Editor’s note: This is a guest post written by Doug Heacock of Underpants Office.
It is a rare person who lives without fear of one kind or another. You may fear heights, or spiders, or new situations, or rejection–whatever your fears may be, you can either let those fears form boundaries beyond which you can’t move or grow, or you can face them head-on and allow them to become opportunities to move into new places in your life. The choice is truly yours.
Fear can be paralyzing, literally, for some people. As a camp counselor many years ago, I helped teach rappelling to high-school students, and there were some who were eager to step off the edge of the cliff and experience the thrill of zipping down on a rope. But there were some who were so afraid of heights (or more specifically, of falling), that no matter how much I tried to assure them that the rope would not break, and that they could completely control their rate of descent, they simply froze up and could not take that first step over the edge.
Fear is not always a bad thing. There are obviously some things about which we should be afraid and in which we should exercise appropriate caution. But if our fears control us, or prevent us from taking certain risks, we allow those fears to define us, to limit us only to courses of action that we deem sufficiently safe, and as a result, many of us never achieve our potential–or we cheat ourselves out of the richness that life could otherwise hold for us.
1. Realize that everyone is afraid of something.
I am the only person in my household who is not deathly afraid of spiders. If a spider of any size or species turns up anywhere in my house and my wife or one of my children sees it, I have to drop whatever I am doing to deal with it. Once, while I was out of town on a business trip, I got a phone call from my wife, who was in a state of panic because there was a spider in the kitchen. (I had to make arrangements for a neighbor to come over and kill it.) Spiders don’t bother me, but if a wasp gets anywhere near me, I simply have to leave. On one occasion, I jumped from the top of a twenty-foot ladder while painting a house, fearing a wasp that was hovering nearby far more than the risk of injuring myself seriously by jumping off the ladder.
Others may not fear the same things you fear, but everyone fears something, and understanding this can help you not to feel isolated in your fear. You’re not alone, and the fact that you are fearful in some area doesn’t make you a weak person.
Try this: find someone to talk to about your fears–you may find that someone else has faced the same fears as you, and has found a way through them that can help you.
2. You don’t have to overcome your fear all at once.
When my daughters were very young–still toddlers–we enrolled them in swimming lessons with a friend who taught children as young as six months old to swim. She didn’t do this by just tossing the kids into the water on the first day. She gradually introduced them to the water, holding them and allowing them to get used to it, teaching them how to float on their backs and so on, until eventually, they were able to jump in and swim on their own.
If you are fearful of public speaking, for example, you may not want to begin addressing this fear by booking a speaking gig in front of a thousand people. As a high-school student, I was abnormally shy, so as you might imagine, my sophomore speech class was a serious challenge for me. My first speech assignment was to introduce myself to the class with a five-minute talk about myself, and after about two minutes of stuttering through my notes in abject terror, my field of vision literally began to narrow, and I thought I might actually black out on the spot, so I just stopped and went back to my seat without finishing. I got an “F” for that assignment, and my teacher, knowing that I was really struggling with stage fright, asked me come see her after school. She was understanding and encouraging, and let me give her my speech one-on-one, and the next time I had to give a speech, I did much better. I went on to study broadcast journalism in college, which involved reporting and occasionally anchoring our college television newscast, and one of my first jobs after college involved weekly talks to groups of teenagers. These days I face a crowd of several hundred people every week, and although I still get a few butterflies now and then, I’m far more at ease than I was that day in high school. But it didn’t happen all at once. Remember: baby steps are okay.
Try this: write down something you are afraid of, some fear you want to overcome, and make a list of three small steps you think you CAN make to begin facing up to your fear. Choose one and do it tomorrow.
3. Approach your fears as opportunities for growth.
You don’t really want to be afraid, do you? If you think about what your life might be like if you weren’t afraid of that thing, whatever it is, you know that things would be better. If you look beyond the fear to the benefits of overcoming the fear, you may see a world that might just be worth taking some risk to live in.
Take a few minutes and make a list of the pros and cons of dealing with the thing that you’re afraid of:
- What are the potential benefits of overcoming that fear?
- How might your life be different if you weren’t afraid of it?
- What would you be free to do that you aren’t free to do now because of your fear?
- What do you have to lose by giving up that fear?
If you can objectively appraise the advantages to moving past your fear, you may come to see your fear as an opportunity to grow. The adage, “nothing ventured, nothing gained,” and all of its various permutations (e.g., “no guts, no glory”) are based on the time-tested principle that we can’t grow if we don’t allow ourselves to be stretched. You know this is true in the physical realm–a muscle that isn’t regularly used eventually atrophies and becomes useless–and it is no less true in other areas of our lives.
Try this: write a paragraph or two about how your life will be different when you overcome that fear that has dogged you for so long, and why the potential benefits are worth some risk.
4. Be careful how you talk to yourself about what you fear.
Sometimes we are fearful of what we imagine might happen if we step outside of our comfort zone. It’s all too easy to convince yourself that your reasons for being afraid are all valid. I once heard a wise man say, “More important than what happens to us is how we talk to ourselves about what happens to us.” This is so true–we can imagine all sorts of negative things when we contemplate something we’re afraid of, but this doesn’t make those things real.
It is entirely natural to be fearful of the unknown. You don’t know what might happen if you make that phone call to the person who intimidates you, or you’re not sure how the boss might react if you really speak your mind. Why not go ahead and make a list of the possible outcomes? What do you really have to lose if you take the risk? Seeing that list on paper may help you see how irrational some of your fears really are. Don’t forget to include in your list the possibility that things might turn out for the better.
Try this: instead of convincing yourself to believe the worst about something you fear, try imagining the best.
5. Failure isn’t necessarily the end of the world.
If there is one fear that is common to nearly all of us, it is the fear of failure. While there are some scenarios in which failure is potentially devastating, or perhaps even life-threatening, most of the time it isn’t. Yet the fear of failure short-circuits ideas, stymies careers and deprives us of experiences and opportunities that could enrich our lives.
If you have an idea and don’t try it for fear of failure, you’ve just given someone else the chance to try it instead–and someone else will, if you don’t. Thomas Edison is often credited with the invention of the incandescent light bulb in 1878, but the truth is that the light bulb was actually invented decades earlier. In 1802, Sir Humphrey Davy discovered that electricity could make a thin strip of platinum glow and give off light, but because platinum was so expensive, he didn’t develop the idea much further. In 1840, James Bowman Lindsay put a platinum filament into a glass bulb and removed most of the air so that the filament wouldn’t oxidize, and thus the first working light bulb was created. But again, the expense of platinum prevented him from producing the bulb commercially. Edison came along more than 30 years later, bought the previous patents, and experimented with thousands of different materials for filaments that could be commercially produced, eventually developing a filament from carbonized bamboo that would last for 1200 hours. He didn’t stop there–Edison went on to design an electric power distribution system that would make the use of light bulbs practical and profitable.
One could argue that all but one of Edison’s attempts to perfect the electric light bulb was a failure. Edison considered each failed filament to be an important lesson–he had learned yet another material that would not work. But perhaps more importantly, he didn’t let the road blocks that others had met deter him.
Our failures can be dead-ends or learning experiences that can lead us to try other routes to success, depending on how we treat them. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” That’s a very old saying, but it’s great advice.
Try this: if you’re afraid to fail at something, make yourself a list of the things you can try if you do fail at first. It never hurts to plan ahead. (They put redundant systems on the Space Shuttle for this very reason.)
So what are you afraid of?
Doug Heacock writes about how to be more successful working at home at Underpants Office.
译文:
五种战胜恐惧的方法
编者注:这是来自内衣公司职员Doug Heacock的邮件.
世间极少无所畏惧之人.你可能惧高,怕蜘蛛,对陌生的环境感到不安,或害怕拒绝他人，无论你的恐惧来自什么，你可以让恐惧形成堡垒将你深深围困寸步难行,也可以正面迎击，将恐惧当做迈向新生活的契机,一切都是你的选择。
对有些人来说恐惧足以让他们瘫在地上。多年前我作为学校顾问教高中生速降。有些学生迫不及待的想踏上悬崖边，感受攀着绳索蜿蜒向下的刺激。但有部分人学生极度畏高（更具体的说是怕摔下悬崖），无论我如何保证绳子不会断，他们完全可以控制降落的速度，他们就是害怕，都不敢走到悬崖边。
恐惧也不总是件坏事情。显然有些事我们应该感到害怕，应该学会谨慎对待。但如果让恐惧占了上风，阻止我们进行适当的冒险，而我们也允许他把自己的手脚束缚住，只在足够安全的行动范围内活动，我们中的很多人将永远远离成功-或者我们可以欺骗自己，失之东隅，收之桑榆，虽然生活没有带给我们富足但肯定有其他的礼物等待着我们。
1.要知道每个人都有"天敌"。
我是家里唯一一个不那么害怕蜘蛛的人。如果我妻子或孩子在家里发现了蜘蛛，不管他有多大个头，我都得放下手边的事情去把它处理掉。有一次，我外出公干，突然接到妻子的电话，她的声音显得惊慌失措，原来是因为她发现厨房里有只蜘蛛（我只能挂电话让一位邻居来帮忙消灭蜘蛛）。蜘蛛不会带给我很大的困扰，但如果是黄蜂，我一定落荒而逃。有一次我在刷墙，感觉有一只黄蜂正朝我飞过来，为了不让他继续靠近，有机会蛰我，我从二十英尺高的楼梯上跳了下来。
别人对你害怕的东西可能并不感到恐惧，不过人人都有“天敌”，明白了这一点你就不用担心只有你一个人害怕这个东西了。你不会是一个人，并且对某些事物怀有恐惧不意味着你是弱者。
小贴士：找个人聊聊你的恐惧-不准你会发现某个人曾经和你一样害怕某个东西，通过他们，或许你可以找到方法克服恐惧。
2.不要想一步登天彻底消除恐惧。
我的女儿们还在襁褓里时候,就跟着我的一个教六个月大的孩子游泳的朋友学习。第一天我朋友没有把孩子们往水里扔。她一步步让孩子们认识水，熟悉水，教他们怎样在水上漂浮，到最后孩子们都学会了游泳。
如果你害怕在公共场合演讲，比方说，不想在一千人面前做演说。高中时候，我非常内向，如你所想，大二的演讲课给我带来不小的挑战。我第一次的演讲任务是在同学面前做个五分钟的自我介绍，我在恐惧中结结巴巴地讲了两分钟，我的眼界确实太狭隘。我觉得自己要在讲台上昏过去，所以我中断了演讲回到自己的位子上。那次作业我只拿了“F”，老师知道我真的是在同舞台作斗争，他让我课后去找他。老师很善解人意,还给我鼓励。他让我在他面前演讲，一个接一个。等到第二次我必须做演讲的时候，我表现得好多了。我大学继续学习广播新闻学，包括报道和停播校园新闻，毕业后我的第一份工作就要求和青少年进行数周的交谈。这段日子里每个星期我都要面对数百人。虽然有时候我想变成蝴蝶飞走，但比起高中时候我已近从容多了。这种改变不是一蹴而就。记得：即使只是一小步的迈进也是进步。
建议：把害怕的东西，想克服的恐惧写下，列出你认为可以做到的开始直面恐惧的三个小步骤。选择一个明天就开始尝试。
3.把恐惧当做成长的良机
你真的不想害怕的，对不对？是否想过如果你不害怕了，生活会变成什么样。无论如何，你知道生活将更加美好。如果你能看到克服恐惧后的好处，或许你会发现值得冒险的世界。
花几分钟列出消除恐惧的利弊:
- 克服恐惧后可以获取哪些潜在利益？
- 如果不再害怕，你的生活将会产生怎样的不同？
- 哪些事是你因为害怕而不能随心所欲去做的？
- 不再害怕之后，你会失去哪些？
如果你能客观的列出克服恐惧的好处，那么你离把恐惧当做成长机会的境界不远了。谚语有言，“不入虎穴，焉得虎子。”许多类似的谚语（例如：无小人，无君子）都经过时间的考验。不舒展筋骨，我们就无法长大。在人体器官中，确实存在这种情况，肌肉不经常使用会变得越来越小，最后失去作用。这种真实性在生活中不见得会打折扣。
建议：用一两段文字描述克服囚禁你许久的恐惧后生活将产生的不同，以及这种结果值得冒风险的原因
4.留心自己对恐惧的阐述方式。
有时候我们害怕一旦踏出舒适区，担心会变成现实。要让自己相信有理由感到害怕是件简单的事。我听一位智者说过，“比起已发生过的事情，用何种方式告诉自己发生了什么更为重要。”毋庸置疑-当想到害怕的事的时候，我们会联想到许多糟糕的画面，但是这些不会因此而成现实。
对未知感到恐惧完全是人类的自然反应。你无法预知给威胁自己的人挂电话会有什么结果，你也不能确定老板会对你真实地说出自己的想法做何反应。为什么不高瞻远瞩，把所有可能的结果列出来？把冒险带来的损失列出来？这张清单或许可以帮你看清恐惧来得有多无理。别忘了把可能带来的好处写上。
建议：不要把事情往坏处想，要往好的方面想。
5.失败并不是世界末日。
如果说有一种恐惧为人类所共有，那一定是害怕失败。在一些戏剧中，失败意味着潜在的毁灭，或甚至是生命遭受威胁，但多数时候并非如此。害怕失败，害怕思想短路，害怕挑战性的工作，让我们失去丰富生活的机会和体验。
如果害怕失败而不敢将想法付诸实践，你就把机会拱手让给了别人-你不做，有其他人会做。托马斯·爱迪生被认为在1878年发明了白炽灯，可真像是早在数十年前灯泡就已经被发明。1802年，大卫·汉弗莱发现电流可以使铂丝发光，但是铂太昂贵，他没有继续深究。1840年，詹姆斯·鲍曼·林德赛把铂灯丝固定在玻璃罩里，为了不让铂丝氧化，他抽出玻璃罩里大部分的空气，第一个灯泡产生。然而，铂那昂贵的价格再次成为阻碍，詹姆斯没能把它商业化。爱迪生的实验比前人晚了不止30年，通过借鉴前任的经验和数千次的实验，终于在众多材料中找到可适用于生产的灯丝，取材于炭化竹可连续发光1200小时的灯丝。爱迪生没有浅尝辄止，他继续设计了一个分流系统，保证了灯泡的寿命和实用性。
人们会怀疑一切事物，但绝不会认为爱迪生完善灯泡的尝试是个败笔。爱迪生把每次失败都当做重要的一课-这种材料他了解过，不适用。不过更为重要得是，他没有让阻碍前人的困难挡住自己的脚步。
失败可以是终结，也可以是带领我们走上另一条成功之路的经验，关键看我们怎样看待。"一次不行，再接再厉。"这句谚语虽年代久远，却不失为一个良方。
建议：如果你害怕失去，那就把自己想成是个出师不利的人，这种情况下你能做些什么，把它们列出来。高瞻远瞩永远不会错。（出于这种考虑，科学家在航空飞机上安装了“多余”系统）。
那么，您都害怕什么呢？
Doug Heacock 在在内衣公司的网页上发表了如何成为在家工作的成功人士的文章。