Your heart is racing, your breathing is near hyperventilation, your palms are getting sweaty, and that inevitable pit at the bottom of your stomach has already grown to the point that it won’t be squashed.

Ever feel that way?

Maybe it’s before you pick up the phones for your dial session. Maybe it’s before you hop on a zoom appointment with a client. Or maybe it’s before you have that tough conversation with a loved one, or an agent.

We often try to avoid this emotion like the plague, but it seems to be a part of our DNA. If we never felt fear, the human race would have been eaten by lions a long time ago. We were given a God-given fight or flight response (aka fear) to keep us alive! If we didn’t feel fear, we’d at some point, walk out into open traffic, or jump off a building….am I right?

So if we know that fear can be a healthy emotion….what if we could use fear to our advantage?

In the fight or flight response, fear makes us more focused and intuitive. Imagine an angry bear chasing you through the forest. You’re running from the bear and suddenly you notice every fallen branch and tree stump you need to hop over, you hear the bear’s breath and heavy thumping behind you, and you suddenly realize you have more speed than you never knew was possible. Your instincts – seeing, feeling, smelling, hearing, tasting – are on overdrive.

Fear increases our instincts and brings us intuition and focus. This is something to be grateful for! If we kick fear out of our lives, we lose our intuition and focus.

So how can we use our fear to our advantage in everyday life?

1. Acknowledge fear – understand that it is a healthy expression of life and become aware of its presence

2. Thank your fear for keeping you alive and for bringing you focus and intuition

3. Use your fear – calmly listen when you feel fear so you become aware of your surroundings, focus on the task at hand, and use your instincts to make adjustments as you go.

In its most positive expression:

You’ve got this!