I had such a wonderful insight this morning about being scared. I wanted to sy thank you and to share it.
I thought I was in a bit of an ethical quandary about whether or not it was okay to accept consulting work offered to me as an independent consultant, when I had been introduced to the project through a firm. I knew I was feeling really icky about the whole situation, and I thought the root was the ethics, but it was actually my thoughts!
Here’s my model work:
Unintentional
C: Client wants to hire me
T: I want and deserve this work. They chose me.
F: Self-righteous, entitled, “over”-proud, arrogant
A:Rationalizing questionable practices, manipulating people, sneakiness (all in a very “professional” way, mind you!)
R: Precedent set, existing relationships tainted, my opinion of myself and my integrity slips.

Interesting. Fear isn’t really in there. I thought it was what was motivating me. So the intentional model:
C: Client wants to hire me.
T: I want to do the right thing, be in my integrity.
F: Clean, clear, open to possibilities. AFRAID
A: honest interactions, smart decisions, not negative consequences – even if I don’t get this bit of work.
R: Nothing that has to be cleaned up!

So the big insight was that in this case, fear was showing me where the true massive action lies, for me – taking the risk that following my own integrity just might cause me to lose some work and I would have to go find more. And I can do fear.

The obvious epilogue would be that if it was shady and uncomfortable at the beginning, it would only get worse, etc. etc., which I know. But I was more fascinated by my thoughts and which ones really caused fear – and why!

What a freakin’ awesome tool. I just removed so much stress.