Irrational fear should be treated as your number one enemy and every time you detect it, you must rationally deter it immediately. This of course is not the case when your physical life is in danger. Everything else can be comfortably treated as irrational fear response, because it has no other purpose, except to create the state of confusion and paralysis.
It is your job as a manager to effectively balance expectations from many different angles and due to complexity of your job description, it may be very likely that you could experience irrational fear on a regular basis. This is not an encouraging emotion to have swirling your mind at times when you need clear head and confident demeanour free of negative thoughts and emotions. However, regardless of what you actually need, the reality on the ground provides different emotional outlooks depending on types of environmental pressures you are exposed to. Particularly during tough times, when things are not enfolding as planned. In order to analyse this observation a little better, let’s use the following examples:
- Management of expectations
The key aspect of your job performance relates to effectiveness in which you are able to manage expectations of key people in your organisation, followed by your customers and other stakeholders. By the very nature of your job complexity – these expectations can be relentless and expansive. Relentless means that expectations imposed on to you are constant, regardless of your personal efficiency, because their intensity never drops down. In fact, the more you produce, the more you will be asked to produce and that can be extremely tiring and demotivating, thus leading to an array of negative emotions, inclusive of irrational fear.
When we talk about expansive expectations, we must acknowledge that they never remain the same, but instead they mutate in direct correlation to changing situations on the ground. As all this invokes tones of unknown, one cannot dismiss the fact that regardless of how mentally strong you appear to be, you will inevitably fall victim of irrational fear at some point.
Expectations sit at the very centre of all inter human relationships. Whatever interactions we have with others will automatically generate expectations. The quality of these interactions will depend on whether these expectations are met or not. he only way to cultivate meaningful relationships is to find out specific expectations at the outset. This will prevent second guessing and possible problems, if things are not crystal clear from the beginning. When I say problems, I mean it is very likely that you may experience fearful responses caused by second guessing the very needs of people you wish to build meaningful relationships with, if their expectations are not known to you from the beginning.
- Management of change
Management of change represents the ability to make complex strategic changes at times when most needed, without causing major disruptions in daily operational processes. In nature – change is a constant phenomenon. Nothing stands still and everything is prone to some form of change or evolution – hence survival in any form means embracing and mastering the art of change. Those who resist the notion of change are destined for self destruction, because evolutionary processes are pressing forward, regardless of who’s onboard. The same applies to companies and their life cycles. The ability to embrace timely and highly constructive change provides living juices necessary for that company to thrive. If the company is market/customer orientated, it will thrive. In order to keep up with that trend, this company must embrace the notion of change, which can be very testing and stressful for majority of people working in it.
The direct consequence of these types of self imposed pressures lead to creation of irrational fears and the only way to keep them under control is to learn to calm and relax your mind and body at all times. This will allow you to control intensity of negative emotions, by being able to positively influence your thoughts and emotions. With regular practise of a number of cognitive exercises, you will be able to reach the state of superior mental composure, even when under severe external pressures. You will be able to manifest sharp thinking, resolute decision making, increased creativity and productivity.
- Effective communication
This is important cognitive tool that will help you exert even greater control over your already strained mental states by giving you necessary clarity to compose clearer picture of what you need to do. How so, you may be asking yourself. Well that’s because clear and structured communication will grant you with opportunity to receive clear and detailed feedback, which you need to prepare exact strategy required for managing specific expectations of your targeted audiences, whomever they may be. Whether they are within your company or outside. In fact, you cannot communicate congruently, until you are totally congruent from within yourself, which comes from your ability to calm your mind and body at will.
The mental clarity creates positive environment for clear and logical thinking, which are key prerequisites for effective communication. In return, good communication further enhances your mental clarity, which in turn leads to greater mental and physical congruency that closes the feel good loop. When you align these factors together, you are starting to create benefits stated above.
Now let’s explore this further and let’s use a life like scenario, which may or may not apply to you directly.
You may be very good at whatever you do by knowing your current job inside out, but how do you react in unexpected and difficult to handle situations? What do you do when you are faced with criticism related to not meeting “expectations” of your pears. How does that make you feel? I guess, you may experience sudden attacks of irrational fear, which might even paralyse your whole being. This is perfectly normal reaction, particularly when you didn’t expect such development, because you were under the impression that you were handling everything well. But repetition of same or similar developments can cause you to underperform in time, due to accumulated and not handled irrational fear response.
In fairness, no one can prepare you to handle sudden emotional incidents, because it requires extensive knowledge of human psychology and in particular the part that relates to conditioned thinking. This is the cradle of expectations, which is usually reinforced with dominant organisational culture that dictates everything you are expected to do in your organisation. However, here is the catch. What about you wishing to propose something that in your view will bring considerable benefits, but does not fully comply with currently acceptable organisational norms? In such situations, due to prevalent element of uncertainty, it is quite possible that you might experience nagging sensations of fear, in whichever way it may appear to be. Because you might feel extremely uncomfortable to air this idea for not being able to accurately guess the response of your peers.
This is totally natural response that usually occurs every time you experience conflicting feelings about something and you consciously decide to push it away and even negate it by not giving it your full support. You will create an internal inferno, because your subconscious mind will not rest, until you finally deal with this dilemma conclusively. In here we are talking about either you accepting that idea and choosing to present it confidently and professionally, regardless of what may come out of it. Or you will let it go for good, without even testing as to what could potentially come out of it. Dilemma is here and unless you take decisive action to either support it or drop it, your subconscious mind will go into overdrive (anxiety) and will keep you fully alert, until you have resolutely dealt with that problem.
If you look into this more closely, you will notice two things. The irrational fear of your peers has shattered your self respect to that level that you have chosen not to present it, so to keep your current status quo. In some way, this can be interpreted as a natural response, because in your own mind, this perceived problem has intrinsically grown so big (much bigger than it is) that it will require almost super human strength to go against it. This is the power of fear that can grip you so hard (if you allow it to grow unobstructed) that you will find it extremely difficult to counter act upon it.
On the other hand, if you drop this idea, how can you live with yourself knowing that you have had a great solution for acute problem, but due to your irrational fear you have dropped it down. Either way, it is very likely that you may not see a win situation regardless of the option you chose, because you observe from positions of known. This means the more you dwell and observe your options from positions you know, you will hesitate, because outcomes will almost always work against you. This is due to fearful response that will block all your mental ability to see and feel beyond your currently available spectrum of mental operations. The more you get sucked into fear, without decisively acting to neutralise it – this type of problem evasion will lead you to procrastinate and being fearful of decision making.
As a manager, decision making is a constituent part of your job and therefore, you must learn to trust yourself and your senses unconditionally, regardless of what happens outside and how others may react. Because if you succumb to excessive external influence, you will find yourself immersed into deep end of fear, marred by debilitating procrastination and lack of decisive decision making.
What is the solution and what can you do to achieve more congruent and empowered state of mind?
The first thing you must work on yourself is to learn to be more self sensitive. This means that you must develop complex understanding of what is specifically going on within your mental, emotional and physical body. You must become aware of specific emotions you are experiencing at any time and how they make you feel. If for some reason your current thoughts and emotions wrongly depict your experiences of external reality, you will immediately know that something is not right with you and that you are not congruent. Something along your mental, emotional, energy and physical body is not aligned. In most cases the key culprit is negative thinking that promotes negative emotional states. These are the first two mental faculties you must grow to be aware of at all times.
The next step that follows is to learn the art of complete mind and body relaxation. When you achieve this part and you are now able to calmly observe your environment, you must learn to bring yourself to be in NOW (present moment). The objective is to focus all your energy on this moment and what is relevant for you to do here and now. The correct and productive use of every moment will guarantee you success in whatever you do, regardless of what you may experience in your present moment. So never waste a moment, because that’s all you will ever have. When you achieve this level of awareness of being in the moment – you will now be in a position to define your exact thoughts and emotions and how they correlate to your external reality.
If they are not relevant to what you are experiencing in Now (present moment), you must choose different and perhaps more empowering thoughts and emotions that will motivate you to take action to produce results you desire. In this way, you will always be in charge of your prevalent moods and in turn that will put you in charge of your actions in given situations. Added benefit is that you will always be super sensitive to any unplanned spikes of fear, which if necessary can be neutralised at the outset.
If you don’t learn these powerful techniques, the danger is that you will be forever governed by fear and its ally – limiting beliefs. So the best way forward is to feel the fear and go against it anyway and see where you will end up at that point.
If you wish to learn more on how to heal yourself from devastating effects of unbalanced or reduced energy flow in your bio-energy field caused by excessive fear, please visit our website: www.energy-savvy.com and in particular we would recommend you try our 20 weeks energy and mental healing programme “The Hour of Power”, in which we will teach you various energy generation exercises, mind reframing techniques and routines. Alternatively, you may contact us via email on: info@energy-savvy.com and we’ll be more that happy to assist you in any way we can.
