Dreams and Goals: What are You Afraid of?

Most of my workdays are spent talking to women about their dreams and goals.  We also talk quite a bit about getting stuck in a variety of aspects of our personal and professional lives.  Almost always women get stuck because they are scared of some aspect of their dream.  Maybe it’s the unknown that scares them, or the disapproval of someone else, or failing, or even succeeding.  Sometimes women are afraid of the reactions of their loved ones and sometimes they are afraid of making fools of themselves.

All of these are normal, even understandable fears, yet they aren’t very helpful in getting us to our dreams, goals, and desires.  Fears hold us back, keep us stuck, and generally make our lives rather frustrating.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.  It is completely possible to face our fears, walk through them, and come out the other end alive, well, and thriving.

Get really clear on what your fear is and then ask yourself, “So what?”

How you say?  First, you need to figure out what you are really afraid of.  Dig deep.  Is it social embarrassment, disappointing others, or fear of failure?  Get really clear on what your fear is and then ask yourself, “So what?”  So let’s say your dream is to be an author but your fear is that people will make fun of your writing.  So what?  What is the worst thing that can happen if people make fun of your writing?  You’ll be ashamed or embarrassed?  Will you die of shame or embarrassment?  Not only will you not die from shame, you are actually more than likely to learn and grow from it and know that you can handle some embarrassment without the world coming to an end.

Almost always our fears are in our heads and not really reality based.  So if we face them and we ask ourselves if we can live through the worst-case scenario surrounding our fear, we can almost always move forward and step into that fear.  Brain surgeons had to learn something new in order to become surgeons.  Do you think they were scared?  At some point they had to let the reward of becoming a brain surgeon outweigh the fear of actually harming a patient in order to become skilled at what they do.  Luckily, most of us have fears that aren’t life and death and thus pushing through them probably isn’t as hard as brain surgery!

So figure out what that fear is, say “so what” to yourself regarding your fear, and go out and live that dream!  You won’t regret it.

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC