Goodness, gracious!  I have been dealing with a lot of fear lately.  Without even knowing it, fear of the unknown and fear of failure have had a big grip on me and my psyche.  Thank goodness I have been able to reconnect with my purpose and leadership mission.  Being in and acting with fear is a miserable existence.  Frustration and anger are typical, and all I see is negativity everywhere.  Well, here I offer three steps to make your fear irrelevant and to use to excel:

<strong>Reconnect with your larger purpose and strengths</strong>.  First,  to deal with mine, I pulled out my leadership mission statement and recalled consciously why I am in the leadership training business as an entrepreneur....I have the privilege of honoring my values, utilizing my strengths, and having a positive impact on the community I serve.  The positive feedback I received from my webinar with ASIS women in security last Thursday, my coaching sessions, and my Guilt Free Self Promotion teleseminar on Thursday enabled me to do this (sign up for the Security Executive Skills Mastery on Sept 15 at 1pm Eastern under "subscribe").  This immediately made the fear irrelevant.

<strong>Examine the root cause of your fear</strong>.  Second, I analyzed the fear more tangibly.  What specifically am I afraid of?  What am I avoiding?  The root cause of mine was fear of failure as an entrepreneur.  As part of this process, I recalled that there are no failures and no mistakes, only lessons to learn.  Indeed, I learn every time I trip up and am willing to honestly evaluate how I contributed to it. 

<strong>Ask yourself what would you do if you did not have the fear.  </strong>In my case, I continue to take small actions in pursuit of my entrepreneurial dream, and so I am.  

<strong>Identify at least one specific action to mitigate the fear</strong>.  For me, I determined three specific actions and committed to completing the actions by the end of the week:  1)  Communicate my new full-time professional endeavor to my professional community - Check.  2)  Gain clarity on how to communicate my new coaching services as part of my leadership training business  - Check 3)  Write about my personal journey with fear in my blog - Check! 

And now that I am done,  I feel free.  I feel like the possibilities are endless, and I am grateful (again, as I learn this lesson over and over )for the opportunity to do this work.

What are you avoiding unnecessarily because of fear?  Fear of the unknown is not to be under estimated.  But, holding on to it only enhances its power.  Fear is easily destroyed by confronting it head on, asking yourself what would you be doing if you weren't afraid, and launching into action.  Booya...now, that is leadership!