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FEAR – Embrace or Avoid?4 min read

Our word for today is fear, and fear has two meanings. The first one is what shies us away from taking action. We’re fearful of something, we’ve never done it before so we avoid it. Fear in this case means false evidence appears real.  

How many times have you built up anxiety about some event, something you had to do, where it created a boiling in your stomach and you just avoided it? You possessed an overwhelming sense of anxiety and stress. And when you finally took the action and did whatever it was, you realized it wasn’t really that bad. False evidence appears real, 99% of the things we worry about never happen. Most of this fear is right between our two ears. We create a story in our head and we build up this anxiety about it. 

Another way of looking at fear is face everything and rise. Face it, use the fear, embrace the fear, instead of having the fear create avoidance in your behavior. Embrace it as an opportunity to get better, to get stronger. When going to the gym, you have to work out those muscles to make them strong, the same thing with becoming persistent, and taking action in achieving success. We have to go outside our comfort zone. We have to face our fears.  

Interesting enough I’m sure most of you are familiar with Navy Seals and hell-week. Hell-week is where drill instructors put navy recruits through absolute hell. It lasts almost six days — Sunday evening to Friday morning — during which students run more than 200 miles, often with boats on their heads, swim, do hours of physical training with logs, and numerous other brutal evolutions.                                                                  

The percentage of people that actually go through hell week and make it to the end is about 25%. If there are 100 recruits, that’s only 25 remaining, 75 of them tapped out, they rang the bell. There’s a particular time of hell week where the largest percentage tap out and quit! It’s not when they’re getting shin splints and spraining ankles carrying big heavy logs, it’s not when they’re in the cold California water shivering through the night.  

The quitting takes place one particular time when the sun’s slowly setting at Coronado Beach, California, a beautiful bright orange ball into an ocean that is nice and calm. All the Navy Seals are locked arms, all in a row. The drill instructor in a nice calm slow steady voice is saying, look at that beautiful sunset. Look at that calm ocean, enjoy it, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy it. He puts him in a state of calm with the sunset, the water, and the beautiful colors.  

And then he starts yelling, in about one minute, when that sun goes down, you are mine for the next few days and I am going to run you to the ground. I am going to break you, but if any of you want to go back there and take a nice hot shower and get a cup of coffee now is your time to ring the bell.  

That’s the one time that most of them rang the bell and tapped out. Why? Not because they were feeling the physical pain, but because he put fear in their head and it took them down. 

Think about that. You want to avoid fearfalse evidence appears real. Or do you want to embrace fearFace everything and rise. The choice is yours. Embrace your fear, align yourself with someone that can encourage you, provide you the courage, faith, and belief in yourself for you to persevere. And that could be the one thing that will help you get to the next level. 

COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, professional speaker, and trainer. He is a proud ActionCOACH Business Coaching Franchise partner and the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com