Mastering the psychology of change
By SOCH Business Mentors LLP Posted July 18, 2023 in Business & Organisation
By SOCH Business Mentors LLP Posted July 18, 2023 in Business & Organisation
No one likes unpredictability and uncertainty. – Wrong.
True leaders feed on unpredictability, and they thrive on uncertainty.
We don’t stick with our goals and commitments because we’re afraid. Plain and simple.
Well, maybe not simple… See, it’s not always easy to admit that we’re afraid.
Especially it’s not easy to admit that we’re afraid when we’re not exactly sure what we’re afraid of.
In the rest of this article, we’ll look at one deep fear—fears below the surface and often hard to recognize. The ones that often hold people back from the commitments they made and still believe in.
As James Clear says:
Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.
Out of my 25+ years of observing real pain leaders win over and become who they are, I am sharing the one I observe most in our motherland and its sacred soil.
Let us begin understanding why we go for the easy paths.
Did you notice that it is so intoxicating to choose ease? Ease in everything.
The truth is easy paths bring hard life, and hard paths bring easy life. We all know it, yet we do otherwise.
Did you notice that the hard paths (the worthy and defining paths) are full of fears of unknowns, unpredictability and uncertainty?
We mistakenly think that stability and a comfortable path will give us more time to think better and evaluate life better; hence, we will bring better results—nothing further from the truth.
The path less travelled results in the highest success, and dealing with excessive fear of taking paths is bound to upset social connections because they don’t want you to change and be someone they aren’t comfortable with.
I have seen families powerfully once-built businesses lose all and much more because of this fear
I have seen people lose their sense of self-worth and true belonging to themselves because of this fear, which eventually affects all areas of life.
Bearing in mind that this eventually isn’t far away, it may appear, but it is an entire month to may be a year or so.
I saw much worse where people are losing their entire sense of life and, more so, their dignity even because of this fear. So much for easy that people have destroyed if only you care to pause, reflect and realize.
What was easier:
Taking your firm stand to be who you are irrespective of the fear (or) the life that
gets compromised and destroyed in living the easy?
Leaders who thrive on unpredictability and uncertainty decide based on the above. This is where the confident winning streak begins necessary to bring real transformation.
They want to breathe what they want, and they liberate through the actions they believe in to build a future they care about in such a way that speaks who they are.
A decision to face the fear of many disappointing people in the social set-up who have been holding multiple images that you have created or they have created for you, or you believe they have created for you or any other permutation and combination.
This can be an excessive fear, and there is only one way if you want to thrive and be who you are – get over this excessive fear: You have to face it repeatedly and willingly
Repeatedly from your office entrance to your cabin to conference rooms to your home kitchen to your garden shared with neighbours to your shared garage to your bedroom to your living room to your social gathering to any other place or situation that needs you to make that one more move for living real you.
In a short while, this act becomes liberating to leaders, and soon they thrive and, in the process, liberate others they meet who are high potential but are stuck in their pursuits of leadership and life.
Leaders know that they set free themself after the choice. They know that all they have to do is choose their values and who they are. There is no power of choice; hence there is choice first, and then power follows.
This is why many don’t exercise the power of choice because they wait to feel power and courage before they make a choice, and the truth is you get power after the choice, courage even after the choice!
This is why many simply waste their huge potential untapped by slowly accepting decay and self-defeat consumes them sooner than they felt it would.
So how can I get free or unaffected by my fear of disappointing others? Is there a cure for this?
The only way to gain confidence over excessive fear and replace it with it is to prove to your brain that the thing it’s terrified of isn’t dangerous.
Read this again, and it will help.
To do this, you must willingly expose yourself to it and all the fears that come with it. Because it’s only by approaching situations and things we are afraid of, instead of avoiding them, that our brain biology learns to stop fearing them.
This means that if you want to get over your fear of disappointing social images, you have to be willing to do the thing that might lead to them feeling disappointed and tolerate the fear that comes with it.
Sounds good. But how do I do it?
Remember that feelings that come with emotions like fear and anxiety are uncomfortable (can even be painful) but not dangerous… Never
One of the reasons we have such a hard time facing fear is that our tolerance for fear itself is low because we mistakenly assume that because they are bad fear and anxiety, we feel bad, and as a result, we’d avoid them.
If you’re going to get over your fear of disappointing socials, you’ll have to face that fear head-on. This means you will willingly have to feel afraid and tolerate that feeling for a while. I will help you with an easier mighty way how to do this.
We tolerate not because we are good and someone or a situation is bad or powerful over us. We tolerate it because we fear that if we reach out to our truest becoming, then it will hurt our own social identity.
It will hurt those around us, our families, associates and rest who are so comfortable and wired to our social identity, which isn’t oozing from who you truly are or what you want to become should you unleash your potential. You scare yourselves so much that it cripples your senses, and most of the time, you become fragile in decision making.
So keep this in your mind:
Just because emotions we hold sometimes feel bad doesn’t mean it is bad.
Leaders learn to reframe their fear as uncomfortable but not dangerous, and they become more likely to face it instead of impulsively trying to avoid it.
Now, it isn’t my objective nor my professional boundary to take you into the depths of psych. What you should observe in you is by asking these counterintuitive questions and see what you get:
(Yes, nothing has stopped people more than their fear of success itself. But they do a perfect job of keeping you stuck!)
This becoming-ness can be scary for those who see their soul identity with what they created over the years as their mind identity.
The truth and only truth is soul identity.
The mind is full of fear and will not allow you to change, especially if it is connected to an identity that harbours in your mind, which is untrue, false and plain survival centric.
You can never thrive towards abundance unless you realize and face that fear with open arms to get you on the path of realization of who you are. It’s liberating, beautiful and cent-percent worth every fear you face!
You are a born leader, like, everyone else, but realize the above and may even take help in identifying exact blocks beneath the surface that may have held you for years. Give space for CLARITY about the price you have paid and the pain you are living due to the issue.
And in this space, ask questions like How long have you felt this way? (or) How long has this been going on? and How much has this (way of being) cost you?
I hope this sparks a few reflections that can save your business or lives.