Turning Fear Into a Motivator
You can turn your fear into a motivator. That’s what I’m trying to do. Every time I come to an impasse and I know fear is there, I can feel it. I know that there’s something good getting ready to happen. There’s something good on the other side of that fear if I will let myself go on through that waterfall.
You can’t overcome that fear without facing it or without doing it.
You can rehearse the speech as many times as you want to. But until you look out into that field of eyes that are all looking directly at you, overcome that and start feeding on that because it gives you that tingle of fear in your stomach and you want to get out there… Until you’re able to tell them a joke and relax and just become yourself and the material flows off your tongue, until you’ve done that enough times, you can’t rehearse your way out of the fear.
Now, rehearsing a lot and having a good practice ethic can make it easier for you to depend on what you’ve practiced when you have to face fear.
Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, but ultimately when you move into master class, you’ve learned how to shoot. Now you’ve got to learn how to compete, and the only way you’re ever going to learn to compete is through competition.
People say that you can reprogram the brain, but I don’t believe it. You can reprogram it to a certain extent. You can be congruent. You can put yourself in the right situation, but the 10,000-hour rule is going to win out. It’s time on target. It’s time behind the gun.
Now, if you’ve got a crazy person like Gil or Vicki Ash that you can bounce your experiences off of and they can keep you grounded and going in the right direction, then you’re all the better for that. But you’re not going to practice your way into being a U.S. Open champion. You’ve got to compete your way into doing it.
This is an excerpt from the December 2012 Coaching Hour podcast. You can listen to it and read a written transcript, along with more than 20 years of archived episodes with your Knowledge Vault membership.
