Fear of a thing that may happen.
There is a common pattern of occurrences:
- You anticipate a bad thing or symptom may happen
- Your anticipation creates fear and Anxiety
- The anxiety causes the bad thing to happen
- Your fears are reinforced
This Snowball Effects shows up in all sorts of places.
- Fear of failing a test causes your study to be unfocused which causes you to perform poorly.
- Fear of missing a shot causes your brain to forget how to make your arms move right and you miss.
- Fear of misspeaking in front of someone causes you to misspeak.
Three techniques I’ve come across to break this chain:
- lean in to failing - use Paradoxical Intentions and try to anticipate how bad the thing could go. This alleviates pressure and can cause it to go better.
- reframe fear as excitement. The body signals for both are essentially the same, and you can often trick yourself into being excited to (give a big presentation/make the phone call/whatever)
- go first - minimize the amount of time spent agonizing. Jump directly into the pool without dipping in a toe. Volunteer to be the first one on the group presentation. Get it over with. => Action Relieves Anxiety