3 Things Every Small Business Owner Held Back by Fear Needs to Know

As a small business owner, have you ever procrastinated on anything you knew you needed — or even wanted — to get done? Of course you have! We all procrastinate sometimes.

The problem is that sometimes we confuse procrastination as our identity. For example, we might say to ourselves, “I am a terrible entrepreneur. I can’t get anything done. I’ll never succeed!” Or, we might approach procrastination as just another problem to be solved, so we start trying every checklist app and productivity trick we can find. I’m all for making lists and prioritizing tasks, but usually these only work once we are on a roll and have clarity on our direction. And, negative self-talk will never contribute to our success!

Here’s what you really need to know about procrastination: It’s a symptom, not a problem.

And you are not the problem either.

The problem is FEAR!

If you dwell on your procrastination with ‘self-deprecating angst’ or ‘denial-by-list-making’, you will never really solve the problem of fear to make real progress. You must dig deep into your psyche, journal about your emotions, and figure out what you are really afraid of in order to defeat the fear and overcome the procrastination.

To lead your business to success, you must recognize your fear, defeat your fear, and learn to embrace your fear. Here are a few tips on how to do these three things to get unstuck and not be held back anymore by fear.

Recognize Your Fear

The first step to conquering fear is simply becoming aware of it. Once you recognize and identify your fear, you can begin to work on overcoming it. Ask yourself, what am I afraid of? The answer is not usually readily available to us. Fear insidiously dwells in our subconscious mind. So, the best way to explore this and find the answer is to journal your feelings. No one else ever has to read what you’ve written, so just write with a stream of thought. Forget about punctuation and spelling. Just spill your guts onto the page. You might be amazed at the difference between what you thought was wrong when you began to write and the conclusion you come to through the process.