How to Deal with Fear in Business

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emotional intelligence involves both awareness of one’s feelings and being able to control their influence on thought and behavior. Some of our entrepreneurs could pull this off. “If I’m in a lower mood one week and I look at my projects, I see only negative things and reasons why it can’t happen. I started to learn that that’s actually not associated with the projects, but it’s associated with my emotions,” one said. Added another, “I’ve recently been learning to separate that anxiety out because I’ve learned that it’s just transient.”

 

Emotional self-awareness is a skill that can be learned, and it involves becoming aware of the signs of emotions intruding upon consciousness through feelings and moods, anticipating their impact on thoughts, and using this awareness to limit their effects on decision and action. Practicing self-awareness can help curb the potent influences of negative emotions on goal setting and decision making.

 

2-Problem solving. 

Actively seeking out flaws and weaknesses and doing something about them is a powerful means of reducing the fear of failure. Intuition is a potent source of information, and research has demonstrated that among experts, tacit knowledge and gut instinct lead to rapid and effective decision making. Such instincts are often associated with feelings rather than specific thoughts. Feelings of fear driven by concerns over the idea, for example, can offer important signals that work is needed. When treated as such a signal and acted on, rather than being repressed or ignored, these emotional flags can help entrepreneurs eliminate weaknesses and flaws in their venture idea.

 

A proactive, problem-solving response to feelings of fear can help reduce fear. But our research also shows that such action tends to be inhibited when the fear is caused by doubts about the validity of the business idea. This suggests that taking a deliberately action-oriented approach, overcoming the desire to repress or ignore the problem, will be especially important. Of course, weaknesses can never be eliminated altogether. For any entrepreneur, perfectionism is potentially dangerous.

 

Entrepreneurs told us one of the ways in which they overcome the feelings of fear was through learning and information seeking. This might be for core knowledge, such as computer coding skills on the part of the software entrepreneur seeking financing, or learning to cope with the high pace of activities that most entrepreneurs experience. Some of the entrepreneurs we interviewed learned through formal education and training, although it was more common to do research, reflect, and network with experts and mentors.

 

Learning is a powerful antidote to fear of failure, helping to mitigate one’s doubts by increasing one’s capabilities. But uncertainty is real and constant. Uncertainty and ambiguity are defining features of the challenge of entrepreneurship. There are always unknown unknowns out there, and so a recognition that one will never have all the information one wants — that one will always have to keep learning — is important.

 

Reaching out to mentors who are directly related to the business you are starting is really key and really helpful. For entrepreneurs in a constant battle with fear of failure, mentors and networks can be a vital source of reassurance. Mentors and social supports are beneficial because they support the three strategies of learning, problem solving, and self-awareness.