Does anybody ski? It’s an interesting thing, skiing, in the way you control yourself and the mechanics of how to turn. Especially when you’re doing it for the first time.
In order to turn when you’re skiing, you need to push off with your legs and carve with the edges of your skis. You need to put enough weight down on the front of the skis for this to work. If you don’t, the front edges of your skis don’t dig enough into the snow, and you won’t be able to get a good carve. You can’t turn properly, and you lose control. It’s scary.
The thing about putting weight down on the front part of your skis is that you have to lean forward. When you lean forward when you’re skiing, you accelerate. The first few times skiing, acceleration can be scary too.
Scary.
What’s the immediate reaction to being scared? To fear? Often, it's to escape. Run away from the threat. In this skiing situation, the equivalent of running away is learning backwards. Leaning away from the mountain in front of you. Away from the source of fear.
Ironically, when you lean back, you also take the weight off the front part of your skis, which prevents you from getting a good carve, and stops you from turning properly. You lose control, and since losing control is scary too you lean even further back and you lose even more control, and you get even more scared, and you lean even further back and so on, and so on. Once you start leaning back, out of fear, it’s a downward spiral driven by fear. All the way to the bottom of the hill.
What should you do to get out of the spiral? You have to lean forward even more. Dig the edges of the skis into the snow even harder, get a deeper carve, and get that control back.
When you feel fear and want to fall back away from it, you have to lean forward instead.
Lean into your fear.
It is a little unintuitive to lean towards the very thing you want to get away from. It's hard to overcome your emotional response. Once you do however, the results are surprisingly simple.
Accept the fact that you are feeling fear. Let the feeling pass through you. Then do what you know you need to do, and be pleasantly surprised when it magically works. After you do this a few times, you'll gain confidence. The fear slowly disappears, and soon it becomes natural.
It's like the exact opposite of a fear-driven downward spiral. It's an upward spiral driven by confidence.
In public speaking, people often talk about projecting confidence. If you really think about it, this concept is a little unusual. Projecting confidence does not imply having confidence itself. It’s doing the right actions to give the appearance of confidence. You could be completely faking it, and it wouldn't matter. It’s only the projection that counts.
Ironically, if you fake it well enough, you will get a positive response from the audience, and if you do a good job faking it enough times you’ll actually gain the confidence you’ve been faking. Eventually this confidence will be self-evident; you’ll be projecting the confidence you actually have, instead of going through the motions.
The more public speaking you do, the better you get, the better the audience response, the more confidence you gain, the more you want to do public speaking. This is the upwards spiral.
Most importantly though, this also illustrates how you get into the confidence loop. By faking it initially. By going through the motions. To gain true confidence you first have to fake confidence. Weird, isn’t it?
When you feel fear, lean into it head first, and it will slowly stop being scary.
If you lack confidence, fake it first, and true confidence will follow.
Who knows what you can accomplish by going head first and pretending you know what you’re doing?
Tiny Action: Next time something comes up in your life that scares you, attack it!
In order to turn when you’re skiing, you need to push off with your legs and carve with the edges of your skis. You need to put enough weight down on the front of the skis for this to work. If you don’t, the front edges of your skis don’t dig enough into the snow, and you won’t be able to get a good carve. You can’t turn properly, and you lose control. It’s scary.
The thing about putting weight down on the front part of your skis is that you have to lean forward. When you lean forward when you’re skiing, you accelerate. The first few times skiing, acceleration can be scary too.
Scary.
What’s the immediate reaction to being scared? To fear? Often, it's to escape. Run away from the threat. In this skiing situation, the equivalent of running away is learning backwards. Leaning away from the mountain in front of you. Away from the source of fear.
Ironically, when you lean back, you also take the weight off the front part of your skis, which prevents you from getting a good carve, and stops you from turning properly. You lose control, and since losing control is scary too you lean even further back and you lose even more control, and you get even more scared, and you lean even further back and so on, and so on. Once you start leaning back, out of fear, it’s a downward spiral driven by fear. All the way to the bottom of the hill.
What should you do to get out of the spiral? You have to lean forward even more. Dig the edges of the skis into the snow even harder, get a deeper carve, and get that control back.
When you feel fear and want to fall back away from it, you have to lean forward instead.
Lean into your fear.
It is a little unintuitive to lean towards the very thing you want to get away from. It's hard to overcome your emotional response. Once you do however, the results are surprisingly simple.
Accept the fact that you are feeling fear. Let the feeling pass through you. Then do what you know you need to do, and be pleasantly surprised when it magically works. After you do this a few times, you'll gain confidence. The fear slowly disappears, and soon it becomes natural.
It's like the exact opposite of a fear-driven downward spiral. It's an upward spiral driven by confidence.
In public speaking, people often talk about projecting confidence. If you really think about it, this concept is a little unusual. Projecting confidence does not imply having confidence itself. It’s doing the right actions to give the appearance of confidence. You could be completely faking it, and it wouldn't matter. It’s only the projection that counts.
Ironically, if you fake it well enough, you will get a positive response from the audience, and if you do a good job faking it enough times you’ll actually gain the confidence you’ve been faking. Eventually this confidence will be self-evident; you’ll be projecting the confidence you actually have, instead of going through the motions.
The more public speaking you do, the better you get, the better the audience response, the more confidence you gain, the more you want to do public speaking. This is the upwards spiral.
Most importantly though, this also illustrates how you get into the confidence loop. By faking it initially. By going through the motions. To gain true confidence you first have to fake confidence. Weird, isn’t it?
When you feel fear, lean into it head first, and it will slowly stop being scary.
If you lack confidence, fake it first, and true confidence will follow.
Who knows what you can accomplish by going head first and pretending you know what you’re doing?
Tiny Action: Next time something comes up in your life that scares you, attack it!
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