Overcoming the fear of visibility
What happens when you are open to a new perspective?
You can get over the things that hold you back. You realize the discomfort of delaying something is greater than the discomfort of actually doing the thing. And you see that the only thing standing in your way is your mind.
The other week I was coaching an amazing woman who recently got certified as a Life Coach through the Life Coach School.
She had invested tens of thousands of dollars in her certification.
She was a great coach and really knew her shit.
But she hadn’t yet told anyone in her personal life she was a Life Coach.
She worried about what people might think of her if she did.
When we got on the call she had a ton of things going on in her mind that felt like real, tangible reasons why she couldn’t possibly post to her personal Facebook page telling people she was now a certified coach. I knew I needed to switch her focus.
When I asked why she wanted to be a coach in the first place she was a bit caught off guard. She hadn’t stopped to think about that in quite some time.
She was so focused on the menial details such as what name she should choose for her new Instagram account. Also, should she use her personal account or start another one?
But until she could see that getting lost in these details was simply a distraction from the step she’d next need to take, putting herself out there, she thought these mind spirals were justified. It's amazing what our mind does to go out of its way to not experience discomfort. She had convinced herself that these were completely justifiable reasons to not move forward. She even tried to convince me of it! But that's why coaching can be so powerful. We often can't see from an outsider's perspective what's going on in our own minds. We're too caught up inside of it. If you have a coach though, who is able to call you out and gently lead you back in the right direction (hint: to the real things that keep you moving forward) then eventually, we get better and better at seeing it for ourselves. Soon after she felt pretty good about posting and we set a deadline for her. BUT the work wasn't finished there. We kept digging around her thoughts to see what might really help her when she inevitably comes up with the world's best excuse the second she's alone with her thoughts again. I asked her a question I'll often ask in coaching, which is to give me an example of something recent you did that you had once feared. Because pulling from her own lived experience is way more impactful than me giving a personal example. She couldn't think of anything. I knew she had invested about 30k in her coaching program so I asked if that was scary at the time. She responded by saying it was terrifying but she did it anyway. I asked her why. She said she thought to herself "if I don't do it now, I'll never do it." And just like that, we had her anchor thought. A thought she could bring up whenever her brain negotiated back with her that she shouldn't post to Facebook. This was going to be a HUGE step for her, one she has debated for months and months. I asked her to message me when she posted and I didn't hear from her the next day...but! She did do it the following day. And she was super proud of herself. I was very proud of her too.
So what's the best part of all this? Now she has another example to draw from where she overcame her fear. So the next time her brain gets all clever on her and pulls her into a negative thought spiral that keeps her stuck, she can have the assurance that she's already worked through one of her biggest fears! What is a fear you've overcome recently that you can look back on to draw confidence from? What thought did you tell yourself that ultimately got you over the hump? Can you use that for a current area you're stuck in? Would love to hear about it!
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