What's the One Fear?

Yesterday I was afraid to go to the dentist.

I’d broken a tooth but was dreading the work that would need to be done.

I knew it was irrational to be afraid of going to the dentist. I’ve been before. My dentist is great. There isn’t ever any pain.

But still, I was feeling queasy at the thought of what might be.

As someone who is interested in people and what drives them, I know that we fear uncertainty. Indeed, research shows that people would rather know something bad is going to happen than not know what is going to happen.

At heart, I knew my one real fear was of a nerve being touched during the procedure.

And that’s when I decided to list all my fears around the visit to the dentist.

...I’d need a filling.

...I’d need a root canal.

...I’d need to have a filling and a root canal.

...The tooth would have to be totally replaced.

And then the completely extremized ..... I’d need fillings in all my teeth. I’d need a root canal in all my teeth….or worst of all, I’d need to replace all my teeth.

But I already knew I wouldn’t feel any pain. So what was really going on?

When I stopped and took a Six Second pause – six seconds to calm down breathing, distract my mind (by going for a mini walk), gain emotional equilibrium and re-view my ‘reality’’ - I realized my fears had been exacerbated by a work situation that I was deeply disappointed about and felt was out of my control.

The work situation was also playing into my fear.

And as a result, I was moving away from both the work and the tooth situation.

Emotions move us towards or away from people or things. And my fear was causing me to move away from both these situations.

Realizing this helped me change my emotional energy of fear and the associated behaviour of avoidance - to acceptance and the choice of opportunity.

I took the opportunity to tell the dentist I was worried and my dentist took the opportunity to reassure me there would be no pain.

And afterwards, I took the opportunity to move towards the work situation and frame that as an opportunity to more fully realize my potential.

Lend Your Attention

Fear is an emotion. It's a signal that something needs your attention.  

But are you sometimes harsh on your fear? Trying to quash it, or criticize it - when it is simply trying to draw your attention to a need?

As with any emotion, it helps to own your fear, recognize other associated fears and emotions - and articulate these, so that you can deal with the situation.

As Barack Obama owned in A Promised Land, at his pivotal 2004 Democratic National Convention speech:

‘’I was scared. Not just about the speech, but about whether I was meant to be in this game at all.’’

Fear can have a knock on effect. It's not just the one fear, it's other fears associated with that one fear. (Not to mention the other emotions that might be playing back up).

Leaning into Fear

Can you find one of the drivers of your, or your team member’s fear?

What else is going on? What other fears haven’t they yet expressed? How are you or they extrapolating that fear into a cycle of doom, avoidance and inaction?

When you recognize the one fear – whether that be be considering your thoughts, or physical feelings of queasiness or visible action of nail biting - can you do yourself and those you lead a favour?

Can you list all the worst case scenarios you fear?

Can you take a six second pause, regain emotional equilibrium and re-view the situation from different perspectives? And ideally engage your team in this process?

Can you see and realize the opportunity in fear?

Andrea Stone is an Executive Coach and Global Leadership Development professional enabling leaders and their teams to enable themselves – based on a foundation of greater self-awareness, self-management and self-leadership.

She frequently provokes leaders to consider not just the ‘rational’ data, but the ‘emotional’ data - because considering just the rational data means they’re leaving half the data on the table. And that is very wasteful - not to mention irrational.

© Andrea Stone, Stone Leadership