Feeling Fear when Doing New Things

I’m doing some study to uplevel my coaching skills (because I love coaching!) and each month we are given new assignments. This month’s assignment is to run a group coaching call and the thought of it has me running for the hills because of all the thoughts and questions my brain is offering me on repeat like:

- I’ve never done one before.
- You’re going to make mistakes.
- What if you muck it up?
- What if you don’t know what to do?
- What if…

Needless to say, they are not helpful.

Many of us struggle with doing something new in our lives whether it’s a new job, starting a new business or talking to someone new. Our brains love to create fear and drama around the unknown. For some people, doing something new is exciting and there’s minimal fear surrounding it but for many of us, it brings up feelings of uncertainty and doubt.

Both responses are human and normal depending on how we think. The problem with getting stuck in fear and doubt is sometimes we shy away from taking on new challenges, or we unnecessarily waste a lot of time and energy worrying about it only to discover we can do new things.

So, how can we get comfortable with the unknown? A simple strategy you can use to help manage your stress when you’re trying something new is to introduce a reality check for your fears. What that can look like is going to the worst-case scenario about what could happen (because your brain is doing that anyway) and questioning the likelihood of that happening. Yeah sure it might happen but in reality, is it likely?

Applying this strategy to my worry about not knowing what to do in a group coaching call shows me that whilst it's possible, based on all the thousands of hours of coaching I’ve done with clients, it’s not likely. And this realisation helps ground me back in reality where I remember all the times when I’ve been put in new situations, and I worked it out.

So, next time when you find yourself avoiding or hesitating to do something new try it out and notice how you make it so much easier for yourself to do the thing.

If you want to learn more about how to stop stressing so much about doing new things, book your free Time Design session with me by clicking on the clock!