fear

Monday Spark: Overcome fear with practice and preparation [VIDEO]

by

hadfield on fearA lot of freelancers find their forward momentum is slowed down by fear. Fear of making a cold call. Fear of reaching out to get work from a large or well-known company. Fear of charging more for their services. And so on.

And that’s perfectly natural. It’s normal to feel fear when facing an uncertain outcome.

But you don’t have to let it stop you.

One way to address fear is described really well by astronaut Chris Hadfield in the video below.

He is having a conversation with William Shatner. Hadfield is in the International Space Station and Shatner is at his home in California. And it seems they are big fans of each other’s work.

At one point in the interview, Shatner asks Hadfield how he manages to handle the fear he feels at dangerous moments, like when blasting off from earth.

Read the full post…

Monday Spark: Are you paying attention to the wrong fears?

by

fear of failureThis could be a huge aha moment for you…so keep reading, and then watch the video at the end.

During the video author Karen Thompson Walker talks about fear, and how our fears are often expressed in the form of stories in our minds. If you are scared of earthquakes, you see a short story, or movie clip of that fear in your mind – the shaking, things falling off shelves, buildings falling, people being trapped and crushed.

She then talks about the decisions made by a group of sailors back in 1820. Their ship, the Essex, was sunk by a whale and the crew ended up in the lifeboats, over a thousand miles from the nearest land.

They didn’t aim for the nearest island, because they had heard there were cannibals there. They took a route that was almost twice as long, during which they knew they would probably run out of water and food.

Read the full post…

Monday Spark: What is the worst that could happen?

by

scary space jumpIf Felix Baumgartner asked himself that question before jumping out of his capsule at an altitude of over 24 miles, the answer would be a little grim.

He was literally jumping out into the unknown, aware that a variety of things could go wrong at many stages of his descent.

Clearly, he and his team had worked hard to anticipate problems and risks, and to address and plan for them as best they could.

But still. It was a very risky thing to do. And the worst that could happen was…well, it was as bad as it gets.

So how about you?

Do you have plans to grow your freelance business that feel a little scary?

Do you think about approaching large companies for business, but never actually do it because of a fear of rejection?

Read the full post…