Hello! Seiiti Arata. Sometimes you feel like starting something, such as a new project, but you don’t know where to start. This is a common problem; your mind is trying to find a perfect solution.
You focus on dealing with so many challenges, and your brain is loaded with tasks and information, which leaves you stuck. This isn’t good because in your attempt to find a perfect path, you are going nowhere. The perfect path does not exist.
Every minute you spend trying to find that ideal way, it is a wasted minute that you will not be able to ever get back.
Your first step to come out of that paralysis is to accept the imperfect and uncertain paths.
As soon as you make the first step, you will get a new perspective. From there you can take the second step.
Don’t worry if your first step wasn’t the right one and you have to go back and try something different. That’s a lesson learned for future experience and better than not starting at all.
As you make your first steps, you become more mature, and you acquire emotional strength, determination, and valuable resources that will come handy in your quest to overcome fear. Remember: you will not be perfect, but you will see improvement.
1. What role does fear play in procrastination?
Fear increases as you use your mental focus to imagine unknown scenarios. The problem is not fear itself, but the using your mental focus the wrong way.
You could use your focus, instead, to imagine positive things, such as planning how to overcome the challenges you will have to face to achieve your goal.
Your focus determines your reality.
I talk a lot about the focus. Concentration is one of the applications and represents its intensity. The quality of focusing is determining where to apply it.
If your focus is set on fear and looking for a perfect path, you are guaranteed to be unproductive. Focusing on fear is limiting and a sign of immaturity.
2. Try to understand where your fear comes from through a rational analysis
Of course, with any new project and decision, there are certain risk factors that must be taken into account. Many times, they justify our “fear paralysis”, and make us assess the situation before moving on.
There are, however, many situations in which our fear is completely irrational. In these cases, fear makes the first step for us, which is wrong. We must change our focus. The point is to let ourselves make that first step, and if it’s necessary, to make mistakes. This is a good way to learn and experiment with the habit of implementing things in our lives.
Fear is one of the most powerful feelings we have, and one of the most unpleasant ones. It helped our ancestors to survive by avoiding dangerous situations.
Nowadays, we face very few, real life-threatening dangers, so in most cases our fear is irrational. Fear is now more harmful to us than good. That’s why we must learn how to overcome irrational fear.
Where does your fear come from?
Are you afraid of disappointing yourself? Are you afraid of failing in public and being laughed at?
Let me tell you something… Every time I prepare a video to upload here on YouTube, I feel afraid. One of my deepest fears is that I will not meet my viewers’ expectations.
It has already happened to me, that after uploading a video that I thought would be interesting, I received comments sating that the video was stupid and useless. This could have made me lose my motivation and quit.
But when I feel fear growing inside of me I take a step back and I remind myself what my motivation is.
I realize that what might have been a boring video for some, had a great impact on others. All people have their own opinions and different stages of development. If a video helps one person, it was worth it.
Do you remember a series of videos I posted about emotional intelligence, assertiveness, and how to say no? They are the episodes 63 through 72 of the series Hello! Seiiti Arata.
I received some comments from people who said they were not interested in this topic. At the same time, by the episode 63, we received hundreds of messages from people of our community who said they struggled to say no. These people motivated me to keep up making content for our course How To Say No.
What I am trying to say is that you will come across fear represented by different voices. It can come as a criticism of your way of thinking and your efforts.
When you notice, you are starting to paralyze, listen to your inner voice and remind yourself what’s the force that motivates you to keep going.
You have the capacity to change your focus. You can set your focus on your fears, or you can set it on what motivates you.
3. An exercise to understand your focus
Stop for a minute and think about what you have set your focus on in the last three months
Pause the video for a moment and think: what have been your main causes for concern lately? What’s that thought that does not let you sleep at night? And what inspires you? What has made you jump out of bed feeling motivated? What brings you hope? What’s your biggest illusion? Is your mental focus set on the risks and the dangers? Or are you focused on your potential, on finding solutions, and on the next steps you are going to make?
Remember: your focus determines your reality.
Fear is not your enemy. Your enemy is paralysis by fear.
You can overcome the paralysis by changing your mental focus.
When we let irrational fear over us, we stop paying attention to the potential we have.
If you are the type of person who constantly feels insecure about making the first step in important projects, I suggest you take a look at our course FOCUS by clicking on the following link: https://arata.se/focuscourse