A tip for when a task feels scary

When I prepared my webinar about saying 'no' at work, I felt a bit scared. Is it what the participants expect it to be? Will it be valuable enough? Am I doing it right? I notice two things when a task feels scary.

1. I have a hard time making decisions. What program is the best? What content will bring the most value? I overthink every choice.

2. And with that comes procrastination. The decision takes a long time. And I feel restless. I know rationally: I need to decide. But I don't want to because then that tension comes up again!

3. Oh and actually, there is a third one. Overachieving. I think: 'I need to read more books! I need to google more research!' I assume I need more knowledge to be valuable.

These three patterns lead to stress around the deadline. And I did not want to wait until the last moment to finalize my program. Because I knew in that case the webinar would be absolutely no fun for me. I knew I had to look my fear in the eye. Because if I ignore it and procrastinate even more, the stress will become bigger. So last Friday I took a moment and wrote all my thoughts down. A brain dump. What am I afraid of? What is my worst case scenario? What are all the thoughts racing through my head? I did not analyze. I did not try to make sense of it. Just writing. And I checked: is this everything? Or is there more I am afraid of? Until I could not come up with more. After I gave that fear all my attention, I noticed it diminished. I felt relieved. I know I didn't need more knowledge. I had an idea how I could wrap this up. And I had the headspace to finalize my program! Tip If you notice something feels scary experiment with doing a brain dump. Write everything down without analyzing. What do you feel after that?