I Finally Conquered My Biggest Fear...What's Yours?

The greatest fear I ever had in my life was public speaking.

Throughout my career I have always had to present either creative work or marketing strategies to clients simply as part of the ongoing business of the ad gencies I worked for, or even worse, for new business pitches in competition with other agencies.

Man, I used to dread these. Even if I knew there would be only three of four people in the room. It always kept me awake during the previous night(s!) and genuinely gave me the cold sweats. But I did it.

I always knew it was an irrational fear. But upon deep analysis and rumination, as one does when irrationally trying to rationalise such a thing, I traced it back to my school days.

I had this real bitch of a music teacher, Mrs. Mosely. Boy, she hated me because I was a bit of a class joker. Almost every lesson she used to make me get on my chair and sing for the class. She never did this to a single other kid the whole time she taught us. I can't tell you how much this messed up a shy seven year old. To have everyone in the room falling off their chairs pointing and laughing at you as you warble "All Things Bright and Beautiful" I think scarred me for life!



Then the biggest day of my career came, some years ago. After quite a bit of success in a number of industry awards one year I was invited to speak at a unbelievably prestigious event. Probably the greatest honour that can be bestowed upon someone in our industry. I couldn't believe it and I checked the name and address on the envelope at least ten times! Of course I accepted.

However, the event would be attended by a couple of thousand of the brightest and best in the advertising and design world. You can imagine how sick I felt when I accepted the invitation. What made it even worse was the fact that I had more than two months notice. Two months to sh*t my pants with anxiety and lie awake in a cold sweat every day. Every night.

It really was the biggest most important day of my professional life. It was so important to me. Something I had dreamed of since I was a teenager and realised I wanted to go to design school and work in advertising. I tried everything you can imagine, and many that you can't, from hypnosis tapes to weird esoteric chanting! As well as stuff too embarrassing (now) to go into!



How did I conquer my fear? Well, the truth is that I didn't, not really. I was in the green room, sweating and quaking with fear. Worrying about everything from whether I would make an ass of myself to whether my bow tie was on straight. Then I got talking to Drayton Bird, who I knew from previous collaborations, and as we talked I noticed that he looked a bit shaky too and that he was taking quite regular, pained gulps from a plastic cup. Turns out that even he was pretty nervous and the cup was an inch of orange topped up with vodka!

I couldn't believe that he felt like this too, after all, he was Drayton Bird!

So we talked about our mutual fears and he kindly filled a cup with Vodka (and nothing else, Harvey!) for me!

I got on stage and fuelled by the finest Russian Dutch courage and by the greatest pep talk by possibly the greatest living marketer it was a success.

So you see, I never really conquered my fear, but I came away thinking that if I could do it once I could do it a hundred times. And I have done.

I guess the moral is that we really are capable of anything. We just have to take that leap of faith and actually do it once. Take action. Push ourselves and step out of our comfort zone. Yes this is a cliche, but it is also true.

If we can find the strength and courage to conquer our doubts and fears we can achieve whatever we set our hearts and minds on.

Believe me, if i could make that presentation, you can do anything.



Thomas

Great Post Tom....I quite enjoyed reading that.

I've never really had to speak in public, but I'm sure my reaction will by much the same if I ever do!

Well, My greatest fear is that I will lose control of this thing.

I feel like I can never relax, I know this is supposed to be the dream lifestyle, but i"ve in the past always had jobs where I could forget them when I go home.

Now, I never REALLY have time off, even though I probably WORK less than 40 hrs/week, the time I spend thinking and worrying about the business is about 700 hrs /week...

I'm hoping that will go away with time, but still havent solved it.

Wish me luck :-D

My biggest fear is spending years and years trying to succeed on the internet and falling short of my ultimate goal of making a minimum of 10k a month...

My biggest fear is the fear of spiders, and I've yet to find a way to conquer it..

My biggest fear is death. I don't think I can ever conquer it and nor do I think anybody else could conquer it completely. Although very religious people tend to cope with it better.

Derek

I think its ok to have some fear because thats where we get our strength and wisdom to deal with things.

I deal with my fears through meditation, even by just observing my own thoughts as a third person and acknowledging them was a great start for me.

Manu.

My biggest fear used to be that of failure. I was brought up ridiculed for any little failures so I saw it as something to be ashamed of instead of something to learn from. I look at it this way, thousands of inventions were created from the failures of inventors to create what they were seeking to create. Who knows my next failure could lead to my biggest success.

I have had a lot of irrational fears that I struggle to overcome, some I have been successful with others not so much, yet. Things like spiders, we bought a pet tarantula, taking care of her taught me to let go of the fear (we now own 2), heights I still have some issues with but I can fly on a plane without tranqulizers. Most of the fears I have overcome I have done so by being my usual analytical, logical self and going what really is the worst that can happen and how likely is that really to happen and when I realize I have a bigger chance of being eaten by a shark or winning the lottery, I let go of it.

Sylvia

My greatest fear had been interviews. I had always had the fear that I would fumble somewhere and make myself a laughing stock. I would have attended at least 10-15 interviews and only after I succeeded in one of them, that I thought I would be able to tackle the situations and I became a bit confident of myself. Now I have started feeling that I can manage interviews. It has taken nearly 5-6 years for me to get this confidence. Even now I wont say I am fully confident of myself! May be a flaw!!

My biggest fear is having the courage to leave my full time salary job. To have the confidence to say to myself I can make this internet marketing business work and to have total 100% belief in the system.

So it happened that one day I discovered all my fears were the same size - all of them 'too big' for my peace and happiness - so I took aim, and brought down Fear, itself.

Much has changed since.

my "fear" is that success relies on external powers which are not under my control.

EXAMPLE:

Years ago marketers could use affiliate links using AdWords.

Google made (and makes) policy changes from one day to the other - brought down many, many marketers which relied on "given things"....but those things can change from one day to the other.

Thats why you want to spread your wings and don't want to rely on a single factor making or breaking your business.

This merely an example.

It's difficult to say what's my biggest fear. Actually I think I have no such a huge fear. Anyway when I realize that I am affraid of something I try to look for the reason of the fear. When you know the reason of the desease you will be able to find a remedy.

I would normally never reveal this, but why not.

My biggest fear was prospecting.

You see, one of the biggest reasons people fail to succeed online is because of their unwillingness to communicate with people before they make the sale. Also known as : Prospecting.

So, i guess that would be phone fear.

How did i solve this problem?

Daily work on myself in increments. Taking useful advice from those who understood my situation and applied them into my life, actively.

Succeeding in this business means stepping outside your comfort zone, and i made that commitment when i signed up...what i didn't know was that i was actually going to have to talke to *GASP* PEOPLE!

Developing my social skills outside of IM is/was critical to my current success. Talking to people on the phone is actually easier than talking to people face to face - for obvious reasons such as:

1. Risk of embarrasment
2. Fear of saying the wrong things
3. There is someone looking at you while you interact with them
4. odds are there are more people watching you interact with the person
5. You really can't fake confidence in front of people, easier on the phone

I still get nervous, but i've learned to not let it stop me. And I've found that I'm the guy in the mall/bank/supermaket or whereever who's having the most fun.

You really do have to get used to having conversations with people you don't know initially.

Just look at all the big name marketers out there. They are where they're at because they are good communicators - better than average. So they get better than average results.

If you want to succeed, you CANNOT hide behind a computer screen...you gotta be on the front line. Those who work behind the scenes make much less money, and we call those people employees.

My greatest fear is in GHOST..........