In a recent teleseminar call, I talked about the idea that your fear isn’t a bad thing – it’s trying to do some very important and useful stuff for you (you can download the call recording here). Sometimes your fear is trying to protect you from lack or attack by alerting you to avoid a potential threat. And sometimes your fear is trying to point you in the direction of your most authentic dreams and values, and encourage you to get out of your comfort zone and grow. We’ve all heard Susan Jeffers’ famous phrase, “feel the fear and do it anyway,” but surely there are times when that’s not a good idea? It’s all very well if you feel the fear and take the leap and impress the socks off everyone, become an instant success, and make lots of money doing what you love with all the people who most inspire you. But nobody wants to feel the fear and make a move that’s a total blunder, use up your life savings, lose your house, and have your wife and children divorce you in disgust. So, in turbulent times, when there are big challenges and big opportunities, and a lot is on the line, how do you decide when to take that leap of faith and when to hang back?
Stressed people make bad decisions
This is kind of common sense, but what’s really fascinating is the predictable and irrational directions that we choose when we’re stressed. Psychologists have found that, when we’re stressed, we become more conservative when we’re choosing between opportunities that have the potential for very positive outcomes, and we become willing to take greater risks on ventures that have the potential for very negative outcomes and losses. So essentially, when we’re stressed, we put a lid on our chances of happiness and success, and we open ourselves to greater risks! It’s back-to-front, another example of the way that fear gets us more of what we don’t want.
The explanation that the researchers give for this phenomenon is that, “under stressful conditions, we fall back on automatic, lower-level thought processes and we are less able to utilize more rational and deliberative thinking to assist in making decisions.”
When we’re stressed, our primal, unconscious stress response takes over and shuts down some physiological and mental functions in order to enhance others. The stress response enables you to fight harder and run faster, but most of the problems we deal with on a daily basis can’t be solved by fighting or running. Because the stress response is designed to ensure your physical survival in a situation where you’re under physical attack, it causes you to have blinkered thinking where you’ll focus on the threat and have great difficulty seeing anything outside of the problem arena, and it triggers a compulsion to react urgently and impulsively. Basically, you become all sail and no rudder This is useful if you’re being mugged, but it’s a disaster if you’re in this frame of mind while you’re considering whether to pursue a particular financial investment, when to leave your job and start your own business, or how to approach a difficult conversation with someone who’s important to you.
If you’re scared and stressed right now, don’t be taking any leaps of faith, because you’re likely to delete opportunities with the potential for great outcomes from your awareness and leap straight out of the frying pan and into the fire. Instead, learn how to tame your primal stress response and claim back your calm, clear, resourceful mind so that you can think both creatively and rationally, and know where and when to take your next leap of faith.
If you’ve been finding that your thinking is getting all jammed up by stress or overwhelm, and you’re not sure where to start or how to de-stress without adding more stressful stuff to your “to do” list, then join us on my Zen Productivity Teleseminar starting 30 April (more details here), or dive into Zen Productivity DIY-style (more details here).
Photo by BritneyBush
Good points, times of high stress are not the time to be making big decisions, as you point out I guess the law of attraction will just bring about more of what you are feeling, best to sort the stress out before jumping!
Cody Dream-Life-Coaching’s last blog post..3 Steps To Financial Freedom
@Cody: Yeah, and sometimes when you sort the stress out, the clarity you get is that you SHOULDN’T take that particular leap. So either way, sort the stress out so you can access your wisdom and clarity.
Anyway, stress feels crap, so regardless of whether stress causes you to bring more stress into your future through the LOA, if you’re stressed right now, then you’re feeling crap (and not thinking very well) right now. And all we really have power over is right now.
Thanks for stopping by, Cody. I look forward to reading your thoughts on future posts too.
Hi, Cath,
Thanks for the great article!
I have always been a fan of rational decision making. That means thinking over the positive and negative effects of the actions I’m considering. Only when positivity prevails, I say OK, it’s time to do it.
The easiest way to think a decision over rationally is to write down the facts and possible outcomes on a sheet of paper and simply let your conscience decide what’s best.
Dimitar Nikolov’s last blog post..Small Changes Matter
Hi Cath
I thought I’d add a few observations as a licensed tutor for Susan Jeffers ‘Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway®’, whom you mentioned.
Firstly, there are things that happen in life over which we have no control, so fear serves little purpose, as it can’t change the outcome. In fact, fear and anxiety serve to narrow our attention, which may make us less able to react to danger.
Secondly, such a reaction i.e. an immediate fear response to a threat is part of our innate, sub-conscious fight-flight mechanism, which as you rightly say is there to protect us.
For the majority of people, most of the fear and anxiety that they experience comes from another part of their subconscious – their long term memory and their ego. Here. well-rehearsed habits are stored and triggered subconsciously – we often then consciously dwell upon them. This rehearsal and rumination serves to magnify the fear out of all proportion. In fact most of this fear is irrational and irrelevant – hence the saying FEAR = False Expectations Appearing Real.
The narrowing of attention and the ‘chatterbox’ phenomenon of self-defeating self-talk serves to cause stress as you say. It also stop us from accessing our intuition – the inner compass that can guide us through turbulent times and tricky situations. It also tends to put us into a state of confusion – a place that the ego likes to keep us in, in order that we do not make decisions and therefore stay in our comfort zone and avoid risks, change or the unknown. This state often results in the perception that we have only one choice, a right or a wrong way, or as Susan Jeffers puts it a lose-lose or a win-lose scenario. As you say, this is less rational and deliberative.
In reality there will be a win:win scenario and also at least a dozen other scenarios which our narrowed focus and blocked intuition prevent us from recognising.
Leaps of faith, when made from the right state, with access to intuition and a sense of trust in self and the process of life, are required for us to break out of our self-imposed comfort-zone prison. Harnessing intuition, trust and rationality too (i.e. no irrationally high risks), with the affirmation that ‘there is no such thing as failure – only the opportunity for learning and success’ leads to growth and fulfilment.
If you are stressed and your chatterbox is alive and kicking, then yes, tools to de-stress are essential.
Here’s to love, not fear
Andy
Andrew Nicholson’s last blog post..Finding Your Inner Power
@Andy: Thanks for your additional info – you’re spot on! Here’s to love, instead of fear!
Cath
CathD’s last blog post..True Hero’s Sagas – Alta Robert
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Hi Cath,
Very interesting. I tried to download the call mentioned in this article and I received an error.