I do dumb things sometimes, yes I say silly things but all of that is what makes me unique and I gladly embrace it. I think it is a great message for kids to learn, particularly since there is so much incredible pressure among their peers to be like everyone else.
Striving to Find My Unique Me
I know I felt it when in Junior High School (what we now call Middle School) and High School to an extent. I went to a Junior High School where the vast majority of my peers were from families in higher income brackets than hours. Polo branded shirts and Levi branded jeans were the “standard” and if you didn’t dress like that you were an outcast. We could not afford those and my parents have always been thrifty so I wore Sears Kings Road jeans. You can guess how that went over with my peers. I hovered around the edge of several different peer groups and tried to fit in but never really got there. I finally decided to quit trying and that’s what started to make the difference.
Once I reached high school, I started to embrace what was unique about me. Naturally, I went a bit overboard for a while but I managed to stand out in high school and even show some leadership. It was also there that I was allowed to grow more of the skills that set me apart. While I had athletic skills, I chose to spend more time with speech and drama, particularly speech and was a competitive speaker all through high school and into college. It helped me discover and hone the special talents, personality, and style that made me unique. By setting myself apart and showing confidence in that person, I experienced more respect and popularity and SUCCESS than I ever did trying to be like everyone else.
The Girl Just Can’t Help It
I mentioned my daughter is always singing. That’s no exaggeration. Pretty much there is a song in her heart and on her lips every moment of every day. While it sometimes wears thin, I would never dream of stopping her. It is her essence; it is part of what makes Liza uniquely Liza; along with her total acceptance of anyone regardless of race, intelligence, capability, or popularity. I hope she continues to embrace that to find her true success.
Action Plan
- What about you? What makes you uniquely you? Are you embracing that or have you hidden that in order to fit in? How’s that working out for you?
- What can you do today to bring out more of YOU in what you do?