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

<STRONG>Reconnect with your larger purpose and strengths</STRONG>.&nbsp; First,&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The positive feedback I received from&nbsp;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&nbsp;(sign up for the Security Executive Skills Mastery&nbsp;on Sept 15 at 1pm Eastern&nbsp;under "subscribe").&nbsp; This immediately made the fear irrelevant.

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

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

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

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

What are you avoiding unnecessarily because of fear?&nbsp; Fear of the unknown is not to be under estimated.&nbsp; But, holding on to it only enhances its power.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Booya...now, that is leadership!