How to control fear/anxiety?

Is fear / anxiety good or bad?

Imagine your moment of stage fear just before going into the podium was it really helpful that you were almost about to cry and run because of fear of failure. I do not think so, i once remember i literally cried after my first hindi poem recite and still have the stage fear before going into any bigger meetings or presentations.

The other kind of fear is what i call boss fear

So why is this fear – there are tons of explanation for this and goes very long history etc, so instead of dwelling on it lets move to more interesting question…

How can we control it?

By practice/Be Prepared:

I think the best way to defy fear is practice, its like you become so habitual in the tasks that it does not require second thought. It comes to you naturally and your self confidence becomes very high in that task.

What worst could happen:

Think of what worst could happen and work backward, for example if you are have a PPT presentation for a critical meeting, visualize what worst could happen, you will get rejected or you will get ridiculed etc. And be prepared for that, this is like facing fear beforehand and being ready for it.

Financial backup:

At very core levels, lot of things we do is financial security, for example if you get fired from job or do not get that salary hike, what will happen? Because of this we sometimes give in submissively, which is not always bad but it can really hurt if we are in that zone always. Cut down your financial needs or plan ahead, invest or cut down your expenditures. We feel much better if lets say we next 2 years of financial needs in our bank? right ?

Humility:

Many a times we get hooked with our position/status/power, we tend to keep on working towards getting more and more, bigger ranks, bigger offices, more people reporting, basically being ambitious. This is really good and keeps us very competitive, but not at the costs of being anxiety/fear? . Humility or humbleness helps to look at it from different prospective, helps to look at larger picture in our life and overall in the context we work. This does mean we does not have to be competitive or give in but means that understand the context and be ready for it.

Larger picture:

This ties in with Humility and Worst case preparation. Ask yourself what will happen if we fail now, in say next 2 yrs what will happen, were we will be ? Where I want to go? Is it money or home or what exactly i like?

Off course each individual is different and can apply any of the above. But overall just imagine how much more we can achieve if we can control our fear/anxiety ?