A famous trapeze performer and teacher was instructing his students. After full explanations and instruction in this complicated skill, he asked them to demonstrate.
However, one of the students, looking up at the insecure perch upon which he was expected to perform, was suddenly paralyzed with fear. He had a terrifying vision of falling to the ground and being seriously injured. Frozen with fear, he was unable to move a muscle.
"I can't do it! I can't do it!" he cried.
The instructor put his arm around the boy's shoulder and said quietly, "Son, you can do it, and I will tell you how." Speaking slowly and with conviction, he said, "Throw your heart over the bar and your body will follow."
That is what the boy did, and he turned in a performance on the bar high above the ground that surprised even him. He was never afraid again.
If you are human, you will feel fear, said psychologist Tara Brach, author of "Radical Acceptance." But often what makes fear powerful is our resistance to it, such as when we brush it away as if it doesn't really exist, or pretend that we don't feel what we really feel. Instead, Brach said, a better approach is to accept that we are feeling fear (or anger, or whatever emotion you might be struggling with) and acknowledge it. Say to yourself, "Yes, I am afraid of making a mistake at work." Follow up with a statement to yourself such as, "I accept this fear of making mistakes."
That has been my mantra since I followed my dream to own a factory. I was fraught with fear of making mistakes, but somehow convinced myself that making a mistake was a temporary setback, one that I could eventually overcome.
Success usually depends on overcoming our fears: fear of taking a risk, fear of asserting yourself, fear of exposing your deepest self to other people and, ultimately, fear of failure. But for some people, the real fear is — success itself.
