How to Do It Afraid
Are you tired of letting fear stop you? While appropriate in some situations, at times our fears can seem to paralyze from doing things we want to do for ourselves or others. It can leave us short of our goals and dreams. If you can’t stop the fear, sometimes you have to just push past it. That can be easier said than done. In this bonus episode, we reflect on what we learned from our expert guest, Grace Brown in episode 11 called “Moving From Fears to Fierce”. We applied some of her tips and tactics to our own fears. From little victories to big gains, we learned how sometimes you have to feel the fear but do it anyway.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Sandy Kovach [00:00:02]:
Welcome to Imagine Yourself, where we help you imagine the next chapter of your life with grace, gratitude, courage and faith.
Lanée Blaise [00:00:10]:
We are Lanee and Sandy and we really enjoy taking a second look at things that are super important. And our last episode on overcoming our fears is just really thing that resonates with a lot of people and with Sandy and myself included. We love to bring in experts. And we brought in Coach G. That's Grace Brown, the Momentum Mindset coach. And she talked a lot about specific fears that people have and how to overcome them. And so, Sandy, you and I just decided that on this particular episode, we'd make it a little more personal and talk about some of the fears that we have that are a little different from the last episodes, the ones Coach G tackled. Those things that crop up in our personal lives, in our daily lives, in our work lives.
Lanée Blaise [00:01:05]:
You kind of had a great example of something that you had to unlock your fear.
Sandy Kovach [00:01:15]:
You know, it just goes to show you that when we think of fear, sometimes we think of the big things. Know, you fear something happening to you or your family or you fear like Grace talked a lot about public speaking. That's a big fear. But one fear that a lot of people have and I really, actually don't have is technology. But there's a specific part of technology that I fear and people who have worked on websites, not just websites, but many things, is coding. And it's always been something I was just you said coding and it's like, no thank you, I'll just work with what I can work with without it. But I had a situation where I either had to learn it or I was going to lose money.
Lanée Blaise [00:02:00]:
That's a motivator.
Sandy Kovach [00:02:03]:
And all it was, was just going through and watching some videos. And I'm not saying I'm an expert coder by any stretch of the imagination. All I did was just very little. People out there are listening and are thinking about like actual people. That that's their job and they know a lot about it. No, I'm just saying getting over the fear of having to work with code on a website just a little bit where I was not having it, and then I made something work. It was just a little victory. And it isn't like I'm going to go out and find a job coding.
Lanée Blaise [00:02:33]:
Now, but at the same time, it is a victory because it does teach you that something that you had absolutely closed the door to because you fear that you were not adequate enough at it. You just kind of jumped in because did you just decide, I'm just going to tinker with it, I'm just going to give a little try, and then it ended up kind of building into working out.
Sandy Kovach [00:02:56]:
Yeah, well, I had done a little tiny bit of it before, so I had to kind of draw on past experience. I had to go to YouTube and look at some instructional videos. But it's just getting past it. And a lot of people have a fear of tech in general. And I kind of started empathizing with folks like that at that point. I'm like, OK, I kind of get that now.
Lanée Blaise [00:03:16]:
I have this little thing that I've been thinking about ever since. It kind of goes exactly with what you're saying to Sandy. I have this fear of what if I suck? And that's what gets me stuck. What if I suck? Yeah, that's what gets me stuck every time. That's what I wanted to work on. And it's so interesting. Like you said, Coach G talked about some of the really big tangible fears and some of my fears definitely go that route, but some of them are the small things. But like you said, they will eventually be the things that will ease into my money making ability.
Lanée Blaise [00:03:52]:
So what I did was there was another episode that we had with Leslie Horner from Better Than Balanced and she was telling us about how sometimes when you are dealing with some things like negative emotions, she said sometimes you just have to sit with it and feel the negative emotion and let it pass. And in this case, I wanted to implement it with fear. I wanted to allow myself to sit with it, feel the fear and then to let it pass. I am really trying to do this whole thing and instead of it just being about negative emotions, I'm really targeting it in on fear. I'm trying to do that same thing where I will allow myself to feel the fear, to sit with the fear and let it pass. Because I see the value that even if I feel that I might be inadequate in some area, I don't want it to affect my livelihood. I don't want it to affect my relationship. Building networking is another one that I was not always comfortable with.
Lanée Blaise [00:05:01]:
And I know that we talked in the last episode about do it afraid, like do it anyway. But in this case, I'm really activating that by again letting it sink in, thinking about all the what ifs, thinking about the fear and then letting it pass. And when it does, then I'm able to do the thing. Whether it's networking, whether it's reaching out to somebody who I think is so important that they might be above my level and pay grade. Think of me as a little peon. Yeah, above my pay grade. Think of me as a peon. It's like, whatever, if they do, who cares? I guess it wasn't meant to be.
Lanée Blaise [00:05:39]:
And just really believing that I'm not going to want to sit and miss out on things that are meant for me and even don't be fearful about that. Don't be so afraid that, oh my gosh, I'm going to miss out on something that's meant for me. I really have to have faith. I was just thinking about the fact, and this is something I did not look up myself, but in the Bible, there's some version of the phrase fear not 365 times yes or more. So this tells me that God understands our tendency to have fears and he wants us to overcome those fears that stifle us. But also we can use a different verse about putting an end to our fears. 365 days of the year. If you want to just pull one, snag it, use it.
Lanée Blaise [00:06:30]:
If we do have this fear, then we sit with it, we let it pass. I really believe in this and it's something that I've been implementing and it's blossomed. I am reaching out to new people on LinkedIn that don't seem to think that I'm beneath them and it's leading to great career opportunities.
Sandy Kovach [00:06:49]:
Yet you never were. It just was all in your head. Exactly.
Lanée Blaise [00:06:52]:
Oh my gosh, that's another one. Yet these whole conversations and thoughts and scenarios that are in our heads that are not really what the other party is thinking.
Sandy Kovach [00:07:02]:
So we've got everything from do it afraid, jump in and do it. I have no choice now. I have to do it. That was kind of me. Then you have like, a very specific way of thinking it out. And I think some fears are going to lend themselves to the way you're talking about. Sit with the fear, think about it. Does this really make sense? Call on a fear not verse in the Bible.
Sandy Kovach [00:07:24]:
Matter of fact, I think we should put out a fear not devotional if somebody already hasn't with those 365 days. Or in my case, just like jumping in the deep end of the pool just because, hey, what else am I going to do?
Lanée Blaise [00:07:36]:
Yeah, you can jump in the deep end or you can wade your way in through the shallow end as long as you're taking some steps towards getting there. And that's really all it's about. Imagine yourself taking little steps, baby steps, big steps, or leaps and jumps towards the things that you've been afraid to do. Let us know how you think about it. Check us out on imagineourselfpodcast.com and really give us a few of your scenarios where you have fears or you overcome fears because we really want to hear from you as well.
Sandy Kovach [00:08:08]:
Really love to hear your feedback. Or if you just want to stop by and say hi. When you go to Imagine yourselfpodcast.com, you can get our email or you can get a link to one of our social media feeds. We're on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and you can hit us up there as well as subscribe to our blog and places. You can follow our podcast like Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon and more. So look forward to hearing from you. And until next week, when we have something new to imagine, let's do it afraid.
