Are you a pre-need sales representative who is afraid to pick up the telephone to make appointment setting calls? Do you fear drop-by home visits to people who mail back in a sales lead reply card from a direct mailing? Are you afraid you just will never be as good a pre-need salesperson as someone else you admire and look up to? All of these fears, and many more, are what are holding you back from achieving the success you desire and deserve to attain.
    Fear is a very natural emotion. It’s not something that we should loathe or try to eliminate from our personality. Fear can be a positive thing if we learn not how to eliminate it, but how to effectively control and use it to our betterment.
    Fear is one of the things that causes a lot of the accomplishments we, as a society, obtain. For example: a fear of disease has caused us to build hospitals and train doctors and research scientists. Fear of ignorance helped build schools, colleges and universities. Through a fear of meaninglessness we built churches and became part of a community of faith. Fear is something that must be a part of our lives, if we’re to accomplish anything of lasting value.
    Fear that is irrationally dealt with can turn our lives upside down and keep us from being and accomplishing all we are meant to. Fear can turn into chronic anxiety. Fear can break our peace. Fear can crumble our personality. Fear robs opportunity. Fear causes hesitation and hesitation causes your greatest fears to come true. Fear causes us to lose the power of possibility thinking, thus stifling our growth and wellbeing robbing us of our future success, happiness and joy.
    Fear literally smells. A study by Denise Chen of the Monell Chemical Senses center in Philadelphia and Jeannette Haviland-Jones of Rutgers University found that frightened people emit a sharp, unpleasant odor. This indicates that, like some animals, people signal emotions through scent.
    Fear is a great servant, but it is also a ruinous master at the same time. How do we effectively deal with our fears?
    Most fears are learned. According to psychologists, human beings only have two natural fears. Fear of falling and fear of loud noises. Most of what we fear has nothing to do with our personal safety, but is merely a conditioned response to something that either no longer applies, or was originally misinterpreted. Fear therefore is really nothing more than false evidences that appear real.
    Fear is often irrational. Fear is often something we use our imagination to produce, based on unfounded facts, thus blinding us to the facts, as they really exist. Fear can manifest itself as False Evidences That Appear Real. If left unchecked, fear can cause us to dessert our post and fall into deep anxiety and despair for no good logical reason.
    In order to learn to control and use fear to our advantage we first need to identify and truthfully confront what we fear. What do you fear?
    The majority of us in any type of a sales capacity have a fear of rejection; fear of failure; fear of ridicule; fear of what others may think of us.
    Fear is oftentimes generated by our own “ego”. We’re afraid to fail; afraid of embarrassment; afraid of consequences of our actions; afraid of being laughed at or in some instances we’re afraid to succeed. Afraid of what our success will mean in the way of added expectations or responsibilities.
    We don’t want people to think we have somehow let the world or our co-workers down by our inadequacy. We don’t want to try new things because we’re afraid that somehow it’s going to reflect badly on us. It’s so easy for us to become so sensitive to what other people think about us that we don’t try new things and therefore become paralyzed. It is through this paralysis that we become stuck and don’t move forward.
    Once you have truly identified and faced the things that you fear the most, ask yourself these simple questions. What’s the worst that could happen to me if I face and tackle this fear head on? Can I live with the consequences of the ultimate outcome? Will my world end as a result of taking this action?
    Also ask yourself. What’s the best thing that could happen? Will my world be enhanced? What do I stand to gain? How can it benefit my family and me?
    Have confidence in yourself and your abilities. Forge ahead! Don’t be afraid of failure. Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. All growth in life comes through experience, learning from failure, being willing to face and challenge our fears and taking action. Change your thinking and habits into more productive thoughts, patterns and actions. Study, learn and accept the truth. Trust what you’ve learned. Triumph over your fear.
    You can control and use fear to your advantage. You have already done it. You first overcame your fear by being born. Leaving the comfort and security of your Mother’s womb and coming into a world filled with uncertainty, pollution, hatred, violence, famine and war was a scary first step to take. However, you also saw the love, beauty, warmth, caring and opportunity that awaited you and after weighing all your options you were born.
    Think about all your job searches. For whatever reason, you were dissatisfied with your employment state and decided to make a change. You started an awkward and uncomfortable search to find meaningful, satisfying, gainful employment. You really weren’t sure what was out there, were you? Weren’t you a little fearful through all the searching and job interviewing process praying that you’d find and then accept, “the right job”?
    However, you set aside your fear and forged ahead. Look where you are today. Look how far you’ve come. Look what unimaginable hurdles you overcame. Was your fear really worth it? Imagine what is still waiting for you.
    Remember, only two fears are natural to all human beings. All others are learned. Take the time to really examine your fears. How many can you overcome, with a little planning, effort and factual analysis of the fear?
    We are all meant to be the best we can be. Are you living up to your full potential or allowing fear to hold you back?