Fear declared a form of brain cancer!

Well, not officially but it too can have terminal results.

I had a call from someone I know yesterday about a development they are in as an investor. They’re concerned because things are moving slowly and there is very little communication coming from the developer despite continued requests from the investor.

Now they’re really starting to get concerned. As the concern nags away, it becomes fear. And that was their state of mind when I had the call yesterday. A person fearing the worst.

As I reconstructed the deal with them so I could better understand the history it became evident the investor had gone in with very little due diligence and more importantly had taken no expert advice.

So they weren’t just fearful, they were continually giving themselves an uppercut for what they saw as stupidity. They were constantly ruminating on the past and it was affecting their ‘now’. And the more the ruminating the worse the ‘now’ became.

On closer analysis, I could see how there could be a happy ending. Certain things had to be done and a plan was agreed. What was important is that they agreed to draw a line in the sand, not look backward and give themselves a little slap on the face whenever they found their mind dwelling on the past.

When I got off the phone it got me thinking about FEAR.

There’s a fair sprinkling of that out there at present. It started as a fear of catching a virus and now it’s moved on to the fear of an unknown economic outcome.

That prompted me to refer a section in “Practicing the Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. To quote “The psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger……This type of psychological fear is always something that might happen, not something that is happening now. You are in the here and now, while your mind is in the future. This creates an anxiety gap”.

How is your ‘now’ going? How fear-proof are you?

I would love to have total recall – well, maybe not everything. But what if we could list in a column every fear we have ever had in our lives. It would be a long list. And next to it we list every one of those fears that came to fruition. I guarantee it would be a shorter list.

Now is not a time for fear. It is a time for maintaining clarity, focus, planning for coming out of this more informed, more determined, with an enhanced appreciation of what ‘life’ means to us.

If you find fear sneaking into your thinking try these three simple steps.

1. Name Your Fear
Naming your fear will let you externalise it. We often worry because we’re so entangled in the problem.

2. What is the worst-case scenario?
Now that you have named and externalised the fear ask yourself “What is the worst outcome that could happen?” State the answer.

3. Ask yourself “Can I handle it?”
We humans, are incredibly resilient. Could you survive that scenario? Could you then move on and recover?

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