In last weeks’ blog, I discussed how fear can help you achieve your goals.
One of the best things to ask when you feel afraid, is “What’s the worst that can happen anyway?”
- If you would like to find out why this is such a good question to ask, come to our next IMPACT Goal setting workshop.
Everyone feels fear, the difference is, as Susan Jeffers says in Feel the fear and do it anyway, some people are better able to say, “I can handle it.”
When you think about it, what do you actually have to fear?
What is the worst that can happen?
How does this sound?
Imagine that you are an upstanding member of society and the freedom of you and your family take for granted is taken from you by your country for no good reason.
You are put in an overcrowded train with hundreds of other frightened people and taken to an unknown destination.
As you approach it, you realise that it is a Concentration Camp and that it is likely that you will be killed on arrival.
Somehow, you are not and so you ask to keep those few possessions that define you, including your wedding ring, but they are stripped from you along with your clothes.
Your head is shaved and you shower naked with hundreds of others.
The removal of your identity is complete as you are tattooed with a number and given the same clothes as everyone else.
You are pushed, hit and shouted at, and this is only the first day.
What follows is one brutality after another: violence, starvation, disease, pain, all without reason.
You are incarcerated without a known end.
This is what happened to Viktor Frankl when he was sent to a Concentration Camp, and is described in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning.
I cannot imagine the terror that he must have felt.
The situation was to get worse: he lost his wife, father, mother and brother to the Concentration Camps, as well as everything that defined him.
And yet…
And yet, he survived, returned to society and rebuilt his life.
He became a successful neurologist and psychiatrist.
Frankl’s life is a stark lesson that it is possible to experience worse than you can imagine and survive.
For most of us, it is valid to ask the question, “What’s the worst that can happen?”, to imagine answers, then to ask “So what?”
In doing so, you will often find that your fears become manageable.
The IMPACT Goal training course explores different ways to overcome your fears and reach your goals. Register here if you would like to come along.