How to Overcome Irrational Fear

Luckily for me, I’m the type who will finally reach a limit and do the thing that needs to be done.

When it pertains to business, I almost never have any reservations in doing what needs to be done. But when it’s personal, well, suffice it to say that I’ve had four girlfriends in my life, and every one of them asked me out first.

Also, that it took me three months to deal with this particular issue before reaching my limit might indicate just how much embarrassment I felt this call was going to bring to me.

Still, I’d had enough. I picked up the phone, made the call, talked to the party on the other line,… and all was fine. Matter of fact, it turned out way better than anything I could have hoped for.

I was shocked and stunned...for about two minutes. Then I realized that I had experienced the same type of thing I tell people all the time as it pertains to business issues; things you feel won’t go right are usually worse in your mind than they will be in reality.

The same thing happened recently for a friend of mine. She got offered a new job on Thursday, and worried about the reaction of the person she worked for.

She ended up taking the easy way out; she called him on the phone after work over the weekend. Instead of getting a negative reaction back, he saw that it was a positive move for her and her family, and wished her well, saying they would discuss issues more come the following Monday.

Fears lead to superstitions and phobias, but also to inaction or overreaction...Our imaginations run wild, and we allow indecision to eat at us

Franklin Roosevelt said the only thing to fear is fear itself. It’s always that unknown that most of us don’t like, but it’s amazing how we can plant certain fears in our minds based on that unknown.

Fears lead to superstitions and phobias, but they also lead to inaction or overreaction. It’s hard enough in our personal lives, but when we have work to do, and these fears pertain to others, whether we’re in the leadership position or not, fear can be detrimental to our performance, as well as the performance of others.

Almost everyone has had a project that’s had a deadline. I was always the type who did the project immediately, just to get it out of the way.

Whenever it was budget time, you could bet my budget would be in the hands of the finance department within a week, even though we usually had at least a month to work on it. My thinking was that, if I got it in earlier and there were mistakes, I’d be informed and then would have the opportunity to fix the errors.

It never happened, though. However, almost every other director would wait until the week of, or a few days before, their budgets were supposed to be turned in. Most of them would say they didn’t understand how the process was supposed to go, even though it was a yearly event that hardly ever changed.

What was the real reason for the delay? The real reason is that many times, the rules were that we had to find ways to cut expenses by some percentage, and when things weren’t great, that percentage, for many people, meant they were going to have to address staff cuts.

Even though many employees don’t believe this, no manager ever wants to be forced into cutting members of their own department. So, many of them would let their fears keep them from even starting the process, and then use those same fears to say they didn’t understand it.

This would put a lot of pressure on the people in finance, and sometimes administration would end up making the decisions instead, which the managers were never happy with.

In a way, those decisions let the managers off the hook; they abrogated their responsibilities because they were scared, but tried to fight the decisions made for them on the back end so they could look good to the remaining staff.

Many good things come when you don't have time to think about anything

Dale Carnegie said “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.” Benjamin Disraeli said “What we anticipate seldom occurs, what we least expected generally happens.”

Many of us will allow our fears to paralyze us, and when that happens, we can’t progress or move forward in any way. He keep things on our minds that need to be released, and those fears are what rules us until we find a way to overcome them, if we can. We tend to project feelings onto something because it’s what we feel might be the worst thing that could happen, yet, if we were on the other side, rarely would we react to the same events as we think others would.

That’s a very interesting point, because, even if we know what someone is like, we sometimes put an emotion or reaction to that person that, if we think about it, would be totally out of character for that person. Our imaginations run wild, and then we allow indecision to eat at us.

Notice how many good things come from those times when you didn’t have the time to think about anything, but instead reacted out of necessity. What might seem to most people should turn out negatively usually ends up being positive, not always because it was the absolutely correct decision as much as it was the most honest decision at the time.

In those moments, all those life lessons one has learned, all those morals and mores that have been stored within join together, come up with a plan of attack, and you’re on your way. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could always generate that kind of emotion?

Well,… it depends. A recent article in Discover Magazine said yes. But I don’t often believe in absolutes. When one has the time to make proper decisions, as in weighing all sides of a matter before enacting something, one has a better chance of making the right decision.

However, if there are only two choices, one being reactionary and the other being inaction because of fear, I’ll take reactionary every day of the week, because at least something has happened, and now it can be addressed and acted upon.

T.T. "Mitch" Mitchell of T. T. Mitchell Consulting specializes in helping companies produce more effective and satisfied employees at all levels, as well as helping individuals be better and more content in their professional and personal lives. He concentrates especially on management, leadership and diversity. Read about and subscribe to his two newsletters - on management and healthcare business issues respectively - here, or visit Mitch's provocative blog.

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