We all have something we fear. Fear of flying; fear of heights; fear of public speaking; fear of spiders … and so on and so on. Some of our fears are mildly annoying. Some are totally debilitating. Which brings me to a gem of a Canadian magazine Cathleen Filmore of Speakers Gold introduced me to; Motivated. The theme of the Fall 2010 edition was fear. And, from the many useful articles, the one that caught my eye was ‘How I Pushed Through Fear & Talked To Bill Gates’ by Richard St John.
Through overcoming his fear of talking to people he didn’t know, he developed an effective model to help him overcome fearful situations and take positive action to move him and his business forward. He calls it the 4P’s. Purpose, Push, Practice and Persist.
Purpose ‘ identify why you must do something. Be very clear why you must take this step despite the fact that you would rather chew glass. If necessary write out the purpose. Make it so strong you can’t possibly avoid the situation and absolutely must act.
Push ‘ with the help and backing of purpose, your next step is to push yourself into action. You can’t avoid it; you can’t ignore it. So you must act.
Practice ‘ the more times you do something that terrifies you, the less terrified you become. We know from Malcolm Gladwell’s book ‘Outliers’ that to become truly great at something you must practice for 10,000 hours. St. John is suggesting, if your fear is public speaking search out as many public speaking opportunities as you can. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much easier it gets.
Persist ‘ and keep doing it. To continue to use the example above, keep delivering those speeches. If you can record them, evaluate yourself so you can get better and therefore less fearful. If your example is getting in touch with someone you’ve never met be persistent until contact is made.
Getting over his fear of talking to people who he didn’t know resulted in the publication of a book ‘The 8 Traits Successful People Have in Common’. Think of the possibilities when you get over your fears.
Here are the links:
Cathleen Filmore of Speakers Gold www.speakersgold.com
Motivated Magazine www.motivatedonline.com
Article author Richard St. John www.richardstjohn.com
