© 2024
Courage
Welcome to this seventh module, designed to help you to better understand and build your courage and reduce any fears you may have about job hunting
Tackle the module in bite size chunks, don’t feel the need to do everything in one go and allow plenty of time to digest and apply the information covered
The module includes helpful ‘Activities’ for you to complete, it is strongly recommended that you undertake them to get the most out of the content and the key learning points
Allow yourself time to reflect and take on board the advice, key messages and suggested tasks contained in the module to enable you to move your job campaign forward
This module will
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Explain what the barriers are to being courageous in your job hunting
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Provide user friendly techniques to manage your fears and concerns
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Enable you to ensure that you do not allow your fears to affect your success
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Help you to reduce or avoid anxiety and to feel positive about your campaign
One dictionary definition of courage is 'the ability to do something that frightens one’
Another definition is ‘the ability to control your fear in a dangerous or difficult situation’
A third definition is ‘to do something difficult or dangerous, even though you may be afraid’
So courage isn’t about not being afraid but, rather, the ability to manage your fears
In particular, job hunting courage is about the ability to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’
The most common job hunting fears (but there are lots more) include
Fear of uncertainty
Fear of looking undignified
Fear of reduced self-respect
Fear of being demotivated
Fear of losing ……
Fear of rejection
Fear of ridicule
Fear of change
Fear of making mistakes
Fear of embarrassment
Fear of blame
Fear of failure
Being courageous often involves being open, non-defensive and prepared to fail
Every successful entrepreneur has innumerable stories of failure before becoming rich
They embraced and managed their fear of failure as part of becoming successful
They also take more risks as they are confident of being able to deal with failure
Another related common trait is their ability to learn and resiliently bounce back
More on resilience in the next section – for now, let’s focus on courage
Our fears can be very powerful and influential in what we do, say and think
Courageously overcoming our fear(s) can be incredibly empowering and liberating
So why is it so difficult to overcome our fears and what can we do about them?
When we feel fearful our brain tells our body to produce adrenaline
It’s a perfectly natural, normal and safe auto reaction that you can’t stop
It’s your brain’s primeval way of preparing your body for a ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response
Although you can’t stop it, you can manage and harness your response to it
In job hunting terms, you need to ‘fight’ a campaign, not take ‘flight’ or 'freeze'
Successful job hunting involves feeling the fear and still make the campaign happen
Our response to a fear related adrenaline rush can be managed via two dimensions
Our response to fear consists of our feeling response and also our thinking response
Our feeling response to fear or an adversity or challenge can be either positive or negative
Similarly, our thinking response to the same adversity can be either positive or negative
Our positive or negative feeling and thinking responses drive our subsequent behaviour
The model below may help you to identify and manage your feeling and thinking responses. Let's have a look at what each quadrant means in terms of how we tend to respond and behave
TRAPPED
CAPTIVE
AMBIVALENT
ENTHUSIAST
KEEN
ACHIEVER
ANXIOUS
DOER
Lets look more closely at our feeling and thinking responses and how we can manage them
The adrenaline fear generates makes you feel anxious and uneasy or perhaps worried
Naturally, your brain attributes the sensation to the fear that generated it
However, the same adrenaline is generated when you are excited or enthusiastic
Bungee jumping generates adrenaline, sometimes even just the thought of doing it
Some view bungee jumping as exciting, others see it as a fearful activity to be avoided
Its simply a matter of how your brain works and how you interpret the adrenaline rush
So, you need to retrain yourself to attribute the feeling adrenaline gives you differently
In essence, you need to change your attribution, something like this for example
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Original attribution – 'the adrenaline is making me feel fearful or anxious'
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New attribution – 'the adrenaline is making me feel excited and enthusiastic'
When you experience an adversity or something you fear
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Your thinking response is driven by one underlying thought – ‘I can’t handle it’
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If your driving thought was ‘I can handle it’, then you wouldn’t think it was fearful
Either way, the thought is rooted in your level of belief or trust in your own abilities
Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, famously summed it up
‘Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you're probably right’
So the solution to thinking less fearfully is in having more belief and trust in your abilities
It is about truly believing that you are ‘good enough’ to deal with the adversity or fear
That is very easy thing to say, but much more challenging to actually make happen
Below are a couple of techniques to help you to build your belief in your ability to cope
Use either or both, whatever works best for you and for the adversity or fear you’re facing
Technique 1 – keep repeating your version of one or more of the following mantras
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‘I know I can do this’
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‘Doing it will get rid of the fear’
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‘I’ll feel better about myself if I do it’
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‘Doing it is less scary than living with the fear’
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‘If I do it I’ll be in control of my fear and situation’
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‘I can handle this’
Technique 2 – redefining how you measure success and failure by truly accepting that
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‘I’m not a failure if it didn’t work, I’m a success for trying’
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‘Failing is just part of my journey to get to where I want to be’
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‘Failing is painful, but I can live with it to achieve my goals’
This module has enabled you to
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Recognise the key issues concerning courage during times of adversity and fear
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Understand the importance and value of managing your fears and concerns
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Recognise the impact on your behaviour of your feeling and thinking responses to fear
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Better manage your future success by accepting and controlling your fears
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Learn some useful, practical tools and techniques to increase your courage