When I first started my business, absolutely everything about it scared me. When I shared content on social media, I wanted to hide under the bed afterwards. When I met new people and they would ask me what I did, I mumbled something about starting this thing ´but we´ll see how it goes´, before excusing myself to go hide in the bathroom. Being visible online, hearing other people´s opinions of what I did and potentially failing publicly all felt terrifying to me, especially when I was still figuring out what exactly I was offering.
I knew rationally that nothing terrible would happen if I just took action. There was a chance that I would fail, or look a little bit silly to some people, but I was not actually in danger. And yet, I felt a physical panic taking over my body every time I took a step.
Facing your fears and diving right in
My extreme fear-based reaction to taking tiny steps made me think that maybe I wasn´t ready, or I was not meant to be doing this. Maybe if I worked on feeling more confident first, I could then try again. But to my disappointment, I found out that I didn´t magically wake up one day feeling confident. Confidence is something that grows as we take steps and gradually get better at something. To get there, we need to go through the uncomfortable phase.
On the other end of the spectrum, the most common advice I got from people around me was something along the lines of ´just do it, dive right in, face your fears´. And sometimes, that is the best advice. At times we get stuck in overanalyzing and what ifs (I know I do), and then just doing it without having a lot of time to think about it can be the greatest thing. It often feels amazing afterwards, a mix of nervousness and a lot of excitement.
Other times, diving right into it might not be the answer. Sometimes, when you take a big leap but haven´t grown the confidence, you can feel overwhelmed afterward, wanting to crawl back into your shell. But when you slowly work towards that big leap, you build the foundation for it to no longer feel like a big leap at all, but rather like the next logical step to take.
What fear looks like
Fear often comes with a mental and a physical aspect. The mental aspect comes in the form of overthinking, worrying, going through all the doom scenarios that could possibly happen. There is often an element of self-doubt, your inner chatting telling you that you are not good enough, or not ready. If these thoughts go on long enough, the chances of you giving up or not trying to begin with become much higher. It can be hard to distinguish whether these thoughts are just your fear speaking, or whether they are actually true. With practice, you can learn to recognize the difference, so that these thoughts no longer have as much power.
Fear also has a physical side to it. It can show up as a tightness in your muscles, shortness of breath, nausea and an increased heartbeat. It varies from a light nervousness to full on panic. Nervousness has an element of excitement to it, it helps you stay sharp. Taking action when you are nervous often results in feeling great afterwards.
If you feel full on panic in your body, taking action might not have the same result. The symptoms are your nervous system´s way of telling you that it feels unsafe, even if you rationally are not. It activates the fight-or-flight response in your body, increasing your stress hormones and preparing you to either run or fight. While feeling short bursts of fear is normal and can even be healthy, being in that state for long periods of time can cause health issues.
When your nervous system is calm, your thoughts will settle and feel calmer as well. When you move out of the fight-or-flight mode, you are able to relax and look at your situation with a new perspective.
Growing resilience through nervous system regulation
Our nervous system is here to protect us from danger. When we feel the physical symptoms of fear, this is our nervous system doing its job. Even though our life is not actually in danger, our body can´t tell the difference. Taking the time to allow our nervous system to adjust and know that it is safe for us to move forward, while using tools to ground yourself in the process, allows the fear to dissolve over time.
This doesn´t mean that we should avoid that which we fear, but that instead of going for a 10/10 scary thing, we can choose to pick a 2 or 3 first. Something that is in the general direction of the 10, but that feels manageably scary. By doing this a couple of times and giving ourselves time to notice the physical sensations that come up and to integrate the fear, we teach our nervous system that while it might feel slightly uncomfortable, we can manage this, and we could even do something a little scarier. When you move up to something that felt like a 5 or 6 before, it probably does not feel overwhelming anymore. Finding the sweet spot where something feels makes you nervous, but in a way that you can handle allows you to build resilience for fear, one step at a time.
While it might sound like this takes a lot of time, allowing your nervous system time to expand while continuously taking steps in the right direction leads to sustainable growth.
Honoring your needs
Behind our fears are often some of our biggest longings. Moving towards our fear can therefore bring us what we truly desire. But progress does not always have to be a ´jump right in´ moment, it can be a gradual process where we honor our own needs and don´t force ourselves into something that we don´t feel quite ready for. Your process is unique to you, just like your fears and longings are yours alone. Acknowledging what you need to move forward is a great form of self-care and allows space for joy and fun in doing scary, uncomfortable things.
Some days you will feel brave enough to take a leap and do a big scary thing. Some days, you don´t. And that is totally okay. You can still make progress when you take tons of tiny steps that feel slightly scary, and gently grow your courage and confidence over time.
If you feel called to do things that scare you and you would like some guidance in this process, or if you want to gently expand your resilience to fear, then you can contact me here.