Do Something Every Day That Scares You

The alarm blasts at 6:00 am and you jump out of bed ready to take on the day.  You quickly dress, eat a hearty and healthy breakfast and sit at your desk to look at what’s on the schedule (of course like every proactive entrepreneur, you list your activities for the day the night before). As you gaze down the list you see the note to make a call to a highly influential prospect. You’ve been moving that call each day waiting for the right time to make the call. Okay, you say to yourself, this is the day I make THE call.

You piddle around all morning answering emails, texts and making some personal calls. Before you know it, It’s noon. You tell yourself that as soon as you return from lunch with a friend who is visiting from out of town you are going to return to your home office and make THE call. You go to lunch, which ends up lasting 2 ½ hours and then you remember you have to pick up the dry cleaning and stop at the store and by the time you get home it’s almost 5:00pm. And now, you have to start preparing dinner.

What do you do? You move that important call to the next day and before you know it a month has passed and you still haven’t made THE call.

Is this a familiar scenario? Do you find yourself making crazy excuses to get out of something that you don’t want to do or are afraid to do?

You are not alone!

Many times we put off doing the things that scare us. We keep calling the same five people because we know them and know that they will be nice and friendly (but they have no intention of doing business with us). We keep returning to a job we hate and we know are overqualified for because we don’t have to stretch and look for something that will challenge us to really bring it every day. We stay in unhealthy relationships because we don’t feel we deserve better… And the list goes on.

So how do we overcome our fear? For me, it was doing that one thing that would create momentum, which led to other things and the next thing I knew, I was experiencing great success. When I first started my interior design business, I had a grand opening and picked up one client (for wallpaper) and then had months of nothing! I somehow expected that people would come to me. So every day I’d wake up and wait for the phone to ring. It didn’t and I’d start anew the next day waiting for the same thing to happen.

What was I waiting for? I was waiting to be BRAVE enough to pick up the phone and make something happen. Or go out and put out some flyers. Or set up a booth at a home show. Anything other than waiting because I was too afraid of rejection to step out.

Well into my sixth month I was on a coaching call and was challenged to do something every day to move my business forward. That would include doing the things I was afraid to do. So I did, with the help of a very successful designer living in Virginia who was also in the franchise. I picked up the phone and that 500 pound nemesis quickly became normal size. One phone call led to a direct mail campaign which led to a home show which led to me joining a lead generation program and within months, I had gone from nothing to being so busy I barely had time to sleep. Once I got over the fear and wasn’t afraid of hearing the NOs (which I did hear) things began moving and I stopped making excuses.

In an article written by Fabienne Fredrickson, a business coach and mentor, she outlines four things you can do to overcome the fear in your business, career or personal life. Here is a summary of her four tips:

Take a no-excuses approach – Lose the excuses! You are NOT too busy. You DO have money to invest in a future for yourself! Your family WILL survive if you start your own business! You don’t have to wait until Johnny finishes high school or college! You are 50Something and you have given enough to everybody to do something for yourself. So DO it!

Feel the fear but do it anyway – The list of fears we create within ourselves is endless. For example, fear of rejection, fear of making mistakes, fear of losing it all, fear of the unknown, and on and on it goes. The list is huge. It’s a scary world. Especially if you’ve been in a job for 20 or 30 years and everything is familiar. Now you find yourself out of work (for whatever reason) and no more routine. It’s okay to be afraid of something different. I know I was. But when you do it, the exhilaration that follows is fabulous. Be afraid but do it anyway. The reward totally outweighs the fear.

Be willing to stretch beyond your comfort zone – We all love the safety of our comfortable little worlds. We go to the same places, talk to the same people, and drive the same route daily…STOP IT! If you want to experience success beyond where you are today, you must be willing to stretch yourself toward something bigger. 50Something-year-old Joel Martin (who you will meet next month) was comfortable in a very successful advertising business. She was comfortable but unfulfilled. She walked away and stretched herself to create a thriving global coaching and training business.

Take decisive action – DO something! It is not going to happen just because you want it to. Remember my experience of thinking every day that the phone would just ring because I wanted it too? You’ve got to make a decision to do the activities that lead toward success in whatever you do. I now have a business development and training business in the network marketing industry and there are some definite activities that I must do in order to grow my team. I have to do a certain number of presentations each week, talk to a certain number of people each day, attend a certain number of trainings, and on and on. Each day I have to DECIDE to do an activity that moves my business forward. When I do that on a consistent basis, my business grows. Make a decision to do the activities that move your career or business forward.

So what are some of your fears? Think about them and jot them down. And then do something EVERY day that scares you.