Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself. – Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
I’m never afraid of what I know. – Anna Sewell, Black Beauty
The funny thing about fear is that once you do something you’re afraid of, not only are you no longer afraid of it, but if you’re like me, you forget why you were ever afraid of it in the first place.
Thursday morning I led my first (and hopefully only) meeting of the Compensation Committee of my company’s Board of Directors. I really didn’t want to do it because I didn’t know how it would go. Wednesday night everything just hung in the air. Waiting.
Will they ask impossible questions? Will I mumble my words together too fast and sound like an idiot? Will I be okay? Will I dazzle them in my pencil skirt?
Even on Wednesday, I knew that I would be less anxious on Thursday, once the meeting was over. For better or worse, once the meeting was over, I knew that I would be able to react to what actually happened. The facts.
Wednesday night, there were thousands of potential outcomes. After the meeting took place, there was one specific combination of events that led to one outcome. Even at its worst, one outcome is far easier to process, adjust to, and deal with, than a thousand good and bad potential outcomes.
This is another reminder of why it’s so important to do what scares you. Facing your fear takes you from the thousand uncertain worries to one certain outcome. Fear exists only in our imagination. Good or bad, the outcome is REAL and not just festering in your imagination.
I was thinking about this Wednesday night and almost didn’t write any of it down because I figured I’d write about how nervous I was after the meeting was over. Luckily I recognized that after the meeting, my worried thoughts wouldn’t seem important enough to write about because I would have already faced it and crossed it off my list.
I was right.
Now that I’m on the other side of the meeting (and lived to tell the tale) the experience has been realized. It’s tangible. Accomplished.
I’m learning that as a perfectionist, I tend to minimize my own accomplishments. My brain is a traitor. Once I accomplish something I was afraid of (i.e. presenting complex material to the leaders of my company, for example) the fact that I was able to do it twists in my head and that it was doable makes it somehow not as worthy of credit in my mind. As if my ability to complete a difficult task causes my mind to re-grade difficult tasks to “moderate” or “easy”.
It’s beyond time for me to recognize this, as I’m just now beginning to do. I’m working to correct it because it’s absurd. Other people give me more credit for things that I do than I give myself, which is just silly. If I’m going to become self-employed I’ve got to become my own biggest fan – effective immediately – because I’ve got a full agenda for the rest of 2010 and I refuse to let ME hold me back.
