Evolve Your Relationship with Fear with Dr. Eric Bean

During this episode Coaching Through Stories, host Dr. Eric Bean coaches us on how to effectively manage and eventually overcome a paralyzing pattern of behavior most people have: fear. Discover how you can look at fear from a totally different perspective—something that can lead to growth and joy rather than a feeling that’s triggered by danger, pain, or threats.

Episode Highlights:

• People are much more comfortable choosing the familiar over the unknown. 
• While fear is one of the seven universal emotions, it manifests behaviorally and psychologically in several different ways.
• Managing fear is a learned response.
• Generally, without the gift of experience, managing emotions comes down to space.
• It is necessary to create space in between the stimulus that’s creating the fear so you can choose your response.
• Developing the ability to create the space and measure and create your response is critical to high performance and will take some work.
• To change your relationship with fear, you need to get clarity on what you’re truly reacting to.
• The biggest fear of all is the idea that you can’t handle it.
• Part of changing your relationship with fear is shifting your mindset from one of threat to one of opportunity.
• Before you face your fears, examine them.
• Instead of focusing on the worst case scenario, ask yourself what the best case scenario is.
• You can practice engaging your fears by getting out of your comfort zone.

Three Key Points:

1. To change your relationship with fear, you need to get clarity on what you’re truly reacting to.
2. Part of changing your relationship with fear is shifting your mindset from one of threat to one of opportunity.
3. You can practice engaging your fears by getting out of your comfort zone.

Resources Mentioned:

• HigherEchelon
• Inside Out (Pixar Film)
• The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence by Gavin de Becker
• Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers
• Challenge vs. Threat: The Effect of Appraisal Type on Resource Depletion by Erin N. Palmwood and Christine Mcbride
• Lazarus and Folkman’s Psychological Stress and Coping Theory
• Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions by Barbara L. Fredrickson
• Google’s Study on Psychological Safety (Project Aristotle)
• Building a Pyschologically Safe Workplace by Amy Edmondson

Quotes:

“Moving toward our fears could actually set us free. Unchecked, our fears would continue to quietly run over our life and steer us away from our goals, hopes, and dreams.”

“To maximize our performance, we’ve gotta get better at creating the space."

“Part of changing your relationship with fear is exposing the illogical catastrophizing that is triggering our situationally excessive fear response."