What wold you say if somebody tells you that they hear voices, constantly buzzing in their head?

You would probably think that they would need to see a psychiatrist, wouldn’t you?

Now, wait a minute…..

Think again.

If you get quiet. Without a doubt, you will hear voices too. You don’t even need to get quiet though. Sometimes these voices are so loud. They can actually give you a hard time when trying to have a conversation with a real human being. So loud, that no matter how hard you are trying, you cannot hear the words of the person sitting  right next to you.

I remember, numerous times, when sitting in a business meeting. The voices inside my head screaming loudly “What are you doing here? You don’t belong! You are not smart enough. You are not good enough. Everybody is going to find out.” It was so bad, that at the end of the meeting I didn’t even have a clue about anything that was said.

That was the voice of fear inside my head. Everybody hears it every now and then. It is completely normal and natural. After all, it is there to keep us alive. That is the voice that tells us to step back when walking too close to the edge of a tall building. That is the voice that commands us to run faster, when chased by a ferocious dog. And that is the voice that warns us not to put our hands in the burning fire.

Therefore, we should all appreciate and be grateful for the voice of fear.

However, there are people ( I was one of them until very recently ), who hear the voice of fear more often than they need to and louder than it is necessary.  They would often hear the voice in situations where there is no danger at all. Such as me, during my meetings. There was no life threatening danger in those cases. And the voice screaming:

“You are not good enough”

“You are not smart enough”

“You wouldn’t have what to say here”

“You would make a fool of yourself”

and many other similar comments,

was not actually helping me. Just the opposite. It turned me into a ball of nerves and anxiety. It made me fearful of perfectly safe situations.

This is why we need to be very careful when listening to the voice of fear. We need to be able to determine the accuracy of what the voice is saying. And quite often, this is pretty easy to do.

Whenever you hear a fearful thought, all you need to do is to determine whether there is a real danger in what you are about to do. And if there is a chance that you might get physically hurt, like getting bitten by a dog, falling down from a high altitude, getting burnt etc. Then you need to stop, listen to the voice and make a decision what your next steps need to be.

And even in those cases, sometimes the best decision would be to ignore listening to the voice altogether. I am sure that before jumping into a burning building, every firefighter has at least one fearful thought. This is nature. However, they are trained and able to act in some of the most dangerous situations to save lives. For them it would not be helpful to get paralyzed by fear and simply watch the building turning into ashes and taking the lives of the people inside it.

Thankfully, most of us would not face dangerous situations like that. But what we face on a daily basis are job interviews, giving presentations, job losses, criticism, decision making , learning new skills, sitting exams, taking risks etc.  And this is when we might hear the voice of fear:

“You are not good enough.”

“You are not smart enough.”

“You wouldn’t have what to say here.”

“You would make a fool of yourself.”

“This is too hard.”

“What if I fail?”

“It’s too overwhelming.”

“I can’t manage.”

“It’s too stressful.”

Those are just a few examples that you need to be aware of. The commonality between them and many others is that there is NO REAL DANGER here.  Hearing any of these inside your head,  just means that you are about to come out of your comport zone. And doing that is a really good thing. Because only when you do something that’s outside your comfort zone, you grow, you learn, and you expand your potential. And this is when, the best thing to do is to ignore the fearful thoughts and just to go ahead.