Tuesday 29 September 2020

Dealing with FEAR

 Dealing with FEAR

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 
One more emotion, if not handled well, that affects personal effectiveness in the workplace, is FEAR. The fear could be loss of job, employees, customers, or loss of finance or fear of rejection or failure in any effort or initiative. The list is countless, and it depends on the individual.

Dealing with fear is not an easy task for all, as the FEAR itself has many dimensions and complex.

Imaginary vs. Fact:

Imaginary fear is something we have in our thoughts and not necessarily present in reality. Some of the fears are an exaggregated version of our thought process.

For example,

what will happen if i fail in my effort or new venture?
What will my colleagues think about me if i ask this question in an open forum?.

The other type of fear is based on the fact; it is reasonable because it is based on the data or fact.

For example,

How can i pay my EMI as my bank account is zero?
How i can face the customer as i did not deliver as committed? 

Whether we have fear due to over exaggregated thoughts or facts, it certainly affects the well being and quality of work in the workplace.

Research studies show that only two fears like fear of falling and fear of loud noise are inborn with us. The other fears are developed by ourselves since childhood experience and the environment. Hence the intensity of fear will vary to everyone.

Another dimension of fear is that one person may have courage in one aspect of life, and the same person may have fear in other aspects.

For example, one person is very bold enough to start a business where most of the population looks at his/ her courage with surprise. Still, the same person may have a fear of scaling up or dealing with a difficult employee or customer.

So, the fear factor is unique to each one depending on the time, context, situation, or environment.

However, we can deal with some of the imaginary or fact-based fears with three steps approach as i experienced. 
  
1.Recognize
2. Subsidize with rational thinking
3. Confront with Action 


We will discuss each step with examples next week!

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