Anxiety and fear suck. But they’re also the great equalizers. We all suffer from them in various forms.

Confronting challenge isn’t a “you” problem. It’s an “us” problem. This shit constricts the chests or women (and men) in business across the globe.

The difference between the successful – the ones you admire – and you? Their coping mechanisms.

Let’s talk about fear.

It’s a natural response to a threat. My stomach turns when I think about skydiving. Our bodies, our fears, protect us from imminent danger. It’s pretty simple.

Tornado sirens. Fire alarms. Something scary is around you, something harmful, and your body knows.

Let’s say you’re leaving the mall on Black Friday and you remember the new outfit you need for an upcoming interview. People spill out of the entrance behind you, bags draped under their eyes and across each arm. Fighting your way back in there is going to suck. You rush back toward the sliding door, trip over the untied Chucks you’re wearing and hope to get out of that hellhole as soon as you can.

As you regain your balance, your knuckles buckle around your keys and you place them in your jean pocket. You look down, making sure money didn’t tumble out. And just then, your peripheral vision spots the moving brake lights of the Mazda six feet from you. You can’t slow down enough (a body in motion tends to stay in motion, after all) and you’re about to catapult into the back of a moving vehicle.

What do you do? Scream? Slap the trunk? Channel your inner Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy? Did you consciously make the decision to avoid danger or did your body do it for you?

Good fear takes over on its own when necessary.

Not so good fear – aka anxiety – is different. It keeps us from reaching our dreams. It helps us spin countless scenarios in our heads about future possibilities (usually none of them good), instead of living right now. And it’s useless.

Learning to approach it will help you build the business, career and life you want. One that wakes up your frontal lobe and pelvic floor.

I haven’t coached a day without a client freaking-the-fuck-out. Someone, somewhere, is dealing with gut-bending anxiety right now.

That’s where I come in.

Anxiety consumes us when we allow fear to become about something that might happen later, not now. For example, right now, I’m writing this. No need to be anxious. But if I started to mull over all the people who might not like that I say fuck, or who don’t like my preference for incomplete sentences for effect, or who are just pains in the ass, well, I’d get anxious damn quick. Fortunately, I don’t care about any of that.

The restrictions we place on our lives to avoid potential discomfort are anxiety-driven.

The always-single forty-something who was burned once and locked her heart in her four-family flat.
The man in the mall parking lot who now refuses to go to ANY parking lot in an attempt to avoid getting hit.
The boss lady who never shows up online to share her services because she’s afraid of rejection.

When anxiety changes the course of your life, when it stops you from reaching a dream, it’s a big fat problem.

So how do we breakthrough?

Ask for help.

Whatever way you’re able to bend your mind and shift anxious energy, do it. Pay someone to do your taxes. Try exercise and yoga. Hire a coach to walk you through the scary parts of telling visibility and sales.

We don’t have to do anything alone.

The bottom line? Are you willing to give up on your dream because anxiety wrecked your T-shirt armpits last night?

Screw that.

And here’s an extra tip, because I can –> Arguably the single most valuable thing you can do about anxiety? Talk about it.

Holding it up to the light invariably allows people to see it for what it is – a whole lot of nothing.

My clients have this gangster-I-love-you-no-I-love-you-more thing happening in our mastermind community. They have each others’ backs. They all have the same struggles and feelings, and they talk about them openly. It’s kinda like free therapy, and the women there are beating anxiety and getting shit done.

So what are you waiting for?

As long as you’re worried about things that might happen in the future, you’re not doing shit now.

And you’re never better prepared for bad things because you spent all that time worrying.

No more excuses. Get it done.

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Want freedom from anxiety forever? Check out RTT. My specialty is helping women ditch anxiety, panic and fear forever. You don’t have to suffer.

You’re scared? Good. That means you’re moving forward. Chasing something. Going after what you want.

Frankly, the times when I’m not scared – when, for instance, I stay in bed an entire day, telling myself I suck and I should pack it in – that’s when shit gets ugly.

Yeah, I do that on occasion. Like just before I launched my last book. And just before I decided to stop doing 1:1 work. And when I decided to launch a new $50K mastermind.

Here’s the deal: Making big things happen brings on doubt – about everything. What you do. Who you are. Who you want to be. All of it goes under the microscope. That’s normal.

The trouble comes when you can’t come out from under the blankets.

We spend a lot of time telling ourselves we’re doing things wrong. Or we shouldn’t be doing things. Or we should be doing other things.

What we don’t do very much is listen to our bodies, our GUT. If you want to stay in bed, do it. Get it out of your system.

Because eventually, once you’ve given yourself permission to feel whatever feelings are making you want to stay in bed, you will want to get up. And launch a book. Or start a new $50K mastermind. Or any other crazy ass thing you can think of.

These days, my life is about doing what I want to do. I’m not always great about it, but I’m trying. I don’t beat myself up anymore if I need a break. I don’t stress that I’m a complete ass and everyone hates me because I swear. I no longer bother trying to please everyone.

What I’ve learned by being gentler with myself is that I feel more empowered.

I don’t need anyone’s permission to be myself. That frees me up – it energizes me – to do the creative work I love with people who like my style.

My point?

Anyone who goes for it will fall down along the way. Feeling like a failure is a part of success. Being scared shitless is a step in the process. It means you’re not sitting on your ass whining — like most of your critics.

I fall on my face all the time. You’d be shocked if you knew how much time and money I’ve sunk into useless products, dead-end projects and bad deals.

But I also learned from those mistakes.

Feeling like a failure is normal. Sometimes it means you’re sitting on the edge of your biggest success. But even if it doesn’t, your world is not going to crumble.

You feel me? Hit me in the comments and tell me the last time you talked yourself into defeat. What happened that made you feel like you suck? And how’d you get out of it?