The Fear Buster Exercise
Sunday, December 7th, 2008
Fear Buster Exercise
A very effective strategy I use with my clients involves role-playing. I ask them to imagine that they are participating in a drug trial developed by a major pharmaceutical company. The drug is called “Fear Buster” because it eliminates all your fears for 12 hours. As a safety precaution, the drug company has designed this new drug in such a way that you will not be stripped out of your basic survival skills, so you will not, for example be tempted to jump out of the top floor of the Chrysler building. However, all other fears are eliminated - fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of being different, even fear of success.
Once my client is in the right frame of mind, his goal is to mentally live an entire day without any fear. All of a sudden he walks, in his mind’s eye, into his boss’s office and asks for the promotion he so clearly deserves. He approaches the office bully and confronts him head on; he sees himself pick up the phone and call a long-lost friend whom he treated unfairly in the past.
As they engage in this mental role-play, my clients are having the time of their life. Once they are done with the exercise, I tell them that this is their life. That’s how they can live from right now. It’s up to them, but they have now seen and experienced what it can be like to live without fear. Once they’ve done that, they don’t want to turn back. The key point here is that fear can be conquered through practice, patience and creativity