The Confidence Trick…

The struggle switch - do you switch yours on when you are anxious?

“Do you want me to surgically remove your anxiety and fears from you?”

When I ask this of participants on my courses at least half the hands go up.

Now I never actually do any surgical procedures on my course (or anywhere else for that matter), but this question reveals how many people feel blocked or panicked by fear. Last week a coaching client told me “I’ve been fearful for years, I see fear as a weakness, I really shouldn’t have it.”

He is not alone.

Most people do everything they can to either avoid fear or to control it. The bad news is, avoidance or control usually make it worse. The good news is, there are ways to change our relationship to fear that helps expand our comfort zone and soften the impact fear has in our lives.

Here are some of the reasons people give for coming on my course:

“I want to lose my anxiety when I speak publicly.”

“Remove anxious feeling/fear prior to and during presentations/pitches and public speaking.”

“To not feel anxious when speaking in large groups and to be able to speak with confidence.”

Adrenaline rush, heart racing, losing focus, brain going foggy, sweating — not great.

I really get it. Why would anyone want to feel those feelings?

Over the last 23 years I’ve worked with 8000 people whose lives are often massively pushed around by the effects of anxiety. One guy had moved country TEN times, avoiding learning the local language so no one would ask him to present because he was so fearful of feeling anxious. Can you imagine the upheaval and the costs involved — and all because he wanted to avoid public speaking?

Like many others, not only was he anxious about public speaking, he started to developed fear of the fear. Yes, it can get complicated!

But when we avoid public speaking, we make the fear grow. So even if we escape the threat in the short term, we then become even more worried about next time it might happen. So many people I work with are missing out on human connection, promotions, fun, love, adventure, weddings, because they want to avoid situations that might bring up fear. Six months ago a man said to me, that he hasn’t had children because he doesn’t want to give a father of the bride speech in 25 years. (And some people have doubted that story but I swear it’s true)

So avoidance stops us living life to the full and our lives get smaller. Living life to be comfortable doesn’t seem to work. It actually makes us focus on fear:

“It is not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. You want to feel comfortable so you avoid doing or saying the thing that will evoke fear and other difficult emotions. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run but, it will never make you less afraid.” Harriet Lerner

But it’s not just avoidance that makes it grow.

Oh no!

When we attempt to control our anxiety we actually create more anxiety.

It’s really kind of annoying.

We think we can solve inside our head problems like we sort outside our head problems. When we get that feeling of anxiety, our mind often gives us a running commentary, full of judgement. We start to struggle with it…

“I shouldn’t feel this feeling”

“Other people don’t feel this feeling”

“I hate myself for feeling this way”

“I just have to think positive thoughts harder, I’m not doing this right”

“I’m going to lose my job”

“People will know I’m a failure’

What started out as simply an uncomfortable feeling has suddenly become massive. It’s like we have switched a metaphorical struggle switch on. We create a fight. And when we battle with ourselves, there are no winners!

What would happen if we framed anxiety differently? What if we could understand that it’s not fear that holds us back, but rather our attitude to it?

Anxiety and fear are hard feelings to live with, sure, but anxiety is not bad, you are not weak and you are not wrong for having it. Whenever you take a step out of your comfort zone, take a risk, or face a challenge, you will feel fear. That’s not weakness: it’s a normal, natural state of being a human.

Fear and anxiety evolved to give us a natural selection advantage.

We need fear to alert us, and anxiety to help us focus. And that’s a pretty life-enhancing thing to have.

In the stone age our ancestors learnt to be very cautious and always on alert, or they got eaten. They had to be both warriors and worriers. But somehow, in our modern culture, we’ve created a myth that fear is a weakness, that its wrong or bad to have that feeling.

Instead of hating that part of ourselves that is looking out for threat, we need to change our relationship to fear. You can do that by learning fairly small shifts in attitude that create huge shifts in experience.

• Learn that audiences have blank faces naturally, it doesn’t mean they are bored;

• Make the whole thing smaller by seeing public speaking as a conversation rather than a performance;

• Learn new, more effective ways of handling our problematic feelings and thoughts including seeing confidence comes from trusting yourself more — even with uncomfortable feelings — and changing our relationship to anxiety from rejection to acceptance;

• Know what is deeply important to you in life and shift the focus to doing what matters rather than aiming to feeling comfortable (and suffering because of that).

A recent course participant hints at the shift we need to make peace with our fear:“It resonated with me when you said you don't need to feel comfortable, you just need to accept it won't feel comfortable and be ok with that— before I was chasing comfort and panicking when I didn't get it.”