In my recovery, I look at how my fears and resentments influence me. Every one of us constructs stories based on our perception of a situation, our brains evolved over thousands of years to work that way. However, my fearful hurting addict brain can become obsessed with today’s version of my truth without ever stopping to ask myself, “But is this really true?” Or am I just in a bad mood from a call I got earlier? question everything, especially what you’re telling yourself Or, I ask myself, “Why am I so sure about this? Or do I harbor an unconscious fear related to this belief?”
Fear ignites our defenses, which drives most of our decision making. The big shift into today’s trauma-informed social service and healthcare systems has been summed up in the imperative to “stop asking a person what’s wrong with them and start asking what happened to them?” When you see someone destroying themselves, don’t ask, “What are they thinking?” ask “What fear is driving that behavior?” Each night as I reflect on my actions, I routinely come across the memory of an action that doesn’t settle well with me. When I explore why I am uncomfortable remembering that action, I inevitably find that there was a fear at the root driving me.
It is common for business people to fear that there are a limited number of customers in any market and many competitors vying for these customers. In my experience, such thinking exacerbates the fear of financial insecurity so common among both entrepreneurs and addicts. We crush ourselves with believing we have to completely turn outward and capture new customers before our competitors nab them, but also, simultaneously, turn inward and be perpetually micro-evaluating how to cut costs so our businesses are actually profitable. We’re constantly torn between trying to make more money versus trying to cut costs.
Another fear? Success. What happens if we get that huge client and are not able to actually deliver? Am I worthy of this much faith and responsibility? It’s so common for business people to sabotage success in order to stay small and “safe,” all the while berating themselves for not achieving the abundance they set out to create.
When fear is driving our actions, we tend to be short-sighted. We can’t seem to step back and make the crucial decisions that must be made, RIGHT NOW, in order to best serve what will forever be a changing, evolving consumer market.
Tips:
- Stop discounting because you’re desperate or living client-to-client
- Scrutinize your questions that begin with “what if” – the scenario you’re considering may be driven by fear. Once you identify this possibility, examine your fear. Is it real? Or is it just your mind playing tricks on you.
- Identify the worst-case AND best-case scenarios and how to deal effectively with either eventuality.
- Risk management means you do what you can today to mitigate the risk inherent in the unknown future.
Always ask yourself if a fear that may have surfaced in your personal life (we all have them!) could now be unconsciously influencing your business decisions. If so, take immediate action: seek guidance and support from friends, support groups, coaches and other professionals. You owe it to yourself not to let your personal life get tangled up in your business. So often this is why a business fails and the saddest part of all is that the business owner often remains clueless about the seeds of their destruction. Sooner or later they will become weary and engulfed in a sense of how unfair the world seems or what a failure they’ve been. And all it would have taken to save themselves this trajectory of misery would have been the self-care to seek a fresh pair of eyes from a trusted friend or coach or the ability to hear their own voice while in the circle of acceptance and honesty that a support group provides.
