Are you sitting comfortably? Then it’s time to begin pushing that comfort zone…
As an entrepreneur you’ll recognise your ‘positive mental attitude’ as a vital tool for motivating you to take action. But what happens when that positivity takes leave and you’re left feeling fearful?
Challenging the fear
For me fear stands for ‘False Expectations Appearing Real’. So, the place to start is looking at your expectations vs reality.
Let’s use referral networking as an example. I had a client who was holding back from visiting networking groups because of a fear of speaking in public and delivering their 60 seconds every week.
We looked at the real possibility of words getting muddled, forgetting what to say, their voice cracking from nerves and getting the timing wrong. If all these things happened then my client felt they would be devastated; they believed they would not be able to convey confidence in their business and come across as a novice and lose the respect from the business owners in the room – even worse, they would talk about all of this outside of the meeting too…
The reality is that when someone stumbles over words or confuses their point, no one really minds! We’ve all been adversely affected by nerves at some point in our lives and business owners understand that. However, there are tactics we can implement to avoid the common pitfalls and they’re based in planning and preparing.
Planning for success
In the example of delivering a 60 second presentation, my client and I planned a script. They were more comfortable with the idea of reading than remembering, so included all the points they wanted to get across to the room and practised with a timer running. Fear – gone.
Tip: When you lay out all the fears and consequences of something going wrong, it’s far easier to plan tactics that help you work around them.
Some fears will be identified as appearing more real than they are, some will be real and carry a certain level of risk. Starting from a point of understanding the reality of the situation will help you challenge your fears and achieve success.
Now what?
Learning how to push the boundaries of your comfort zone is the first tip within my free e-book, ’21 Tips for Entrepreneurial Success’. Others tips include;
- Learning to identify who you can trust
- Understanding personalities around you
- Gut feelings – are they valuable to you?
- How to say no
- Knowing your value
- Taking criticism well
- Understanding long term wealth goals
- Stop limiting your focus points
- Testing and measuring your success
When you download your 21 Tips, you’ll also get three other books for free.
And as always, if you would like to discuss any of these tips in greater detail take advantage of a free hour with me. Call me on 01235 614809 or email me at your convenience. Enjoy your reading and I look forward to hearing from you.