Find fear before it finds you

To project to others that we are always happy, having fun and in a positive frame of mind everyday is just pure fantasy. We all feel pain and frustration and all of us most certainly feel fear. In fact, for many of us, fear defines who we are and our corresponding thoughts and behaviours are governed by fear’s close relatives: anxiety, procrastination, stress and worry.

Let’s explore fear a little closer. What is fear? Fear results from the threat or potential to experience pain. What is pain? Pain is the sensation felt when the brain releases certain bio-chemicals in our body to alert us of physical danger — such as cutting our skin or breaking our arm. Pain preserves us from continuing to harm ourselves once injured in some way.

This biological mechanism is brilliant. However, there is one flaw in this program: Regardless of whether the threat is actually real or not, we still experience the same bio-chemical charges that fear sets off in our brains. How many of us have feared something that never ends up happening? The threat of impending pain can be too much to stand for some people, who, as a consequence, become bound and confined by fear. We then become fearful of fear.

So how does fear relate to being a salesman? It has everything to do with it. Fear, according to many experts, is a great motivator, and breaking free of it has everything to do with being successful. Do you fear being wrong? Do you fear being judged? Do you fear not fitting in? Do you fear being rejected? Do you fear failure?

Of course you do. I do. We all do. But don’t let fear be your master. Don’t let it control you, control it. Being conscious of your fear and actually conforming to it are two very separate things. Consider the following: What would your sales role and business be like with less fear? And how would your customers feel with no fear from buying from you?

If you remove fear from your sales role and your customers’ experience, your business will transform magically and you would probably do things radically different to the way you do things today. Without fear to hold you back, you can have a red hot crack! And love every minute of it.

Fear serves us in ways, but also limits us in others. Fear keeps a young child from crossing a busy street and entering into harm’s way. But that same fear 20 years on restrains a potentially powerful woman from stepping off the curb and taking on her dreams. Let fear, pain and defeat be your allies. Embrace them and you embrace life. Deny collaborating with these allies and you deny the opportunity to be all you can be.

Seek fear out! Go looking for it, I dare you. Find if before it finds you. Understand why you fear the things you fear and how these fears limit your capacity to be, do and have more in life. Fear is an illusion if you choose to see and believe it as such.

So pick up the phone and make that call. Get in the car and drive to your opportunity. Make it happen. Go to your customers if they won’t cont come to you. In that meeting today, don’t just be present — ask for the order. What’s stopping you? If you understand how fear serves you— nothing will.

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Trent Leyshan is the founder and CEO of BOOM Sales! a leading sales training and sales development specialist. He is also the creator of The NAKED Salesman, BOOMOLOGY! RetroService, and the Empathy Selling Process.