Have you ever wondered why we fear things?

Our fears cause us to avoid things in our business or working lives stopping us achieving. We all have fears, whether it’s fear of success or failure; fear of change or public speaking; fear of changing jobs or starting up a new business.

Often a lack of self-belief or confidence, or doubting ourselves, a reflection of how we are feeling right now; times of low self-esteem or perhaps having had a run of bad luck, giving us a feeling of immense insecurity.

By delving into the route of our fear and what we are afraid of, it is likely to be our fear of failing or not being able to handle addressing our fear head-on.

This could be a fear of dealing with a difficult client or employee, a fear of what the outcome might be; losing the client or employee, and the implications of this.

Our fear makes us doubt ourselves causing the negative voice to become louder, feeling real.

If we look back to when we were children or young adults, we thought we could conquer the world, achieve anything, we believed in ourselves, having the confidence to tackle anything that came our way.

Here are 6 tips to face your fears:

• Think about TWO of your current fears; business or work and personal

• List what it is that you are afraid or fearful of

• Put a percentage of the likelihood of this ‘actually’ happening to put it into context

• Write down a positive outcome detailing how you will successfully deal with your fear

• List the steps you are going to take to achieve your positive outcome

• Then just go do it!

It is far better to face our fears rather than wasting time procrastinating, believing that burying our heads in the proverbial sand will make them go away. Dealing with the fear is far easier and less scary than thinking or worrying about it every day.

As the Sunscreen song says “Do one thing every day that scares you”.