YOU CANNOT FIGHT YOUR FEAR

Have you ever been in that position where you feel like you’re standing on the brink of change? Maybe you’ve been thinking about a change, or you’ve got an idea you’re toying with or something that you really want to say or do but the fear of jumping in and going for it is holding you back.

Maybe you’ve dipped your toe in the water of something new and fear has got you frozen, unable to move past the point of a toe dip and you’re ready to run back to safer shores. 

If this sounds a bit like you and those feelings and thoughts are fear and swirling around, the fear of what could go wrong feels overwhelming, but I want you to know that those feelings are completely normal and understandable. I want us to acknowledge those feelings and use this little dose of bravery to help you move forward and take the jump.

I’m a mother to two kids and like most kids, they give me the run around at bedtime. My youngest is 5 and she especially loves the bedtime shenanigans. She is such a happy, chilled little girl until it comes to going to bed and as soon as it’s time for lights out, it starts. For the last five years, we have stayed with her while she’s falling asleep, now we’ve been trying to transition out of that because she’s five now and bedtime ends up taking forever!

We all end up cramped in her single bed as she gets overtired. But still when it’s time for lights out and whoever is putting her to bed to leave the room, she starts. She gets really scared and starts tells me all kinds of reasons why it’s not bedtime in an attempt to keep me in the room. The thing about this process is, she is completely capable of falling asleep by herself, she’s just afraid because it’s new.

And new things are scary.

The dark is scary (even when the lights are on!) But fear isn’t interested in what’s real when it shows up for us in our own lives. Fear exists to keep us safe and it will tell us anything to keep us in our comfort zone and the ‘known’.

Doing things that are outside of our comfort zone are hard to get used to and our brains tend to try and alert us and warn us off to help us avoid the risks of the unknown. 

For the first few times we tried this new bedtime routine it was really frustrating. Whoever was putting her to bed would get annoyed at how long the excuses and the faffing about went on for, then it would end up getting heated. I’m sure there are plenty of other parents who can relate to this!

But this process made me realised that when it comes to fear it's actually counterintuitive to try and fight it. Fear is a human, innate instinct and when we try to bypass fear and think that we can fight it, argue with it, or force it into place, that's always going to be a lost cause. 

Fear is unpredictable and erratic. So for my daughter, getting annoyed at her fear only prolongs the fear and escalates the situation more.

When we are moving towards something new, it often involves making ourselves vulnerable, and even it’s something really exciting for you, fear is still at the ready. How fear shows up in our brain is by mentally throwing anything and everything it can think of to make us retreat away from this unknown territory of expansion and vulnerability into safety again. That’s why every thought we have in fear is often about failing, making a fool of ourselves or thinking of everything that could go wrong.

This is why fear is usually chaotic and unlikely to make a whole lot of sense, even though what we might be hearing in our head sounds ‘realistic’ or ‘reasonable’, it’s easier to accept that fear is right than to accept we need to push through this fear and these chaotic thoughts to succeed in taking the first step outside of the known.

So when those chaotic and overwhelming thoughts are dominating, what our fear often needs to hear is compassion and some good old reliable information. It needs tending to like a child kicking off at bedtime. It needs understanding, soothing and calming to counteract the chaos that it brings to our systems. 

As a parent, this means digging deep at the most tired part of the day when all you want to do is crash out on the sofa with an episode of something. And for anyone feeling fear about those things you want to do or want to explore, it means digging deep to find that understanding and compassion for ourselves when all of our instincts are telling us to run and simultaneously shaming ourselves for not having it together, or not being braver.

All we want is for our fear to go away and let us get on with the things we want to do. All I wanted was for my daughter to get there faster with the bedtime routine but she needs me to remain calm and not enter the chaos with her. To reassure her and be that rational voice to counteract the voice of fear. I can’t be the one to put gasoline on the fire of her fears by getting annoyed, instead I need to smother her fears with my love and patience. Hard as it is.

And you know what, after a few nights of digging deep, remaining calm and reassuring her, things are much calmer at bedtime. My reassurance has kept her calm and shown her that she can do it, that it’s safe and that we’re here to respond if she really does need us. It takes some evidence building to proof to herself and her fear that she’s capable of it for it to feel less scary. And it works the same way for us. 

So when you are thinking about or planning for the next thing you need to be brave about and you feel that rise of fear, know that you have it in you to dig deep, show yourself compassion and acknowledge your fear for what it is. 

Your body and brain are trying to protect you from the unknown and unfamiliar. By acknowledging that you can let your fear know that you are grateful for its protection and that you’d like to proceed. You can show it the evidence that you’re ready, that the thoughts of failure are not rational but fear’s safety net which you appreciate and need to move on from. 

You can give your fear a stroke on the proverbial head and reassure it that you can take it from here.

WHY PUTTING YOURSELF OUT THERE FEELS A BIT LIKE DYING

Dramatic title? Yes.

A really true feeling for so many women? Absolutely.

What is it about putting our ideas, businesses, products or thoughts out there that is so incredibly terrifying?

I know I’m not alone in recognising this because I talk to women every. single. day. who are more afraid of telling people about their work or ideas than they are of most other things.

I have a few thoughts on why this is so that I think will help us understand what this is all about and why we need to find tools to move past it.

1) OUR BRAINS ARE WIRED FOR SAFETY.

This is just the science. The same part of our brain that becomes alert to any kind of physical risk is the same part of our brain that becomes alert when we decide to move towards something that might expose us to emotional risk. When we contemplate pursuing a new thing, offering a new service, creating something we have never done before or telling people about what we have to offer, that part of our brain perks up.

It tells us that we are approaching territory that is unknown and therefore surmises that it is unsafe for us. It creates adrenaline and releases it and other chemicals into our bodies that we recognise as feelings associated with fear. The challenge here is that we need this part of our brain to work for times when we are actually at risk; when we are not safe or when we see something happening that tells us to fight, flight or freeze.

We don’t, however, always need that safety mechanism in our brain to kick into full gear when it comes to putting ourselves out there. We need to develop tools to sooth our brain to recognise this vulnerability we are feeling as a passage to potential fulfilment. Our brains primarily just want to keep us safe. They aren’t interested in our fulfilment or satisfaction.

2) THE WIDER NARRATIVE IS OFTEN NEGATIVE.

Putting yourself out there with your work or ideas is brave, there is no doubt. But bravery, when it comes to women, is still not recognised in the same way as it is with men. All across our media, the messages we are picking up about women who put their head above the parapet are conflating and charged. We see women picked apart in every area of life: Doing great work? Must not be a distracted mother or partner. Speaking up about something important? Must be a pushy bitch or aggressive. Staying at home with her kids? Must be boring or not have ambition. And so it goes. This wider narrative can make us feel at great risk, catastrophising the outcomes of putting ourselves out there because of what we see and hear.

It’s hard not to internalise all of these narratives because they are all around us. No wonder we hide or hesitate when it comes to sharing about what we are good at or what we might have to bring to the table! We need to blow up the stereotypes for each other and take control of the narratives for ourselves - calling them out, encouraging other women who are holding themselves out there bravely.

3) LIKEABILITY HAS BEEN OUR CURRENCY.

For centuries, our main currency as women has been likeability. When we couldn’t get access to financial autonomy, or votes, or jobs, we had to rely on being likeable to get by. Stay small and quiet and compliant and likeable and you’ll be fine. You’ll survive.

We have outgrown those confines now, but this likeability hangover is real. When likability has been the main way that women have navigated the world for such a long time to stay safe, it’s really hard to imagine risking that by putting yourself out there for other people’s opinions to be formed of you. But in order to do good, true, honest work, we have to release that risk. I can promise you that not everyone is going to like what you do and I can also promise you that you will survive that.

Our desire to be likeable at all costs – even the cost of our own fulfilment will be a real, visceral feeling that we have to try and override if we want to put our work, our solutions, our thinking and ideas into the world.

Our job is to update some of these stories so they don’t continue to hold us back. Update them by finding the tools to soothe our brains when we feel the fear responses kicking in, to blow up the narratives that try to undermine or pigeon hole us and understand that not everyone is going to like us or what we do and that that is ultimately OK.

How do you feel about putting yourself out there with what you have to offer? Do you relate to any of this? I have a great FREE resource for helping you build that toolkit to move through fear - you can grab it here.

INFLUENCE: 7 LIFE-CHANGING THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW

The idea of influence is intriguing to me. I’m on a bit of a quest at the minute to explore what it means in culture today; to break open the word and dig out all the flesh that we have put around it and try to find out what is at its core – the real juicy stuff.

And I’m getting somewhere. Somewhere surprising. And it’s exciting to lift the layers and see what’s underneath all the trappings of influence that we have created for ourselves. (sidenote: what we have created - not wonderful)

You see, for the majority of my career I have been involved in activism work. Working with charities, running charity projects, advocating, lobbying, creating movements for change. I’ve met people along the way that have shaped my idea of influence. I’ve witnessed a hunger for influence in the social justice sphere and been fascinated at how the power dynamics work when working for systemic change. I’ve seen what it takes for shifts to happen in the policy room or the campaign planning session; how influence is used – in healthy and unhealthy ways. Yes. The non-profit sector is not always healthy. Activism is not always healthy. Crazy, right?

In the last few years I’ve also been building my own business, one that largely operates online. I believe that my business has the same values as my non-profit work – empowering, advocating and opening conversations about systemic issues that have held women and girls back and creating connections so they can flourish – but this time my medium for this work has changed. I’ve been immersed in the world of social media, working to have my message heard there, connecting with others who are doing the same. To have influence in this sphere has certain trappings associated it and what is held up as influential has sometimes left a lot to desire. For me, anyway.

Both of these worlds have been fascinating to be part of and what influence looks like and what it takes to acquire it are very contrasting from one to the other. Not better. Not more effective. Just different.

In one world, influence is largely about who you know at the top.

In the other world, influence is largely about how many people are looking.

In one world, influence is about needing to be an expert in your field.

In the other world, influence can be gained by staging expertise or by learning as you go.

In one world, influence is mastered by having firm boundaries.

In the other world, influence is largely gained by blurred personal/private lines.

There are so many contrasts to it all and so my interest has piqued over time.

How does influence work so differently in one area to another?

Are there common threads that run through both?

And then, just to make things super interesting - last week I asked my friends on Instagram to think about who has truly been influential in their lives. I wanted to know what the top qualities of that person were that made them so significantly influential to them.

The answers to this came in thick and fast and it would seem that the people who have been incredible influences on our lives are quite close to our minds, easy to recount.

I paid close attention to the responses and what fascinated me was that there were some reoccurring themes. Themes that I’ve been sorting through to make sense of.

What occurred to me in sifting through this all, these personal lived experiences of being influenced by someone else is that influence isn’t actually about what happens on the outside.

Influence is an inside job.

Being a person of influence isn’t something that you can cajole or project - it’s an inner work that makes it’s way out.

As I work through all the data and the interviews and research, I wanted to share with you seven LIFE-CHANGING things that are emerging in my findings about the inside out idea of influence. I’ll be unpacking these more over the coming weeks but for now, just read them and absorb. Be challenged and hopeful. Find your own

1. Influence isn’t actually about outer platforms – it’s about an inner posture.

2. Influence isn’t about momentary notoriety – it’s about long-term dedication.

3. Influence isn’t about power – it’s about contribution.

4. Influence isn’t about reach, it’s about depth.

5. Influence isn’t about accumulation, it’s about generosity.

6. Influence isn’t about perfecting who we are, it’s about becoming who we are.

7. Influence isn’t about striving, it’s about ease.

These are life-changing truths because they tip our cultures idea of influence on it’s head.

Influence is getting rebranded, my friend and it’s happening here.

We don’t have to wait for numbers and figures to have an impact. We don’t have to show up perfectly or expertly or loudly. We get to have an impact. We get to do the inner work that brings integrity back into a world that so badly needs some. Are you with me? Isn’t that an enormous relief to hear?

I’m going to be sharing lots more about influence over the next number of weeks because I think it’s a conversation worth having. I’m going to be hosting an online workshop in October that will fully lay out all of my findings and give a bit of a new blueprint for influence that I think will be really inspiring and hopefully create lots of discussion and opportunity for learning.

If you’d like to be kept in the loop about that – stick your email address in in the box below so you’ll be the first to know about it all!