The Fear Of New Beginnings
The fear of starting something new can be deeply paralyzing. It could be a new job, a business venture, a project, a college, a new office, and so on.
It is a peculiar fear that sits between the anxiety of new beginnings and the fear of failure. On one hand, you feel excited to start something new. On the other, you are afraid of the very same thing.
This fear is often healthy, though irritating at the beginning. Sadly, there is no direct cure for it except confronting it repeatedly.
You have grown too comfortable within your comfort zone, which is why this fear exists in the first place. It is the fear of stepping out of what feels safe. Your mind naturally resists this with everything it has. It senses danger. The fear you experience is your brain operating in a state of hyper-alertness.
You need to remind yourself what new beginnings truly mean to you, and you need to do this through repetition. You must manage your internal stakes consciously. Ask yourself what it would mean to never start versus the temporary anxiety of beginning half-heartedly. Nine out of ten times, you would still choose to begin.
Visualise the happiness that comes from having the courage to step out of your comfort zone and actually succeed in your new venture.
Every time you feel the anxiety of something new, imagine yourself succeeding at it.
Instead of telling your mind what it should be afraid of, give it a visual image of what it should feel instead. Feel the inner satisfaction you would experience when you succeed in your project.
If you are starting a new business, visualise yourself deeply engaged in work that brings you both greater revenue and genuine joy.
Reframe your mental process from the fear of starting to the anticipation of succeeding. One could argue that it is foolish to imagine success before it arrives.
But is it not equally foolish to live in fear of something that has not even materialised?
Your fear, anxiety, and worries are not tangible. They exist only in your mind. Real challenges look very different from how they appear in your thoughts. Your mind is not a reliable predictor of future events.
This does not mean you should ignore your gut feelings. In trying to escape anxious thoughts, do not discard your intuition. There is a subtle but important difference between the two.
Gut feeling is the product of experience. You have done something often enough to sense when something is off or unnatural. Anxiety, on the other hand, can exist without experience. The two are therefore distinct.
It takes practice to focus on the positive aspects of a new project. You first have to push your mind to visualise a successful outcome. Over time, your mind grows comfortable with that image.
Eventually, instead of generating fear, it begins offering ideas and confidence in those ideas. Replace the fear of new beginnings with the jubilation of new beginnings.