How to Fight Fear To Get What You Want in Life & In Your Career
I’m too busy, that seems like too much work, I’ll do it next year. Are those some of the things you’re telling yourself, but dig deeper, is it really fear that’s holding you back?
Kim Rittberg shares her story of how fear held her back and how she fought through it to hit the next level of her career: running a business that’s been featured in the press, being flown across the country for speaking gigs and scaling her business in ways she never envisioned.
Whether you’re looking to step up in your career or next level of your business, in this quick bite-sized bonus solo episode of my podcast you will learn:
How to fight fear
How to ask the right questions to figure out what you want
How to take the steps to get to the next level and grow your business, and advance in your career
Who is Kim Rittberg? I teach business owners and professionals how to grow their incomes, leads & credibility with video and podcasts and how to be better on camera. I’ve won awards for my video work, I launched Us Weekly’s video unit, was a TV news producer for a decade and was a video marketing executive at Netflix & PopSugar. I focus on social media strategy, video production & on-camera coaching.
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Kim (00:01):
So I'm back with a special bonus episode about fighting fear and how fighting fear can help your career. I'm generally a great time management person, but right now I'm recording the solo episode to procrastinate other work. And if my voice sounds a little weird, it's allergies. Allergies. Anyway, I want to jump right into fighting fear and how that can help you craft your career. Because I recently spoke to an amazing group of women at the Women's Real Estate Investment Summit in Orlando, and my keynote speech was all about fighting fear. And I think fear is a sort of thing that we put in a bucket with like, oh, I'm going to go bungee jumping, or I'm going to go on a roller coaster, or those sort sort of visceral fear moments that we connect it with. But I've seen in my own life, and I think this is true for a lot of people, is that fear can be really damaging for our career because often when we say, oh, I don't want to pursue that, or I don't have the time to do that, what we really is happening in our own head is that we're saying, can I do that?
(01:07):
I don't think I can do this. I'm a little afraid to do this. And for me, it was a real process going from corporate to starting my own business. I definitely did not envision myself as an entrepreneur, but I did really see the life that I wanted. I wanted more flexibility. I didn't want only three weeks or four weeks of paid time off each year. I really wanted to just have the power to craft my career. And once I realized that, to do that, I had to do all these things that scared me. It was sort of just a realization of my desire to live the life that I want is stronger than my fear. And I sort of looked at that. I weighed on a scale. Desire is on one hand and fear is on the other, and the scales are moving up and down the scales of justice or the scales in a supermarket, but the desire and the fear are being weighed on that scale.
(02:02):
And I'm analyzing how strong is my fear of failing as a business owner? How strong is my fear of thinking about how people will judge me as a business owner, like my old colleagues who have great jobs and steady jobs? Are they going to look at me like, Ugh, Kim's out there being such a salesperson, and oh, what a fall from grace? And I really started separating myself from those fears and the fear of negative judgment from other people. And I realized a lot of those things that were happening were happening in my own mind. Some of those things aren't even real. Sure. Maybe some people are judging me, but other people don't really care what I'm doing. Most people, most people are thinking about what they're ordering for dinner. Should they have spaghetti with meatballs or should they have eggplant parm or maybe a salad? They're not thinking about Kim rit. So I think that stepping through
(02:59):
That fear of failing, of judgment, of not knowing what I was doing, look, I think we all have this fear of looking stupid, of trying something and failing of being in over our head. And something that gave me some peace with some of those things is knowing that I'm always learning. There's never been a job that I started that I knew everything. There's always a learning curve in things. And that empowered me to say, no, this is the right decision for me to launch my business, to double down on myself, to bet on myself because I want that to pay off in terms of time with my family. And so that idea of just weighing your desire and your fear, I think is something that is sticking with me because every year I'm doing things that are scaring the crap out of my me. I spoke 500 people this year, and for anyone who knows me, you listened, you hear my voice, but I don't mind being in front of people.
(03:57):
I like speaking to people and teaching people, but 500 people is like, that's a lot of people to talk to. And I really think, like many of us, I wanted to do a good job. And I think the fear can be motivating and the fear can also be discouraging. So I'm trying to harness the fear in good ways. I'm sort of afraid to take on these bigger challenges at work, be pitching more clients, be doing more speaking engagements, and there is fear there, but I'm trying to tackle that fear and fight through that fear because so far it's really paid off.
(04:32):
I'm doing things that I had said a year or two or three years were on my vision board. Those are things I wrote down and said out loud how Oprah says, say it and it'll happen. That's probably not her phrase, but that's how I think her phrase is. When you say these things that you want, that's the first step to making them happen. And I started to say, I want to speak more. I want to teach more. I want to have a different sort of business that doesn't just rely on one big company and I want to serve more people. And unreal, it's been unbelievable. I just feel like it's been paying off so much having this podcast as a way, I've been meeting so many amazing people from the podcast. I've gotten featured in a lot of amazing magazines like Fast Company and Business Insider, and I'm interviewed on TV at picks 11.
(05:19):
And I think that stepping through that fear and fighting the fear and being honest with myself about what I want and not saying, well, I'm not going to try for those speaking gigs because I can't really travel. I have kids, or, oh, I don't don't know. Starting digital courses feel so overwhelming. Well, that's that fear of not knowing everything and saying, I want to speak, but I don't know, I can't travel, is really the fear of saying, I think I might not be good at it. And I've just started putting those things aside and saying, if I really do want it, I have to find a way to fight through
(05:56):
The fear. I have to quiet those negative voices and I have to push through it. And I've had a lot of people saying to me, Kim, you've had such an amazing year. I'm seeing you on social media. Well, you're doing all these speaking engagements, you've gotten all this press. A hundred percent true. I am so proud of the things that I've done in the past, like 12 to 18 years, 18 months. But it's also been a lot of internal work to really fight the fear and say, this is what I want. I want to grow my business, but in a manageable way, or I'm still in charge of my time. I want to be speaking on bigger stages. I want to teach more people. I want to scale my business. I want to do more coaching. I want to do more group coaching. I help more people, not just high ticket one-on-one coaching.
(06:38):
And so that's what I wanted to share with you today. I think that it's easy to see what's happening on social media or easy to know what someone else is doing, but not realize the voices that they're facing in their own head. Those voices are real. Those voices are so real. And I've been working on quieting them, but also being loud about what I do want and going for it. And not just saying, oh, I want that, but saying, how do I get that? And when those little fear creeps into my brain but is packaged as something else, if fear doesn't say, Hey, this is fear. The fear says, oh, you're too busy. Or the fear says, it seems like a lot of work. It's really fear. And so fight through it, it is worth it. That's sort of what I wanted to let you know today.
(07:23):
I think that as you are asking yourself what you want out of the next six months, what you want out of the next 12 months, ask yourself, are the questions you're asking really related to the logistics of something or are they really related to fear? And I recommend that if you really believe in that next step that you want to take, listen closely. And if it's related to fear, figure out those ways to fight through that. Weigh the desire and the fear and be real about how much you want that thing. Because if you want it, make that desire, outweigh that fear and start taking small steps in your life to get there. It's those small steps. If you do two small things each month, maybe one thing a week, maybe two things a month to get to that next stage of where you want to be, whether it's a career shift or it's growing your business, you can get there.
(08:15):
It can happen. So that is what I wanted to let you know today. And if you'd like to be on my newsletter where I give helpful thoughts and tips, not a lot of spam, I swear I'm too busy for that, you can click in the show notes or you can visit me@kimrit.com or follow me on Instagram. Say hi, though. I love hearing from listeners. I hope you got some value out of this little bonus short episode. Drop me a note if you did and drop me a note if there's things you want to hear from me. Alright, till next time.