I just attended a leadership conference that was hosted by the Willow Creek Association. The Global Leadership Summit was a two-day event that featured some very powerful lessons on how to improve your leadership skills and the influence you can have on yourself and others. I’ve been to a lot of leadership development events, but this one was one of the best I’ve been to in a long time.
During one presentation, the speaker hit me with a statement that some of you may have already heard.
Freedom is on the other side of fear.
That is a very powerful message to most everyone, including leaders. Your fears can take control of your thoughts and then your actions so much that they control your life. You can literally lose your freedom by allowing your fears to control you. If you can control your fears, you can gain freedom in your life. If you can control your fears, you can gain freedom in your career.
When I heard that message it reminded me of a book, Beyond Fear, co-written by Don Miguel Ruiz and Mary Carroll Nelson. The premise of the book is that the human mind is made to dream, and most dreams are based on some type of fear. We let the fears talk to us in our minds and it feeds our emotions with those based on fears. The voices inside our head are so loud that we cannot listen to all of them. But we can change what they are saying to us.
The first step is to be aware that your mind is filled with thousands of voices talking to you all the time, and all at once. Ruiz refers to these voices as the mitote, the chaos of a thousand different voices all trying to talk at once in the mind. The problem is that for every voice that wants one thing, there are others that want the exact opposite. These voices are what causes us to doubt ourselves, to have low self-esteem, to be afraid of being hurt, afraid of what others will say about us. The mitote is the chaos that creates our fears.
How do we get to the other side of fear?
First you need to be aware of where the fear is coming from. It is coming from the voices inside you that you are listening to. The voices that you are agreeing with. Second you need to be a warrior to fight these fears, for a warrior mindset is needed to gain control of your emotions. And third once you are aware and willing to fight, you need to stalk every emotion in your body. You need to be constantly stalking your emotions to see if they serve you well or not.
Awareness of thoughts, fears and emotions allows you to step back and see what they are doing to you. Do they serve a purpose in your life? Do they make you feel good? If so keep them. If they do not have any purpose in your life you need to throw them away, discard those emotions. Being aware gives you a chance to reflect on all of your emotions.
Discarding your emotions can be difficult. That is why you need to be a warrior. Willing to fight for yourself to make your life better. Once you are willing to fight for yourself you can then act against your fears. Because fear is an emotion that most likely does not serve you well in your life. Some fear is good, as is basic instinct to protect yourself. But being afraid of something just because you made an agreement with that voice in your head is never good.
Once you are aware and are willing to fight like a warrior you then need to stay on top of your emotions at all times. When you are feeling doubt, when you are upset, when you are afraid, ask yourself why do I feel this way? What is causing me to be afraid? I believe that most of the time, the answer will be because of something that is not real. It is something that you convinced yourself was real but isn’t. Once you can do that it becomes easy to discard these emotions and these fears. It sounds easy and it is easy, but it is hard to do it right all the time. Just start one emotion at a time and be vigil.
Fears limit your success if you allow them to.
If you control them there is no limit to your success. In my line of work, I see a lot of young leaders afraid to take chances, take risks, to make mistakes. I also heard last week that the road to success is paved with mistakes handled well. Those that handle their mistakes well are not afraid to make that mistake in the first place. Those that are afraid of making the mistake do not handle them well.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Learn from them and try again until you get it right. That’s how life works. When you first started walking you fell down. You got up and tried it again until you got it right. As a leader you need to push the envelope to be successful. That means you will make mistakes. Don’t be afraid. Because fear is not in the equation of success.
Freedom is on the other side of fear. Free yourself of the fears you have created in your mind to allow you to enjoy a successful life. Don’t let your mitote control how you live. Take control of your voices and only listen to those that serve you well.
If you are willing to free yourself from your fears, then you may be onto something here.
Allyn Vaughn
Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash