Anxiety

For any organization to move forward, they must possess a clear and clarified vision. Even though many organizations do have a clear vision, they fail to reach it. Why?

It’s what I call The Fear Gap.

The distance between the you-are-here point and the vision of where-you-should-be point is what I call The Fear Gap. The farther the vision is from the current status quo, the more room there is for fear to enter and cause us to retreat from accomplishing the vision. We have the potential to interject our personal and organizational fears into this gap, which leads to action paralysis.

What Causes This Fear?

A large part of avoiding or overcoming The Fear Gap is knowing what triggers this response with us.

One of the things that robs us from healthy influence is worry, fear and anxiety. In fact, these often don’t decrease our influence but actually cause us to seek to influence others in unhealthy ways in order to bring quick alleviation to our anxiety.

Anxiety causes us to take the short-term look rather than seeking the best long-term solution. Our primary concern becomes, "Get this feeling of pressure off of me." We then tend to push for whatever we think will make us feel better the fastest, rather than asking, "What is the best long-term solution for this problem?"

We all worry. We all have fears. We all have anxiety. It is simply part of being human. But how we handle our anxiety is what sets apart leaders from those who capitulate to the stress.

Is it so bad to feel envious or jealous of someone or others’ opportunities?  No. Actually, jealously can be a helpful emotion. It serves as a clue that you need to pay closer attention. It forces you to listen carefully what is behind the green-eyed monster.

 You’re hard wired to do what’s best for you in most situations; all you need to do is learn to follow your gut instincts. Animals do it day in and day out and it works fairly well for them. They do what comes naturally and typically they do more than stay alive; they thrive!