Using fear to empower confidence and accomplish life goals

My motivation in creating this exercise

Working as a life coach, I get asked by potential clients about the benefits of purchasing a coaching plan for personal development. The person sees that a coaching plan represents an investment that she wants doing for herself to work on a specific issue. However, the person might not feel yet that the action of calling for professional assistance corresponds already to a step towards the search for solutions from a new perspective. It might then happen that the person stays stuck in a state of paralysis, which she sometimes verbalizes as “fear” of doing something, for example: “fear of contacting the deepest part of myself”, “fear of throwing away money again” or “fear of starting a path of self-growth”.

To answer questions like these, I have created an exercise for these people, which has worked out fine so far. In this article you find a simplified version of my exercise, that you can try out when you know that a specific decision is the best choice available for you, but you still feel afraid of taking the next step.   

The relation between fear and its anagonist

When creating the exercise that you are going to learn now, I thought about the relationship between fear and what can play as its antagonist: confidence. I see fear and confidence as two inversely proportional quantities: when we are afraid we lack on confidence and vice-versa. You can also use other predicates than fear and confidence.

So, it would be convenient not to be afraid of anything to be confident about everything, right?
In my opinion, it is wrong.

I believe that the appropriate balance between fear and confidence is important when we consider that each of them also works as an indicator of distance between us and our comfort limits.

Fear seen from another viewpoint

Fear, often blamed for being the root cause for our inaction, corresponds to a natural resource of ours. Fear comes from that basic principle of survival that makes us pay attention to the dangers of the environment where we find ourselves. However, when fear grows so much, we get overwhelmed by the bodily sensations that fear triggers in us. As a consequence, we focus our attention on these sensations, forgetting that we also have the other resource: confidence. Without confidence, we postpone the call for personal growth.

At this point we can move from quantifying fear and confidence (too much/too little), to realizing that it is sufficient to decide on which of these two resources we want to focus our attention, while still respecting the existence of the other.

I created the drawing in the following section to both support my words and challenge you to build a better definition for the thoughts on fear, confidence, and any other content you feel relates to.

Let’s start

I ask you to imagine yourself in first person. You see yourself alone or with other people you might want to take with you in this experience. Now, look at the following image:

Imagine you are riding that bike and you are on the track called “Confidence Level 1”. This is an old track that you have known very well and for a long time. As long as you stay on that track, even if it is worn and has holes, you still know how to ride it. You are confident that the risk of falling does not scare you at all.

At a certain point you glimpse the exit to a new track, called “Confidence Level 2”. You know that this new track is longer in length than the one you are on. However, you don’t know exactly what that new track is like, and you don’t even know what the exit you have to take to reach it is like.

You only see that the ground rises at the entrance to “Confidence Level 2”.

Moving on

At this point you ask yourself:

What shall I do? Shall I change or shall I stay here?

For now, you will continue pedaling on the old track and at each cycle you will look at the exit to the new track and ask yourself the question “What shall I do?”

The old track is delimited by your comfort limits. Every time you pass by the exit, you feel fear in reaching the new track and at the same time you realize that you can choose to leave that comfort zone. You might ask yourself if that thing that you feel is fear or resistance, or a mix of both.

Keeping this scenario in mind, look now at the bike you are riding on that track.

Now take a closer look at the bike’s pedals. They represent the relation between fear and confidence. Call one “fear” and the other “confidence”.

To move, you have to push the two pedals, alternately. One of those two pedals, when pushed harder than the other, allows you to overcome the rise in the ground at the exit of the track you are on.

At this point something snaps inside you that makes you turn the handlebars of the bike towards the exit, and also makes you pedal harder, and now you are at the exit of the old track that sooner or later becomes the entrance to the new track, and here you are in the new track.

What happens to you now?

What do you feel, see and hear?
What happens outside, in the new environment where you find yourself?

Take a moment to reflect and write down your thoughts on paper.

Mastery requires repetition

For people who perceive fear of making changes in their lives, I suggest you imagine yourself in front of the entrance to “Confidence level 3”, knowing that on the next track there is the new version of yourself.

One more time:

What do you feel, see and hear?

Take a moment to reflect and write down your throughs on paper.

Consolidating your work

After sincerely reflecting on the outcome of this exercise, you can continue this exercise, from a new perspective, very time you go to bed. Before you fall asleep, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. As your body relaxes, recall the thoughts you wrote earlier and say to yourself calmly: “I am going to dream that I take my confidence to a higher level“. Repeat the whole exercise every week, for 4 weeks. Take notes of whatever you notice in your way of dealing with new challenges, starting from the smallest ones. To observe how you are changing, choose short term objectives on subjects that used to make you fear them. Let your mind continue working on that.