Insights · June 3rd, 2011
3 Steps to Control Your Fear
A guest post by Lucinda Bassett, author of The Solution: Conquer Your Fear, Control Your Future was posted on My Super Charged Life on December 28, 2010
Lucinda posted the following expert from her book.
3 Actions to Help Control Your Fear in the Face of Change
Glen Hiemstra, our expert futurist, designates three actions that will help you control your fear in the face of challenge and change:
- Get Current With the Latest Technology
If you’re not skilled technologically, it’s time to learn some cool networking techniques that will help you connect to other people and the world at large. Then you won’t have the sense that the world is leaving you behind.- Improve Your Personal Communication Skills
Nothing will get you further in life than being able to communicate clearly and directly. Then you can ask for what you want with no confusion.- Complexify Yourself
This made-up word means that you need to discover your array of choices. Glen suggests you find a book on science fiction or management theory and read it. Or find a book on the history of the Great Depression and see how your ancestors coped during difficult times. Whatever attracts you, learn more and become a far more interested and interesting person.Conquer Fear to Increase Your Sense of Importance
People often say, “You know, I’d really like to do something important. I’d like to be part of something that matters.”
If you fear the future, you will ruin your chances of making a difference because you will react to life with paranoia instead of hope. Like a tortoise hiding in its shell, people become so overwhelmed by fear, they are paralyzed, unable to move in any direction. There is a proven neurological response to fear that causes people to shut down at the precise moment when they need to make an important decision. Once the response kicks in, they either can’t make any decision whatsoever, or they make the wrong one based on fearful projections about the future.
The challenge is to stay outside the boundary, Glen tells us, and find some alternatives to unfreeze yourself. You might engage in physical exercise like a hike or a bike ride to try to break up some of the stress. The point is that doing the three actions listed above can open you to change and the possibilities that come with it.
Most successful people do this on a steady basis. Glen regularly tells his groups, “The next twenty years are all about a mission. We’ve become more sustainable on a planetary basis, developing personal economies . . . that are maybe a little bit more modest but mostly just more sustainable, greener, and so forth.”
At some time or another, we all must change the way we think, act, respond, and, most of all, the way we view the world and other people in it. It’s time to stop the thought patterns that keep you stuck, like “I know it won’t work.” If that’s your belief, then it won’t. No excuses or reasons for not doing something, no matter how intricately thought out and expressed, can help you get what you want. Embracing challenge and change and turning them into opportunity is the solution.
Author Bio
Lucinda Bassett, author of The Solution: Conquer Your Fear, Control Your Future and President of the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety. is a nationally acclaimed motivational speaker and best-selling author. Her life-changing techniques have been shared with a variety of major corporations such as AT&T and McDonalds, and professional associations such as LPGA and the AIDS Foundation, as well as many educational institutions. She has appeared on hundreds of national radio and television programs including Oprah, The View, Live with Regis and Kelly, and Robert Schuller’s Hour of Power. Bassett and her emotional wellness solutions have been featured in a variety of high-profile publications including Health, Family Circle, Cosmopolitan, and even the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Writer: Catherine Otten was a Program Manager and Administrator for Futurist.com in 2007 and again in 2010-2011. We lost her to cancer in 2016. An avid outdoors woman and mountain climber, Catherine was especially passionate about the environment.
