Fear is a fact of business – of life in fact.

It is totally normal to feel fear whenever we are growing – I actually think fear is a good indicator of where we could go next in our businesses!

But that being said, feeling fear can suck… and if we aren’t careful we can get seriously stuck in our fear to the point where it immobilizes us.

Here’s one of my favorite strategies to work through the fear and get unstuck…

I call it embracing your worst case scenario.

Now given all the focus on positive thinking, law of attraction and such this may seem like something we SHOULDN’T do. But what I know to be true for me (and my clients) is that if we find ourselves stuck in fear, then we can’t move forward… we need to find a way to move through or release the fear or stay stuck in it.

One of the things I like to do here is to step into the worst case scenario and really FEEL it. I stop avoiding or running from the worst case scenario and instead put myself right in it (via my imagination) and be with it. If I can be in the space of my worst case scenario and KNOW that everything would be OK regardless, then I’m quite often able to let go of my fear.

For example, back in 2002, my husband and I were building a house. We had already sold our condo, were living with friends and still didn’t have enough for the down payment due in a couple of months. I was, at the time, trying to build my coaching business and wasn’t making much money. My fear was – of course – that we would not have enough money in time for the down payment and would lose the house!

I remember very clearly one night just sitting with that fear, looking it in the eye and deciding that even if it came to that, we would be OK. We would find somewhere else to live and move on from there. And in that moment I felt peace about it and was able to let it go.

Now the great thing about letting go of the feeling of fear is that quite often it creates space for what you DO want instead! In that instance, the very next day I received an email asking me to do a project that gave us exactly the amount of money we needed. If I hadn’t let go of the fear, I don’t know that I would have received that opportunity.

So where does fear have a hold on you? What would be your worst case scenario and how can you make that OK?

Would love to hear your thoughts and how you like to deal with your fear as well.