What Scares You?

I’ve been thinking lately about courage and confidence and how these are two words which might seem, on the surface, to be closely related.  They actually have very different implications when it comes to the success of your practice.   Confidence is highly overrated.  Show me a confident person and in all likelihood you will also be showing me someone that falls short of originality or greatness — because originality and greatness come from the willingness to take risks.  To leap into the void.  To do what scares you.  And while it may seem that this leap would take confidence, what it really takes to leap is courage.  Which is a whole other kettle of fish.

Courage involves feeling your fear — and doing it anyway.  There isn’t a day I don’t sit down at my computer for video chats, or to write an article, or to teach a seminar that I’m not afraid.   Oh, this fear can disguise itself in any number of ways: it can look like resistance, or exhaustion, or distraction, or despair.  It can even look like online shopping or facebooking – ha! But what it is, really––bottom line––is the fear that I won’t be able to pull it off.  Whatever vision exists in my mind, whatever perfect iteration of an idea, will never be achieved.  So why bother?  Why even try?

I’ve been seeing a lot of you lately that are playing it safe.  Some of you are having a level of success that is extreme – no doubt a result of facing your fear and getting out of the zone of comfort.  Then others are content.  You’ve toe-dipped with the systems and chosen some things that are easy.  You’ve avoided the things that scare you.  Maybe it’s marketing your practice in the community. Or roleplaying. Or videotaping.  Or asking for pre-payment.  Or asking that one question to help a patient overcome their objection.  You may feel that the risk of getting uncomfortable or your fear supercedes any benefit you might gain by making yourself vulnerable.  So you stay in your safe, warm bubble. You might even divert the attention away from your fear and defend the old way of doing things.  The bottom line is that you’re Scared. To. Death.  Buckle your seatbelts, because during the month of July we’ll be focusing on ‘What comes after the low-hanging fruit?’  It’s our goal to challenge you in ways that you’ve never been challenged – to stretch the limits in a way that results in success that you’ve never seen before.

So – what scares you to death?  What have you resisted changing or implementing out of straight-up fear?