Fear Is No Longer My Reality by Jamie Blyth & Jenna Glatzer

Author:Jamie Blyth & Jenna Glatzer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: McGraw-Hill, Psychology
ISBN: 9780071447294
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Published: 2004-12-01T22:00:00+00:00

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Self-Talk

Many persons have the wrong idea about what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

—HELEN KELLER

I had listened hard to mentors like Vince Lombardi, who often said,

“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.” I listened so hard that I still saw each meeting as a win/lose situation, all black-and-white. If I didn’t have the right sales numbers at the end of the month, I was a failure.

My self-esteem was still conditional. If I gave a perfect presentation, and if I got that signed contract, then maybe I’d feel good about myself that day, but by the next day I had already quit resting on my laurels and felt I needed to prove myself again.

I saw myself as someone who had caught a lucky break—it just so happened that the president of the company played basketball with me, and it just so happened that my first sales manager was kind enough to walk me through all those early meetings, and it just so happened that my first role-play was cut off by that miraculous cell phone call so I’d have a week to gather myself together and prepare.

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Copyright © 2005 by Jamie Blyth and Jenna Glatzer. Click here for terms of use.

Fear Is No Longer My Reality

God was looking out for me, sure, but what was going to happen if I didn’t make those sales?

The bulk of my negative self-talk fell into the “What if?” category. What if I have a panic attack? What if I miss quota? What if I turn bright red in front of this businessman and he laughs at me?

What if I forget my whole presentation and just wind up stammer-ing and choking and drooling a little?

All of these “what ifs” turned into anticipatory anxiety. I’d anticipate feeling anxious or failing and I’d build up so much anxiety in my head that I was already panicking before I even started. And nearly every time, the horrors I imagined were far worse than what actually did happen. The things I worried about didn’t come true—

or if they did, they didn’t warrant the kind of obsessive overthinking I had allocated to them. “What if I wind up foaming at the mouth and get carted away to an asylum?” never happened. But “What if I have a panic attack?” sometimes did. Even so, I’d spend two days freaking out with fear and making myself miserable over a problem that would last two minutes and probably not be noticed by anyone but myself.

“What if they think I’m stupid?” That thought kept me from asking others for help when I needed it. If I was confused at a meeting, I wouldn’t speak up out of fear that people would look at me and think less of me for not understanding. Instead, I had to figure everything out on my own.

“What if I have a panic attack in front of a sales prospect? I have to do well or else I’m a loser.

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