Beating Fear - and Growing Up - by Dr Stephen Simpson
As a build-up to The Excellent For Business NLP Workshop, Dr Stephen Simpson looks at the mistakes some business people make when they think they lack confidence.
Dr Stephen Simpson
Elite Performance Coach for
NLP LIFE Academy
There are an awful lot of people out there in the world of business, who know they could do so much more successful if only they had the one secret ingredient: confidence.
In my life I have seen hugely talented individuals, creative and gifted souls who were just held back by self doubt and by its natural allies, fear and lack of confidence.
Except of course, that no-one is really "held back" by these things. At least, not in the way they would be if they were being "held back" by a pair of bouncers working on the doorway to an exclusive club called Confidence - a place where amazingly relaxed people swan around without a care in the world.
That way of talking about Confidence highlights one of the big mistakes lots of people make when talking about Confidence. They think they are being affected by a thing.
Listen to what people say about lack of confidence and fear, and it all becomes clear.
- They are "victims" of "fear" at one moment.
- They have "an attack" of "loss of confidence" at the next.
- And they are "assailed" by "self-doubt" after that.
Anyone would think that each of these phrases reveals a creature that needs to be beaten off - as if a great bloodsucking bat is swooping down to scare the living daylights out of you.
...You can learn to start to think about Fear differently...
The problem with this way of thinking is that it's very easy to get into the language that speaks about them as if they are real. So you might try "warding off" your fear or "beating it back".
But because it's a pretty disempowering way to think about fear, you run the risk of letting it come back to "attack" you later.
One of the things you can learn from NLP is that "lack of confidence" is not a thing. It isn't something that is carved in stone, or an animal that wants to bite you.
You can learn to start to think about Fear differently.
The big secret is to turn these "things" back in to processes. Why? Because a process isn't like a lump of stone. It is an event that has a start, rolls on for a while, and points you in a particular direction.
And once you recognise that what you are feeling is a process, then it's a natural step to realise that you are doing it. You are making the process of fear happen. From there on in, you can start to understand your "lack of confidence" in new ways - as something that you get to change as your process of self-doubt changes.
There are many techniques in NLP that make it possible to maximise your feelings of being confident so that you are far more effective in the world of work and your home life. I have found it's a process that strengthens people every day, so that their newfound "process of being confident" gets stronger time after time.
It's part of a process of growing up and maturing. And that's what confidence is all about.
So remember, it might be true that you can't "beat" your fear if you think about it in the wrong way.
But you can choose to grow out it.
And here's the thing: you just can't beat growing more confident!
