Ner­is­sa Gold­en

Fear–the mere thought of the word can make you feel...fear­ful.

Fear is de­signed to con­fuse you. Make you doubt your­self. Paral­yse you long enough to miss op­por­tu­ni­ties de­signed to ad­vance you and your dream. But don't let it.

As some­one who's strug­gled with fear for most of my life, I've had to learn to pur­sue my dreams afraid. Take leaps with shak­ing limbs and sweaty palms. You have to cre­ate mech­a­nisms to help you press through the paral­y­sis and move. Here are some of the most com­mon ways that fear shows up and what you can do to work through them.

Fear of Fail­ure. You be­lieve that a past fail­ure means you will re­peat the same mis­take. Fam­i­ly and friends are re­mind­ing you of the first busi­ness you tried that didn't work. Nev­er mind that you were 14 years old and it was a sum­mer thing. Be will­ing to hon­est­ly as­sess what went wrong with your past ex­pe­ri­ences.

Did you spend every­thing the busi­ness made on your­self with­out rein­vest­ing in new sup­plies? Did the busi­ness fail be­cause you were not will­ing to pay at­ten­tion to what the cus­tomers want­ed? Was your store in the wrong lo­ca­tion? If your busi­ness re­lies on foot traf­fic then it's im­por­tant to be in a lo­ca­tion that has a lot of vis­i­bil­i­ty and easy to ac­cess. If mov­ing is not pos­si­ble, then find new ways to pro­mote your store.

Were you in­con­sis­tent in show­ing up to work? It is im­por­tant to hon­or your com­mit­ment to open your busi­ness on time. You can turn po­ten­tial clients off be­cause you open and close when­ev­er you feel like it. Emer­gen­cies can hap­pen but a bet­ter op­tion is to al­lo­cate a few hours on a par­tic­u­lar day that you will close to pay bills and han­dle your per­son­al and busi­ness af­fairs. Make sure your shop signs and oth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions men­tion this short clo­sure.

It may even be a per­son­al fail­ure that is caus­ing you to think you will fail at busi­ness too. We all ex­pe­ri­ence chal­lenges but when we can learn from our mis­takes we can im­prove our chances of over­com­ing and suc­ceed­ing.

Fear of In­ad­e­qua­cy. What does she know about run­ning a busi­ness? Any­thing you don't know you can learn. I spend months on end re­search­ing dif­fer­ent meth­ods of de­liv­er­ing a ser­vice be­fore I launch a new busi­ness. I am con­stant­ly search­ing for al­ter­na­tive ways to solve a prob­lem. At times when it gets over­whelm­ing, I close out all oth­er sources of knowl­edge and look with­in. Know that your spir­it has the an­swer. Be will­ing to get qui­et enough to lis­ten. Seek out sup­port for the ar­eas you do not feel ca­pa­ble of han­dling on your own. Take an on­line course in busi­ness man­age­ment or in your spe­cial­ists' area. There are many ways to take class­es for free or at min­i­mal cost on­line.

Spend some time jot­ting down the suc­cess­es you have had in var­i­ous en­deav­ors and rec­og­nize that you are more ca­pa­ble than you think.

Fear of Suc­cess. A ra­dio show host re­cent­ly asked me if there was such a thing. Yes. You know you are on to a good thing. Your idea is sol­id and frankly you know that no one else is cut out to de­liv­er it the way you can, yet you are stuck. You haven't reg­is­tered the do­main name. You won't even fill in the bank ac­count ap­pli­ca­tion and the email to push it to the next lev­el is still sit­ting in your draft fold­er. What are you afraid of? Suc­ceed­ing? You know that if you suc­ceed it will tax your time, it will bring you no­to­ri­ety, and it will bring the judg­ment of oth­ers and what­ev­er trau­mat­ic ver­sion of events you con­jure up in your mind. You be­gin to see the cost of suc­cess out­weigh­ing the price of stay­ing where you are.

Don't let this fear beat you. If you are wor­ried about the new busi­ness tak­ing up too much time, struc­ture it so that there are ar­eas which can be au­to­mat­ed and func­tion even when you are at your chil­dren's foot­ball game or sleep­ing at night. You may need to find a friend to car­pool with and re­duce the amount of time you spend car­ry­ing the kids to their ac­tiv­i­ties. An al­ter­na­tive may be to ad­just your price points to al­low for you to pay for oth­er ser­vices rather than try­ing to do it all your­self.

Know that it would be much bet­ter to have peo­ple talk about you with mon­ey in the bank to meet your per­son­al and busi­ness needs than with noth­ing at all. For­get them. Head to the beach with your notepad and cam­era at nine in the morn­ing when they are head­ing to some­one else's work­place or go is­land hop­ping and re­al­ly give them some­thing to talk about. Do not al­low the voic­es of oth­ers to be loud­er in your own mind than your own.

Build a net­work of en­tre­pre­neurs com­mit­ting to sup­port­ing each oth­er. Find a men­tor or hire a coach to guide you in the ar­eas where you are strug­gling. When you have some­one to hold you ac­count­able and who will check on you at pre­arranged times, you can ex­pect a nudge to push you out of paral­ysed mode.

God has not giv­en you a spir­it of fear but a spir­it of pow­er and love with a mind that is at peace and fo­cused on suc­cess. Be blessed.

Ner­is­sa Gold­en is an award-win­ning Me­dia Strate­gist, Busi­ness Coach and au­thor who helps her clients ac­cel­er­ate their busi­ness growth by lever­ag­ing high im­pact com­mu­ni­ca­tions so­lu­tions and in­come gen­er­at­ing strate­gies. Get tips on start­ing and grow­ing a busi­ness at www.tru­ly­caribbean.net or on Twit­ter @tru­ly­gold­en.