In this solo podcast episode, host Rob Anderson reframes the common goal of "overcoming" fear to the more realistic aim of "managing" it. He argues that fear is an innate survival signal that should be acknowledged rather than eliminated. Anderson outlines a five‑step practical framework drawn from psychology and performance coaching: (1) Name the fear – using emotional‑agility concepts to turn vague anxiety into a concrete target; (2) Regulate the body – employing box breathing and parasympathetic activation to calm the nervous system before cognitive work; (3) Shrink the challenge – breaking overwhelming tasks into tiny, actionable steps (graded exposure) to desensitize the fear response; (4) Reframe the fear – viewing it as an informative indicator that signals the edge of the growth zone, illustrated with a comfort‑growth‑panic zone model; (5) Build a practice of courage – repeatedly performing small, fear‑provoking actions to develop self‑efficacy and treat courage as a muscle. Throughout, Anderson shares coaching anecdotes (crowd anxiety, scuba diving, presentation nerves) and emphasizes his role as a coach, not a therapist, while borrowing evidence‑based techniques. The episode ends with a call to action for listeners to share and subscribe.
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Hey, welcome to the Stand Sure Podcast, where we talk about what it means to live fully, live boldly, and move forward with confidence no matter what life throws at you. I'm Rob Anderson, and today we're going to talk about fear. But let's reframe that. We're not going to talk about overcoming fear. We're going to talk about managing fear. Fear. Because the truth is, fear doesn't just go away. Not completely. And it shouldn't. Fear is a signal. It's a built-in survival mechanism that says, this matters, pay attention. The goal isn't to eliminate fear. It's to build the skills to manage it so it doesn't make decisions for us. You see, fear shows up in all kinds of ways. It can be your— it can be fear of water. It could be fear of heights. It could be fear of starting over after failure. It could be that fear of vulnerability in a relationship. It could even be the fear of having a relationship. It could be fear of success. And that is something very, very real. I've had to work on that myself as well as work on that with clients more often than what you would think. It can be fear of being seen, being heard, being exposed. It can be fear of not being enough. And right now, if you're a person who's breathing, You felt in some capacity at least one of those. So let's talk about how we manage fear, not just with clichés, but with real proven strategies that we're borrowing from psychology, we're using in coaching, and that We've lived in experience. And I'm gonna break this down into several steps. So the very first one is you have to name it. Fear unspoken is fear that goes unchallenged. Let me say that again. Fear unspoken is fear unchallenged. When you name what you're afraid of, You begin to shrink its power. It, it moves from this vague cloud that's hanging over you to something that you can see, you can work with, you can respond to. And this is where coaching is a huge advantage because sometimes you'll be fearful of something and not even realize that that fear exists. Or You recognize the fear, but you're not really sure what that fear really is. But by naming it, it moves from that vagueness to something that you can see, something you can respond to, something you can work with. Susan David, who is a psychologist, calls it emotional agility. It's the ability to step out of the emotion and look at it with curiosity instead of shame. So instead of saying, I'm just anxious, say, I'm afraid that if I try again, I'll fail again. And that's something that we can coach through. I had a— I've got a client that we've done this with who has really bad crowd anxiety. Now, this is where I always point out, I'm not a counselor. I'm not a therapist. I'm a coach. And in coaching, we're moving forward and we're not working on the past. We're moving forward. And so, I ran some exercises with this client to help manage that fear of crowds. And they began the process of moving forward. And now that they understand and can name that fear, it's much easier to manage. Step 2. Regulate your body. This is one of the first things that you've got to do. And it's not just a mental game. It's working with your nervous system that's involved. So before you try logic and before you're using logic to work your way out of fear, bring your body back online. I mean, think about what happens when you, you know, in a case where you are getting anxiety. Think about the body responses, the way that breathing and perspiration and just all the different body responses, pupils dilating. So one of the things that we can do is we can start with breath, slow intentional breathing. That when you're doing that, that activates your parasympathetic nervous system. That is your body's natural calm-down system. When we look at Navy SEALs and Air Force pararescue, they use box breathing, and that's something that, that When I coach my clients, I actually walk them through box breathing exercises. Or when I'm working with my clients that we, that we put into the scuba environment, we use box breathing exercises. And it's not fluff. It's, it's science. Again, I'm not a therapist, but knowing what therapists do, they use it in trauma recovery. Leaders use it before stepping on a stage. Performers and actors use it before stepping onto stage, and you can use it before a conversation. You can use it before a presentation or at any moment that your palms sweat and your, and your heart is racing. I do a lot of coaching with presentation skills, and for the past 25 years I've run successful presentation workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions to build better presenters, especially presenters that are coming out of the technical world who they know they're— they've got the technical expertise, but they get really nervous and they don't have solid presentation skills. And one of the reasons why they don't have solid presentation skills is because of that anxiety. So we work with them, and one of the things I use is breathing exercises before they begin their presentation. Step 3, you want to shrink the challenge. Fear feeds on being overwhelmed. The, the bigger and blurrier the task, the louder that fear becomes. Break it down. What's what's the next thing that you can do? It's not trying to do the entire project, and it's not the entire relationship. Just the next step. Going back to my person that I've been coaching on crowd anxiety, one of the things that I had them do was look into a crowd and identify in that crowd. Who was relating to who. And more specifically, it was a crowd of people that were playing cornhole. And there was about, I don't know, 8 or 10 cornhole stations. And there was anywhere between 30 to 50 people. It's probably a little more around, around 30 people in that area. And I had them break it down to— How many groups were there? And what they suddenly realized— well, not suddenly— what we were able to work to is that it's small groups of people that just happen to be concentrated in a much larger area. Now, obviously, that's easier said than done, but that's where we started our practice, was working with small group interactions. And building that into small group interactions in a, in a much larger space. Because once they looked at that cornhole area, we identified there was a fence around the cornhole area and all those people were confined in there. And then able to look at just how many individual groups there were of 2 people and 4 people. Then they realized it was just much smaller chunks of people in that area. So by taking something and breaking it down, and if it's like on a project or on a presentation or just in a relationship, what's the next right thing that you can do? And again, it's not the whole project. It's not the entire relationship. It's just that next step. And this is how we desensitize our fear and that fear response. And that is something that's called graded exposure. Research shows that incremental steps toward fear-inducing activity actually retrain the brain. You're rewiring the brain when you do that. And it doesn't take a massive leap. It's just small steps at a time where you just need that forward moment, that forward motion to go along with it, right? Step 4, reframe the fear. What if fear isn't a warning, but it's an indicator? And we talked about this in the very beginning about fear. Fear can actually be a good thing, right? But what if it's not saying run and you learn in it? When I work with people who are afraid of water or they have a fear of scuba diving, the first step is not putting them into the deep end of the pool. The first step is to work through it Incrementally. And, and we approach it through a learning-type experience. You see, when we change our mindset about stress or fear, we actually change our physical and mental response to it. Your heart's racing, not, not because there's something broken in you. But now start looking at it as your heart is racing because you're now invested. Fear often shows up right on the edge of the growth zone. So if we look at the zones of learning, we've got that comfort zone, and I'll do a whole video podcast on this, but you've got that comfort zone in the very center. Think of it like a bullseye, okay? In the very center is the comfort zone. Then out from that, you have the growth zone. Then out from that, you have the panic zone. And really where I try to keep people is moving them out of that comfort zone into that learning zone. So again, if I've got a client, and we'll just use crowd anxiety because that's That's an easy one to work with in these metaphors. But if I've got someone with crowd anxiety, I'm not going to just throw them into a crowd and go meet 5 or 10 people or have them go hang out in the middle of a crowd. We're going to work, you know, we're going to start with things like, let's go talk to one person. Let's just go ask them the time of day and introduce yourself. And And then we're going to build from that. And that is moving them into the learning zone. But the fear comes in right at that edge between learning zone and— or what we could call the growth zone and panic zone. So instead of asking, how do I make the fear go away? What you should be asking is, what is this fear trying to teach me? That's something I enjoy doing as a coach, is walking someone through that exploratory phase of learning more about why they have the fear and where it's holding them back. The next step, building that practice of courage. And this is step 5. Courage isn't a moment. It becomes a habit. Managing fear, it requires consistent reps. It requires doing it the hard way, doing scary things in very small ways and doing them on purpose. I was working with a client a couple of days ago that was really wanting to make a life change or a career change and a lifestyle change. But as they looked through different opportunities, they were just absolutely afraid of sending their resume in. So I worked with them, built out a solid cover letter, helped them build out or tweak their resume. But it's having an honest conversation with yourself. It's standing up for yourself even when your voice shakes. It's going underwater when you're afraid of water. It's climbing a ladder when you're afraid of climbing a ladder. It's managing that fear. Each of those moments builds what psychologists called self-efficacy, the belief that you can handle what comes next. The US military is great at doing this. And it's, it's in almost every single practice or drill that, that they do. The belief that you can handle what comes next. And that belief, that's where your future begins. If fear's been in the driver's seat, I want you to hear this clearly. I want to be— I really want to make sure that you capture this. You are not weak because you're afraid. You're not broken because you hesitate. You're human and you are trainable. You can rewire your brain. You can learn to manage fear. And once you begin building on that, think of it as a muscle. You can build on that muscle. You do it one breath, one word, one action at a time. Hey, if today's podcast resonated with you, I'm going to ask you to like it. I need you to share it. Put it out there on social media for me and make sure that you're subscribing. I really want to keep positive messaging Getting out there. So next time, stand sure. Lead into life bravely.
