fears
self development
turnaround
winning
The fear of getting hurt
photo: Ville Pirttilahti
I remember the first fighting tournament I took part in and how it felt to enter the big hall and see a lot of people warming up. I started to feel a bit nervous, when everybody else looked so concentrated and it looked like everybody was very skilled and strong. I was just a little boy who weighed 37kgs, with less than a year of experience in training martial arts. You can imagine the thoughts in my head, especially when I got to watch a few fights before my tournament started. I had sparred a lot at my home gym, even with bigger opponents, but still it was not the same as to face an unfamiliar opponent in a full contact fight. What could happen to me, if I would get punched or kicked hard? How much would it hurt?
Do you remember your first sales calls or meetings? What were you the most afraid of? I remember when I was working in telesales selling magazine subscription, where I sometimes really hoped that nobody would answer my calls. I was so afraid of upsetting people, who didn’t want to order a new subscription, that I hoped I would get a chance to talk to them. It was embarrassing to call and disturb people, just to ask if they needed a tenth magazine subscription.
One hates losing, but fears getting hurt. To lose a fight or a deal is not as bad as one might imagine. With losing, one will gain experience and can find mistakes to fix. But with fear, you need to go into our mind and change yourself mentally. To overcome a fear, you would need to start enjoying the cause of your fear, not just go against it. I’m sure, you have many times heard somebody telling you to work outside of your comfort zone. It is good for your development, but not always the best way to overcome your fears.
Do you remember your first sales calls or meetings? What were you the most afraid of? I remember when I was working in telesales selling magazine subscription, where I sometimes really hoped that nobody would answer my calls. I was so afraid of upsetting people, who didn’t want to order a new subscription, that I hoped I would get a chance to talk to them. It was embarrassing to call and disturb people, just to ask if they needed a tenth magazine subscription.
One hates losing, but fears getting hurt. To lose a fight or a deal is not as bad as one might imagine. With losing, one will gain experience and can find mistakes to fix. But with fear, you need to go into our mind and change yourself mentally. To overcome a fear, you would need to start enjoying the cause of your fear, not just go against it. I’m sure, you have many times heard somebody telling you to work outside of your comfort zone. It is good for your development, but not always the best way to overcome your fears.
How does being afraid affect you?
In my first tournament, I won a bronze medal. The first fight wasn’t that bad, even though I lost it by points. I didn’t get hurt, except for some bruises. Few years later, I was facing an opponent, I knew was one of the toughest and quickest around. He was considered one of the most talented practitioner in my martial art. That fight changed my life. During the fight I was so afraid of his strong and fast kicks, that I didn’t get close to him at all. I was trying to keep the distance and just survive the rounds. The funny thing was, that he wasn’t a good fighter at all. He was very skilled in techniques, but not good in fighting at all. Most of the fight, he was kicking in the air and not even close of getting points. He managed to win the fight, but I wasn’t hurt at all. In the locker room, I started to cry (I was about 15-16 years old that time). I realized that I had been so afraid of getting hurt, that I didn’t manage to perform at all. I thought of quitting training martial arts, since if I was so much of afraid of hard contact, how could I managed to take part in full contact fights if I was too afraid of getting hurt.
Years later, after my horrible telesales experience, I was doing B2B sales and mainly on the phone. I had managed to gain some more work experience and was more comfortable in talking to strangers on the phone. But still, I wasn’t too comfortable with telesales and soon it hit me again. I was horrified to pick up the phone again and asking for the deal. Sometimes, it was okay to start a new sales project and make the first calls. But trying to close the deal was difficult. I had my hopes up, but couldn’t close every offer I had sent out. My boss said to me: “don’t fall in love with your offers. Sales is a numbers game and you just need to send out offers and call back. The more you do this, the more sales you will make”. The advice was very good, but the problem was that I was afraid of getting a negative answer, especially to those offers I had put my heart in.
Learn to love, what you are afraid of and you will win
Often people tell you to work outside of your comfort zone and expect that you will become stronger and better. I don’t fully agree to that, especially when it comes to overcoming your fears. Of course, you need experience and to be able to be outside of your comfort zone, but you also need to learn to like what you do and get the kicks out of it. If you have, for instance, a fear of heights, it won’t help you to push yourself to the limit. You will still be afraid to climb up to tall buildings. But if you look around you and love the sights you see, then you will forget your fear of heights.
So instead of pushing yourself into uncomfortable situations, where you will feel frightened, start looking at your motivation from a new perspective. In martial arts, you are actually trying to get better in fighting and that involves heavy contact. The reason for getting used to the heavy contact is to build your body and your mind to be able to evaluate, what is the best approach for you in each situation. Should you try to block, evade or counter attack. Or is it time for you to find a good spot for your attack. When you get the new perspective, you will start seeing the attacks differently. When being frightened, you can’t move yourself so well and you almost freeze to your spot. You are just waiting to get hit and likely you will get hit. But when you stop being afraid, you will move as smoothly as in your training and will be able to adjust your techniques to your opponent’s ones.
In sales, when you stop falling in love with your offers or stop being afraid to make the call, you will start to improve your results. What worked for me in sales and in fighting, was that I started to look at them as a game of chess. I didn’t mind losing a game, but I always wanted to get better. I started to analyze my game, no matter win or lose. I started to improve my weaknesses, not because of the uncomfortable situation, but because I wanted to get better. I wanted to become the best and in order to become the best, I needed to love what I was doing. I wasn’t working outside of my comfort zone anymore, I was working with what I loved. The fear was not there anymore, it was replaced by the drive for success. If I had concentrated only on improving my skills and arguments, I would not have developed the mental strength. But when I chose to not to focus on my fears, but on the strategic perspective of fighting and selling, I managed to build up a way of liking the situations, I previously was afraid of. Getting hurt is part of the game, but as long as you are not afraid of it, you have a chance in winning.
1 comments
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