Fear of embarking on a new project
Hello …. How are you today?
The pandemic has urged many people to reinvent themselves. There are others who already had a burning desire to start a new career path but who pushed it down for fear of the unknown. There’s something frightening and paralyzing when, after careful analysis of every aspect of the new venture, inaction persists.
You can listen to the podcast with this player, or if you prefer reading you have a written version below. Enjoy it!
This reminds me of the six human needs described by my coaching mentor Tony Robbins:
Security / Certainty
Variety
Significance / Importance
Love and connection
Growth
Contribution
I’m going to dive into each of the needs above in a future post. For the time being, let's stick to the first and second. We all need to feel safe and have certain needs covered: a roof over our head, food on the table, our children’s education, and a decent job. Yet, we also like variety and surprises, right? It feels good to have butterflies in our belly, and tolerable challenges depending on our personality.
Now think about this. There are people who prefer to cling to their current realities even if they aren’t happy because they’re afraid of losing what they know and which makes them feel safe. On the contrary, there are others who love risks, challenges and changes once their basic needs are met. They enjoy the adrenaline rush of not knowing what will happen and taking up new things.
Both the first human need and the second are neutral but taken to an extreme they can be negative. If we are bored with our life but prefer that to the uncertainty of starting something new, we run the risk of becoming stagnant. Similarly, if we’re constantly changing jobs, partners, cities, and habits, we will miss the opportunity to grow what we started and to reap we sowed before jumping to our next goal.
“The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty that you can comfortably live with.”
I love this idea because as I always share on this blog, absolute certainty is unreal. We can try to have some control over our lives but we’re always going to face unexpected end up unsettling us. Control is just an illusion, we believe that if we think about everything endlessly and analyze it from every possible angle, we’ll avoid future frustrations but it doesn’t work like that. The result of control and perfectionism is stress and anxiety. Do we want to experience that?
The key is to learn how to deal with some degree of uncertainty and its corresponding discomfort to get ready to embark on a new project. Think about the day you started a course, a job, or a relationship with someone you barely knew. Didn't you feel a knot in your throat, chest, or stomach? You did! In spite of that you made it, you could attend that class, complete your first day at work, and enjoyed your date. You managed to get out of your comfort zone and to overcome your initial anxiety.
I think that the fear of starting a new venture is related to the following:
Not feeling enough.
Not feeling that we will be accepted.
Feeling that we are always lacking something - more degrees, more specializations, more organization, more resources, and so on.
Believing that we don't know enough.
The lack of certainty that comes with change / the unknown.
The investment that we need to make and that we fear we might lose.
Disappointing others with our decision.
Feeling that you still have to analyze more data and think of more and more variables.
We cannot reject fear because as we already know what you resist persists. Rather, the invitation is to be able to relate to fear, being able to calm ourselves as the wisest person in the world would. Imagine the most sensitive and sensible voice telling you "it’s normal to feel this way but listen to your heart, you’ll be fine". Instead of reacting with terror, you can deal with it with discernment. In other words, psychologist Sheryl Paul taught me that when we feel frightened by our own thoughts, we could ask ourselves "Does this come from the voice of fear / my need to flee or does this come from the voice of reason?" It’s a very simple question and very enlightening. Many times when I hear my clients share their concerns with me, I ask them an even simpler question, "Is that really so?"
To undertake whatever we want, we need to feel calm, and the best way to calm down is through our body, breathing deeply, meditating and even doing physical exercise. In times of stress, our mind can weave the most creative, creepy and false stories that will end up entangling us. That is why it is so important to be able to surrender, to have faith, to let go of the need to know how things will turn out. Just respect the time that processes take, enjoy it step by step, and honour your gifts and your desire to share them with the world. You’re probably asking yourself “and if I have setbacks, what happens?” You get up and shake yourself. Remember that those who dare try new things are bound to make mistakes and that they’ll use them to learn. The ones who don’t won’t have any trouble but they’ll be left with their unmet goals and desires.
My motto is progress not perfection, since the latter doesn’t exist. Kristen Neff, the researcher and pioneer in self-compassion talks about two kinds of it:
Tender self-compassion: accepting what happens to us and offering ourselves comfort in challenging moments.
Fierce self-compassion: protecting, nurturing, and motivating ourselves for action as a momma bear would to defend her cubs from danger or looking for a way to feed them.
A combination of both types of self-compassion, the ability to turn down the volume on our perfectionist and controlling tendencies, and the ability to soothe our body in moments of tension will help us loosen the fears that haunt us when we start something new. Pema Chodron says something that I use all the time “the time to start is now”. And if you feel that you cannot do it alone, invest in yourself and ask for help to unblock your potential and get ahead.
I hope this helped you. If you know someone who can benefit from this, invite them to subscribe. In this way, we build bridges to help one other on this wonderful path of self-knowledge and personal growth. Remember you can also follow us on Spotify and Apple podcasts on Georgina Hudson Transformational Coach.
A big hug ❤