What’s your relationship with fear?

I’m going to offer you reflection questions, the kind I offer to my coaching clients (and so you can both reflect on them for yourself and offer them to your clients). These questions will help you reflect on your beliefs and ways of being, domains at the heart of our focus as Transformational Coaches. I have one request for you: If you find the content of this helpful (originally published in my Monday newsletter), would you forward it to a friend or colleague who might also find it useful?

This week, I invite you to consider your relationship with fear.

To explore your relationship, you need to know when your fear shows up. Consider just your professional sphere:

• When does fear arise? What are the situations when your fear makes itself known?
• How do you know that your fear is present? What physical, emotional, and cognitive indicators alert you to its presence?
• And here’s the most important reflection: How do you feel about your fear? What’s your relationship with fear like?

I was recently talking to a friend experiencing a lot of anxiety about an upcoming work project. She named her fear, and then shamed herself for having it. She called her fear, “nasty;” she talked about wanting to banish it. I said, “the problem is not your fear. The problem is how you’re treating it.”

Your fear is natural. It comes with being a human being. We need fear. The point isn’t to rid ourselves of fear.

We can cultivate a healthy, boundaried relationship with this emotion. Begin by getting curious about your fear and how you feel about it.

Related: if you are a positional leader, and you coach your people, you’re likely to experience fear as you navigate this gray, in-between terrain. Check out this podcast episode for how to coach while you’re the boss!