Work sans Fear

Disclaimer: The below article is specifically written for individuals who work in corporates/small and medium-sized enterprises.

“Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears”. – Les Brown

We spend the maximum hours in a day at our workplaces. It’s a fact well-known to all of us. The work that we do makes us feel confident, independent, and most importantly gives us a sense of achievement. Not to forget, it also gets the bread and butter in the house. Things go awry when fear creeps in. As human beings, we all have certain fears, and when we come face to face with those fears, we don’t behave or function normally.

Did you know that as humans, we are innately wired with only two fears: the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling? Those fears are programmed into us to keep us safe, and the same has been passed down through generations.

What that actually means is all of our other fears are learned fears. They’re actually triggered by life experiences that stimulated fear at some point, and now, when we’re in similar situations, that learned fear strikes again.

When this fear is about the workplace, it can hinder one’s professional growth, and one could get labeled as unproductive and unfit for the job. If you are one of those who constantly works under fear, then something is definitely not right. In today’s lingo, it’s called as ‘Ergophobia’. Here, the individual experiences undue anxiety about the workplace environment, and their fear may actually be a combination of fears, such as fear of failing at assigned tasks, fear of speaking before groups at work, or fear of approaching/speaking to your seniors.

Instead of simple worrying, the first step one should actually take is to look within and identify the origin/root of their fears. After doing this, one slowly begins to befriend and eventually overcome their fears. There are many ways in which one can do this. We are listing below a few of them which are easier to practice.

  1. Meditation: We cannot stress enough about the fact that Meditation can change your entire life for good if practiced daily. It helps you to look within and know yourself better. Most importantly, it quiets your mind by reducing the number of thoughts. Research has also found that Meditation has the ability to rewire your brain. It increases the gray matter in your brain, which is responsible for everything from muscle control to sensory perception to memory, emotions, speech, decision-making, and self-control.
  1. Counselling/Therapy: It’s observed that when it comes to physical health, one doesn’t think a lot before making that call to their doctor, but when it comes to mental health, there are apprehensions about visiting a mental health professional. Our fears/phobias/traumas/ are not connected with our physical health. They have their roots in one’s childhood or any unpleasant experiences in the past. So even though you may be physically fit, mentally, you won’t be in a good shape. Counselling or Therapy works by going back to these memories and addressing their root causes. Various alternative therapies like Inner Child Healing and Past Life Regression helps one to relive and therefore relieve these fears.
  2. Trust & love yourself:

In a lot of cases, it has been observed that the person who is fearful at work lacks a certain level of trust in themselves. There is also a lack of self-love. When one is in a situation like this, the confidence is shaken to a great extent, and this can create fear in the mind which leads one to give up, not being able to deliver, perform or speak in front of their superior. Once you start trusting yourself, your intuition, your abilities, and also love and accept yourself the way you are, your confidence is boosted, and that in turn makes you less fearful and more assertive. It is displayed in the way you carry yourself, the way you talk, the way you approach the tasks that are assigned to you.

Think of it like jumping into a swimming pool which usually doesn’t feel good at first, Chansky says. “Then a few minutes later (assuming we stay in) it feels better. Did someone warm up the pool? Or did we adjust? We have the capacity to adjust to change, but that takes time.”

At The Aha Movement, we offer a wide range of workshops, programs and personalised coaching sessions that equips and enables one to overcome their fears/issues/challenges by working on themselves. They are delivered by a team transformational coaches with several years of corporate & coaching experience, who have themselves experienced inner peace and outer abundance in their lives through certain practices in their daily lives.

Prathamesh Paingankar