Introduction
Not all fear leaves you sweating, fearing for your life or screaming and running for the hills. However, when it comes to success, ‘fear’ is a word I hear many times:
- ‘I can’t turn this down. I’m too scared of what the consequences might be.’
- ‘I’m frightened of what they might say.’
- ‘I couldn’t let anyone find that out, that’s just too scary!’
- ‘I can’t do that!’
Fear lurks behind so many elements of our lives, and to be successful you need to find ways to battle it. You must find where it hides and eradicate it.
As a child you had someone there to hold your hand and coax you forward and keep the momentum going, to guide you into action and help you find a way forward. However, as an adult it’s all too easy to stagnate, to stall and allow life to slow down. You ‘accept’ where you find yourself and enable fear to take over.
Before I wrote this book, I hadn’t really thought about how badly fear can attack success. I would have thought that most people around me are not that frightened; and yet, as I think back over the years of coaching clients and supporting people to get the results they want in their personal and professional lives, I have analysed these sessions and realised that, in actual fact, fear had a massive impact on so many people’s results.
So, I reasoned, wouldn’t it be great if someone would be so kind as to put that information into a no-nonsense, easy-to-read book (because, let’s be honest, we are all mega busy) that would sink into your brain faster than red wine into a carpet, and enable your subconscious to pick up on these brilliant ideas to help you override those fears that are secretly sabotaging your success.
And before you put this book down and tell me you’re a fearless superhero who can achieve anything, I have had many a successful entrepreneur before me who has realised in a ‘light bulb’ moment that they too ‘hide’ behind a plethora of things at the most inopportune moment. It is truly scary how fear can sneak secretly into your mentality and erode your success. So, for the sake of your success, it’s worth a few moments of your time, right?
So here’s the thing about reading my book. (‘Wow’, you think, ‘we have not even started the first chapter and already she’s getting bossy!’) That’s fine, I get that a lot, but I don’t want to waste one of the most valuable commodities you will ever have – time – so let’s make this time we spend together really count OK? I do tend to be straight talking!
When I work with people, be it one-to-one or in a room of hundreds, I still set homework. You need to put effort into the things that matter in life, right? So with each chapter I promise:
- not to use jargon;
- to give you real content;
- to give you real solutions that I know could change your success rate (and your life).
And, in return, I just ask that if I set a tiny little exercise, you actually do it. I will make the big assumption that you:
- are mega busy;
- are up against deadlines;
- want a social life – that you don’t want to be chained to work and want to live a life that fulfils you and the ones you love.
With that in mind, it’s my job to ensure the homework I set will realistically fit into a very busy life. So if you read a chapter, do yourself a favour and do the homework!
How this book works and how to read it
Each chapter is neatly packaged with examples, exercises and actions and, best of all, the kind of results you can expect to achieve so that you too can win at work. Let me explain the structure of the chapters so that you can easily utilise them. To really make this book work, you will need to take action AND do the exercises. So, to help you remember how this book works, I’ve created this nifty little acronym: F E A R.
- Section 1 – F: The fear.
- Section 2 – E: Examples and exercises.
- Section 3 – A: Actions
- Section 4 – R: Results.
Let me explain:
Section 1: The fear
Not all fear waves its arms in the air and shouts, ‘Cooooee, I’m a big evil fear and I’m wrecking your success at work!’ Some fear hides in your subconscious and attacks your results without you realising, and it’s hard to spot what these fears actually look like. So, unless you are lucky enough to work with a coach, you may miss that ‘eureka!’ or ‘light bulb’ moment, where clients say to me, ‘I can’t believe this has been impacting on my success!’ And, as with so many obstacles to success, when you know it exists, it is far easier to deal with it. So the start of each chapter will explore what this fear does, how it manifests itself, how it attacks your success and what impact it can have.
Section 2: Examples and exercises
Maybe you don’t have time to read the whole book; maybe you feel like you are having a tough day, or you’re facing a big presentation or a new challenge that is proving scary. Examples of other people’s trials are a great way to see how fears play out in our lives and can help you to understand how they could be affecting your own success. So instead of reading the whole chapter, you can dip into this section of the book and get a quick ‘morsel’ that will get you through the day. Then you can come back later to get the full three courses that will whip that fear out of your life for good.
The exercises in this book are the backbone of so many sessions with my clients, and they can really help you understand a natural way of thinking, working, learning and show you what you really want in life. They also showcase some of the ideas we put into action so that you can trial them for yourself. This is exciting stuff and I can’t wait to share it with you!
Section 3: Action
In life it’s great to talk about what you want to achieve, it’s great to appreciate what you are doing wrong; however, this talk is pretty useless without action. The action section of each chapter will help you reinforce the exercises to ensure you take action. It will help you improve your success rate and keep the momentum going.
Section 4: Results
Here we will look at what results you can expect to see if you take action and, more disconcertingly, what might happen if you continue not to take action. It’s a powerful motivator to know what you are agreeing to. So in the final part of each chapter we will look at the results that you could get stuck with if you don’t deal with this fear.
The best bit about this book is that if you picked it up because you have a fear or public speaking, or you worry too much about what everyone else is thinking, then that’s fine. You’ve read the intro to understand how this book works, so go for it! You need to read Chapter 1 because there is a priceless exercise in there that could change your life. You can just read the chapters you need. However, as you read you may become aware that fear has a habit of hiding. Not all fear is the same. Not all fear is a monster the size of a house, ready to frighten you every time you step outside your front door. Some fears play out in your head every day, but they’ve become an inner voice you are so used to hearing that you just accept them as normal. So it may be worth going back to Chapter 1 and exploring the book more if these fears are lurking as obstacles in the road to your success.
I will ask a few favours of you.
- Do the exercises. Even if you are reading this last thing at night, commuting to work or worn out and wishing you were elsewhere, but desperate for some solutions, my promise to you is that I’ve made the exercises easy to read and action because I appreciate how busy your head is and I know you need easy solutions.
- Don’t be too hard on yourself. We are far nicer to other people than we are to ourselves. You have just gained a coach who is going to help work on yourself in a way that you may never have done before. On a deeper level, that could actually change your success rate. The ‘shout at someone until they do it’ approach doesn’t work, so don’t do it to yourself either.
- Trust that you can change. With the support of this book, you can change, because I’m here to support you to do it. Let’s do this!