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| Ishita Gupta: Talking About Fear Posted: 09 Jun 2012 08:00 AM PDT
Ishita founded Fear.less magazine, which has profiled hundreds of bestselling authors, entrepreneurs, artists, thought leaders and more on how they’ve overcome their fear. She’s worked alongside business greats, launched bestselling books, spoken and interviewed across the web, and is now working on building her coaching and information product business. My conversations with her are always insightful and inspiring, and this one needed to be shared. For Ishita’s insights on fear in business — and how to conquer it — read on! – MEM: One of my favorite threads, in talking to you, has been the concept of sublimating terror. You often talk about how you have been afraid in business, and how you’ve overcome that fear, but for me, it’s often difficult to tell that you are anything but 110% confident. So when these words come up, “sublimating terror,” I always think that those are such scary words for a woman who seems so collected and engaged! I’d love to hear more about what it has been like to cope with those fears, and how you’ve been able to present yourself so powerfully despite them. IG: I love that you say that I present myself confidently because that means that I’m doing something right, even if I’m full of fear! It’s tricky to realize it unless you’ve dealt with it for some time — but fear doesn’t entirely go away. Ever. Despite how many times you encounter it and how many times you deal with it, fear grows in proportion to your ability to handle it. This shouldn’t scare you; It should give you relief to know that no matter what point you’re at in your life, you’ll have the tools to navigate fear, especially if you’ve spent time training and understanding it. Knowing that fear is always present is a good thing — it means you always have the opportunity to keep improving how you deal with it, and you can learn about yourself in the process. For me, that doesn’t mean fear doesn’t rear its ugly head and do me in at times. It does. I’ve spent days in fear, taking no action, simply feeling overwhelmed. But what I’ve seen is that it’s my initial response to fear. I usually have a momentary freak-out where I cry or allow myself to be overwhelmed, but once it’s up, it’s up and I know I need to handle whatever is happening. MEM: How do you make that transition between feeling overwhelmed and having the overwhelm be done with? IG: The best thing here is honesty. I’m honest with myself about what I am and am not able to handle, and I always try to see what tools I can leverage to help me with the situation. I have a “toolbox for life” that I use every single day. It includes habits, personal development tools, ways of thinking, books, audio, inspirational quotes, so many other things that allow me to move out of a period of fear. This is not just necessary, I’ve found it’s crucial for my survival. MEM: That sounds like an incredible toolbox! It sounds like something everyone should start developing for themselves, and collecting over time. I know I certainly should. IG: I had to learn the hard way that only you — and you alone — can ultimately get yourself out of a moment of fear. Other people can try to help, but really, you’re your best companion for the rest of your life. So find out what works for you and use the things that seem to put you in a better state of mind — a more powerful and action-oriented state of mind. MEM: Can you tell us about your personal values and how they help you work through your fears in business? IG: Here are some of the values that help me work through fear: Knowing it’s a training process, and that it shouldn’t just come naturally. I believe that you can and should learn how to deal with fear and other challenging emotions. Life doesn’t prepare us for these things, so we need to start preparing for them ourselves. Know that you don’t need fixing, but your beliefs do. Fear, insecurity, anger, these are all emotions that are not who you really are. You really are joy, confidence, and power — we just forget it on a daily basis, in every day life. Our beliefs and negative thought patterns repeated over and over again are what need to be fixed. Once you start not going to your default reactions, once you start implementing new, improved thoughts and ways of behaving, you’ll be able to help yourself get out of a cycle of fear. I’ve been on the personal development path for the last ten years and that’s helped me understand how I deal with fear. I’ve learned what works for me and what doesn’t, and what I need to become better at handling it when it comes up. MEM: I love that you are so straightforward about the challenges you face emotionally, because there are a lot of people in the world who would prefer to just forget those parts — and I really believe that sharing the bad parts in addition to the good parts is an essential process that allows more people to learn and grow based on that information. Especially when it comes to business that intends to change people and the world for the better! IG: I present myself as transparently as I can when I think telling my story of fear will be useful to someone else. Confidence comes from being honest. And I always try to be honest about my experience, no matter good or bad. That means that part of my story will sound like shit and the other part will sound like gold, and both parts matter and both parts are important! MEM: I want to go back to something you said earlier, about fear always being present. The thing that helps me is to remind myself that even the most successful and well-rounded professionals still experience fear, but I’ve noticed that this self-reassurance is a lot more vague than specific (at least for me). I know it’s true, but I don’t know a lot about how it actually manifests for those people. You’ve worked with some incredible professionals with impressive careers, especially in your work with Seth Godin, the Domino Project and the work you’ve done since. Do you have insights on the difference between the way most people seem to deal with fear, and the way successful, well-rounded professionals deal with fear in their life and business? IG: Absolutely. No matter what level of success you’re at or where you are in your career, you will experience fear. Without a doubt. The difference between highly successful people and the ones who are still struggling with fear is that the successful ones know that fear is going to be present, every single time. They’re not surprised when it shows up, because with all the risks they’ve taken to get to where they are, fear’s been there. They prepare for it — mentally, emotionally. If you’re an expert at what you do, you’ve trained to be good at it. Similarly, if you’re performing at a very high level and you know you’re going to encounter fear, you train for it so that when it shows up, you don’t let it interfere with what you’re doing. People like Tony Robbins and Seth Godin and Oprah have trained themselves — some use affirmations like Tony Robbins, where you mentally engage yourself with positive thoughts or words to get your mind in the right zone. Some take action so quickly that the fear doesn’t register and overwhelm them, like Seth Godin. Some mentally and emotionally engage themselves to visualize a positive outcome, rather than failure. Other people acknowledge that the fear is there, but don’t allow it to control them. You can look at your track record and see that you’ve made it through fearful situations before. The point is, these high performers have a way of dealing with fear so that when it arrives, they know what to expect. They know that the more public they become or the more risks they take, their fears will only grow bigger. So whatever works for you personally, you have to train to navigate fear — and it can be done. MEM: What’s your big takeaway about fear in the business world? If you could make sure that our audience comes away from this conversation with one major lesson, what would it be? IG: This is the biggest lesson I’ve learned, and what I wish someone would have told me so I could have avoided a lot of angst: Don’t be afraid to be fully yourself in the business and professional world. Use your own voice, your own language, do what you think and believe is right, and don’t be afraid to say how you feel. I spent so much time trying to be someone different, someone more “business-y” who spoke in a certain “professional” way that I drove myself crazy. The thing that turned me around was that I saw some of my best mentors, the ones who were the most successful, build their brands and businesses on the very fact that they were themselves. If they were smart, they were smart. If they were silly or goofy, they weren’t afraid to show it. If they had a sales call, they didn’t change how they spoke or what they said. Of course you can always learn new information, new ways of doing things, you can definitely refine your character and show people different parts of yourself at different times, but the main thing is: Always strive to be yourself, and you won’t go wrong. People will appreciate it, you’ll feel like you’re operating with integrity and most of all, it will dramatically reduce your fear. |
| Creativity Comes In…. 40 Shades of Green? Posted: 09 Jun 2012 05:00 AM PDT
When was the last time you and your officemates did wall sits together or tried aerial yoga or competitive badminton? It may sound unusual, but these group explorations into new sports and fitness realms regularly help staff at Tribesports.com keep the creativity flowing. "It helps us connect with our users and keeps things fresh," says Joanna Roche, communications director for the London-based fitness and exercise networking site. More than a social network, Tribesports allows users to join communities of like-minded enthusiasts, issue or join fitness and health challenges, and store training logs and milestones. "For the staff, it's a group decision to try different things," Roche says of the office fitness experimentation. "We have a rather flat structure and it allows us to mix without job descriptions. It also takes away any preconceived notions we might have had about an activity," she explains. After employees try something, they post photos and information about the exercise and Tribesports users can comment. This often leads users to post new challenges on the site. In fact, challenging one another is hallmark of Tribesports. Users across the globe set up creative challenges of all kinds. "We get some incredibly creative challenges," Roche says. For St. Patrick's Day, one user set up a 40 Shades of Green challenge. Ireland is said to have 40 shades of green, and this user challenged others to get out and see how many they could find in their own homelands while out running or walking. Others have set up a challenge for people to cumulatively run the 80,000 miles the Olympic torch will travel, or to take pictures of themselves running past locations where famous movies were filmed. Many challenges are simpler, from striving to go four weeks without soda pop, doing wall sits for 5 minutes, or 100 crunches a day for two weeks. In fact, Tribesports users have issued well over 18,000 fitness challenges. Roche says that the site is unique because it has truly created a worldwide community that includes people from all levels of fitness and enthusiasm. It has been able to do this because "aside from Pinterest, Tribesports has done a really good job of harnessing creativity in a way that Facebook and Twitter have not," she says. Using the site is free and it is monetized through its store and an affiliate marketing system. At a very subtle level, Tribesports encourages all its users to be creative, Roche adds. She says the site is popular too because it inspires users to be fitter, more athletic, and to try new things. (Since I'm of the "exercise because I have to" type, I must admit I was enticed into trying out a couple of the challenges — wall sits are hard!) Users encourage each other and share their stories of difficult, as well as successful, workouts. It motivates as well as provides an enjoyable method of accountability. "I wouldn't have tried half this stuff if it wasn't for the challenges," Roche says. "It gets you out of your fitness box," she adds. The "tribe" part of the site is also important because it connects like-minded people around the world. As a runner, Roche learned about barefoot running from her tribe, and was able to discuss the book "Born to Run," with others who had read it. Tribesports users are rewarded for their creativity through the Leaderboard, where subscribers can see themselves move up the list as they accomplish goals. It's not just the recognition users get, but also a sense of personal accomplishment. "It's not reflective of how fit or athletic you are, but how dedicated you are how much you contribute to the community," Roche says. |
| Posted: 09 Jun 2012 02:00 AM PDT
Between LinkedIn, Facebook, Google searches, and online application systems, the traditional resume has less and less prominence in modern networking. Michael Margolis, writing at The 99%, argues, "the resume is on the out, and the bio is on the rise." The differences in the two are structural and philosophical. Where a bio uses paragraphs and narrative, a resume uses bullets and snippets of fact. "It's your job to reveal a bit about yourself and how you see the world. Do this well, and people will eagerly want to engage with you further," Margolis writes. Margolis, who is the dean of Story University and host of the Reinvention Summit, suggests several tips to crafting a strong career bio, including:
At Joanne Mattera's art blog, the author ponders, "why we spend the first half of our careers working to build it up only to be asked, ever so kindly, to cut it down." The answer to that confusion may be that we need a combo of resume (bullet points) and bio (narrative). Chris LoCurto, who hosts a podcast on entrepreneurship and leadership, argues that having both a well-written bio and a resume is key, in most cases. He writes, "Send me the resume because I want to see your work history, and I want to dig into it if I like you. But a bio would be a great opportunity to show me what else you've done." Image credit: Martin Whitmore |
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