Harnessing the Fear Factor

This Monday just gone, I found myself at my desk with no meetings planned for the week. I know the recruitment matrix well and I understand what activity creates a bustling desk of placements. However, when dealing at CEO level, things happen and meetings fall by the wayside. The pipeline dries up!

Faced with a similar situation twelve months ago, I would have been engulfed in a wave of panic. Fear would have taken control and I would have been drowning in destructive internal dialogue. But over the past twelve months I have developed as a person, both in my professional and personal life, and I’m beginning to understand the role that fear plays in my life. I’ve learnt that, harnessed properly, it is undoubtedly a key driver; but I’ve learnt that, equally, it can become my demise.

I’ve learnt that fear is part of who I am, and I’ve learnt that how I harness my fear will determine whether it takes the form of a positive, constructive energy in my life, or whether it will overwhelm me and become destructive.

I have learnt that in life we can only control our own actions. When you have no meetings make more phone calls. Do what you can to control the situation and fear will again be a driver, not the beginning of a crash in confidence.

For many of us in sales, fear is a key driver; the fear of not gaining a meeting, a proposal, a sale, or not meeting target. But we harness that little voice in the back of our minds, and it drives us to pick up the phone just one more time when the last 95 times have been a NO!

In life many obstacles will be thrown in front of us. Fearing that life will eventually get hard is fruitless, because struggle at some stage, in one capacity or another is a given. It is how we deal with it which decides whether fear allows us to win, or helps us to lose!

Abby Hammerstein
Recruitment Consultant

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