Fitness Business School – Dealing With Fear

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about how I deal with fear. Now this is something that a lot of people struggle with, but not enough people talk about. So we’re going to dig into it in this episode, let’s get started.

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I wanted to really dig in and talk about how I deal with fear, because I think a lot of people, they love to talk about their highlight reel. They talk about their successes. They make everything sound rosy. They make everything seem like you know, they they’ve achieved all sorts of success without having to deal with the obstacles and trials and tribulations that almost always are on the path to that success that they achieve. In fact, recently I’ve had a handful of conversations with people about fear and overcoming adversity.

You know, people that thought they might fail people who’ve been knocked down, or maybe knock themselves down, even in a couple of cases. And you know, they’re not unique. They’re not unique at all. They’re not alone. In fact, we all have fears, we’ve all got our own challenges. We’ve all got our own struggles. And I know speaking from my own experience, man, I know I have. And really, I mean, reflecting back, I’ve had three different points in my adult life where I really feared that I might fail where you know, an adversity that I had experienced made me really start to question myself. So I thought it might be useful to just talk about how I overcame those points or periods, where, where I really started to struggle and, and had to kind of deal with fear myself.

So the first thing that, that I would do in each case, and really I kind of do this any time you know, I hit a bump in the road, not even a bigger an event that might trigger that sort of fear or struggle or anxiety, but even just a small thing, like running a promotion that doesn’t go the way that I want or something, you know, that might just be a blip on the radar. The first thing that I do is I reflect back on the successes I’ve had to, you know, to this point you know, what I’ve achieved and how achieved, because let’s face it, all of us have our own kind of set of wins. But a lot of times we, we kind of lose lose sight of those wins. And more importantly, we lose sight of the truth and the talents and the, the, the skills that we, that we’ve used to create those successes and know that those, those things are still there. I mean, the successes we’ve had are earned and deserved, and they were achieved basically by the, the skills and talents and things that we either have inherently or we’ve personally developed. And so it’s always good to reflect back on that and to remind myself you know, you you’ve done some, some pretty cool things and they didn’t happen by accident. And I think we can all do that. Same thing. It’s too easy. I remember back in the, the, the period where I was coaching college baseball, it was too easy to get caught up in thinking that, you know, you have a bad day at the plate or a bad day at the ballpark and you think, okay, I’m a bad hitter, or we’re a bad team when, you know, maybe you have plenty of evidence to, to, to prove otherwise. So reflecting back on previous successes is always the first thing that I’ve done to deal with any sort of fear or struggle that I’ve had.

And then the second thing that, that I have kind of just, I think, done intuitively is, yeah, I’d take the time to acknowledge the fears, a very natural response. But it’s actually kind of a cliche, right? We’ve all seen that whole false evidence appearing real acronym, but, you know, I think what we know about cliches is they’re usually rooted in truth. And so if I look back and see all the successes that I’ve had, and, and, and that’s real, then, you know, most of the fears that I’ve had were based on hypothetical things that might potentially happen, but I didn’t have any evidence of happening. In fact, I, I think of it another way. I’ll talk about it as being borrowing problems from the future might be the way that I would phrase it. Things that we fear will happen down the line that more often than not never come to pass. So, you know, I’ve always accepted well, it’s okay to have some fear of the unknown, you know, I’ve earned the right to have some self-confidence and I’m sure you have as well.

And then the third thing that I do as a coping mechanism, when I faced some sort of fear as I start to stack up small, it’s really, you know, the easiest confidence builder. I know, and it’s just having those small successes. So instead of the natural reactions of you know, freezing or overthinking things, whenever something doesn’t go well, the, the way that I will cope with those after I kind of just do a little bit of reflection and try to keep fear and perspective is start to just stack up some small victories that give me a little bit of momentum. That’s why, you know, I talk so often about winning the day. Yay. You know, you don’t have to totally transform a business or whatever else, but the day is what’s in front of you. You can, you know, you, you can achieve what’s on your to-do list. You can, can make a, a little of progress, take a small step towards a bigger goal. And if you stack up those small wins, you start to get momentum. And with that momentum, you get confidence and there’s just a snowball effect.

And then finally, the fourth thing that I do and I can’t really sing the praises of this enough is strengthening my own environment. You know, what I’m reading, who talking to, or who I’m spending time with. I always make sure that I’m purposefully putting myself in an environment that’s going to lift me up and motivate me and push me to succeed. I mean, whether it’s you know, spending time around people, who’ve gotten to where I want to go or reading things about people who’ve overcome adversities or challenges to achieve great things, that sort of thing really pushes me. So, so I mean, that’s part of why I love mastermind groups and I love being involved in coaching and that sort of stuff, both from the delivery side and from being the client, having my own coaches or mentors or being parts of mastermind groups, you know, not only do you learn tactical things or strategic things, the education is great, but the environment, and really it has helped me so much when the norm might be higher than I came in to that interaction with like when I’ve been in a coaching group the norm for that group might be outside of my current grasp before long. It becomes the, you know, the expectation. So I think strengthening the environment’s a big, big thing.

So that’s how I’ve dealt with my fears. Now I can’t promise that it’s going to yield the same results for you, that it has for me. I think every one of us has to have our own kind of process to cope with challenges or fears or struggles when they come along. But I know that these things have served to some benefit with the people that I’ve shared them with in the past. So don’t beat yourself up when you, when, when you fail at something or when you encounter challenges, don’t let fear get the best of you. I mean, let’s face it. We all have them. It’s just part of the process. It’s part of life. So, you know, stay the course towards where you want to go and use, you know, these four steps or your own kind of coping or, or I guess coping mechanism or way of dealing with it as a tool to get you back on track, because let’s face it, you’re pursuing something that the average person probably doesn’t pursue. So you’re going to face some uncommon challenges and you need to have a way to get through them and overcome these fears and these, these small kind of bumps in the road so that you can achieve the things that you want to achieve. And it’s going to probably help you be a better coach and better for the people you serve as well. So just a few tips on dealing with fear. Hopefully they’re of some help. I know they have been for me and I suspect they will be for you as well.

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