Fear can grip us in many ways. It causes us to self-censor, to push down our authenticity, to hesitate in reaching for opportunities, and more. Speaking from personal experience, fear can have a powerful impact on how we behave, but the good news is that these moments of fear are perfect opportunities to practice the power of self-coaching.

Self-coaching is the practice of pre-selecting words of affirmation, encouragement, and guidance that you can tell yourself when the gremlin in your head wants you to hold back. It’s a form of mental rehearsal, which we know is a clinically proven strategy for reducing stress. Essentially, it’s a strategic way of giving yourself a pep talk when you need it most.

Self-coaching is a great tool for building your confidence and overcoming your fears, because it’s all about taking your power back. You don’t need to rely on anyone or anything else to support you — you have all the tools you need to help yourself!

Here are three ways you can get started with self-coaching.

Start with Mindfulness

As with many (if not all!) other forms of self-work, mindfulness is essential for knowing when to self-coach. Mindfulness is the practice of tuning into the present moment to gain awareness of what you’re thinking, feeling, and sensing — all in a non-judgmental way.

When we experience moments of fear or panic, our nervous system is activated, and we enter into a fight, flight, or freeze response. When this happens, the physical symptoms of stress can impair aspects of our cognition and decision-making. By practicing mindfulness, we can slow down, hear what’s happening in our mind, and be in greater control of how we speak and behave.

After practicing mindful awareness of your thoughts for a while, you’ll have a better idea of the kinds of situations in which you’re likely to experience negative narratives. It’s in those situations that you’ll want to have self-coaching on standby.

Then, whether your fear is caused by a negative narrative you’ve internalized (“You’re not good enough”), a self-limiting belief that you hold about yourself (“I can’t do this”), or feeling pressure to behave like someone you’re not (“Don’t show your true feelings”), self-coaching can help you to behave or speak in a way that will serve you better and is in alignment with your Authentic Self.

Use Mantras and Affirmations

A mantra or positive affirmation is a statement of reinforcement that you can use strategically to keep you grounded, rooted, and calm during moments of stress. You can choose something simple to practice and call upon when you need it most. For example, during tough moments I use the mantra “I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m great, I’m great.”

You can also use mantras or affirmations during vulnerable moments. For example, the first time I said “I love you” to my partner, self-coaching really helped me! Firstly, I was terrified, because one of my own negative narratives is a fear of being unlovable. Secondly, when the moment arrived and I knew I had to tell him, my body was telling me to run far, far away (which I clocked using mindfulness)! Eventually, I called on the power of self-coaching to push through the nerves, and using the mantra, “I am love, I can do this!” to encourage myself, I was able to push through and express my true feelings. And I can tell you, it was a very rewarding feeling.

You don’t have to use these exact affirmations, and in fact, I encourage you to come up with your own! Choose something unique to you that will help make you feel more grounded during moments of fear or stress.

Challenge Your Negative Narratives

When it comes to challenging negative narratives and long-held fears, sometimes a positive statement isn’t enough. In these cases, it’s important to focus on giving yourself concrete evidence of the positive truth you want to be thinking instead.

For example, if you suffer from impostor syndrome (like I occasionally do when I present to audiences), your negative narrative might sound something like, “I can’t believe I’m up on a stage in front of 500 people right now. What if they think I’m stupid?” This negative narrative is hard to overcome with a simple, “You got this, girl!”

It can be more powerful to take stock of your accomplishments and use them as evidence to unlearn your negative narratives and instead start to internalize a positive truth about yourself. In the example above, I would beef up a positive, encouraging thought by adding evidence of my worthiness, for example: “I am qualified to be on this stage. I have presented over 1,000 times in my career. I’ve got this!”

Sometimes this kind of reality check is what we need to ground us and make us feel stronger, and the more often we do it, the more powerful and worthy we feel! It may not come naturally to you at first, but by practicing this essential self-coaching tool, soon you’ll learn to recognize the negative thought patterns that are fueling your fears and have the tools at your disposal to quickly disrupt them.

Feeling confident and self-assured in the face of our fears is something that everyone struggles with, but these techniques will help you to self-coach the next time the gremlin in your head makes an appearance. By practicing mindfulness, using personal affirmations and mantras, and focusing on positive truths, you’ll soon find that your fears are encouraging you instead of holding you back.

The post Overcome Your Fears with the Power of Self-Coaching appeared first on Ritu Bhasin.

At dinner with his family one night, my boyfriend and his father started talking hockey. I was about to tune out when his dad began to talk about how, when it comes to living a good life, we can learn a lot from the game. He went on to explain, quoting Hockey Hall of Famer, Wayne Gretzky: “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

This was the first time anything sports-related resonated with me, and since then this powerful quote has stuck with me because it’s so true!

When you have a goal or a dream, but you don’t take a shot at it, you miss the opportunity to score, to win, or to get what you want. In order to fulfill your dream, it’s crucial that you take a chance.

Take Your Shot

The problem for many of us is that we’re afraid to take the first shot. It’s often easier, and feels safer, to keep mulling over an idea or to keep yourself in the research phase. Taking the first step can be scary, because it means opening yourself up to the world and to criticism by others. But here’s the thing — there will always be critics out there, so don’t let them hold you back!

You may feel that something needs to fall into place or you need to make a key decision before it feels right for you to take the leap. But as I’ve said many times before, that is often just an excuse.  Plus perfection does not exist anyway! If you focus on what others think or keep waiting for the elusive “missing” piece, you’ll likely never start anything. And in order to succeed, you must take action.

Yes, you might fail on the first go, but as we know, failing is a part of success. If you believe deeply in your dream and want it to come true, you can’t allow obstacles to stop you.

Instead, it’s critical to look at setbacks as experiences to learn from and as opportunities to re-ignite the spark for your next attempt. Plus another benefit of constantly trying is that you’ll have time to reassess the steps you’re taking to achieve your goal. This means that your output will only get better and better over time. I believe that this type of persistence is what separates the dreamers and the doers.

So if you have a dream, I encourage you to take action! Keep your foot on the gas pedal and try and try again. You have the power to create what happens to you as long as you show up and you do your best.

And if you ultimately do fail, at least you’ll know you tried.

The post You Miss 100% of the Shots You Don’t Take appeared first on Ritu Bhasin.

As you may know, I make my living as a professional speaker, presenting to thousands of people around the world on a range of inclusion, empowerment, and leadership topics. I hope you’ll believe me when I say this, but there was a time when I was more junior in my career that I felt really uncomfortable presenting to audiences and speaking at meetings.

It’s true! Unless I was leading a meeting, I had a really hard time speaking up, and I definitely wouldn’t have asked questions during a Q&A period, and I often sat silent in learning sessions.

I now understand that the reason I feared speaking up was that I was afraid of being judged for what I said. I was afraid that people would think I was stupid if I said something wrong or if I sounded timid or if my grammar wasn’t perfect. As I was often the only woman of color in the room, I was already feeling pressure about how others would perceive me. I was often frozen.

But there’s something really critical that I did that helped me to get to a place where I became comfortable speaking to audiences, speaking at meetings, and more — and I became a professional speaker over a decade ago, so I know it works!

In this video I talk about the important thing I did to tackle my fear of speaking in public. I hope that it will help you too.

Watch now!

The post How To Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking appeared first on Ritu Bhasin.

The Performing Self I created was all about appearing flawless — strong, confident, positive, and successful. In my attempt to be perceived as perfect, I changed how I dressed, how I spoke, how I behaved, who I associated with, the content I shared, the activities I engaged in, and more, conforming to an idea about perfection that wasn’t at all true to me. My conformity was exacerbated by my work life — I worked in an elite legal environment, where the bar was set high in every area and the criteria for “fitting in” was both narrow and fixed.

During these years, I did a mix of things to mask what I perceived to be my “imperfections”. I fixated on dressing impeccably to signal class privilege, attractiveness, and that I had my shit together. When getting to know people, I often hid behind a mask that covered up my insecurities about my abilities, my cultural background, and my socioeconomic roots. I also conformed in how I spoke so that I’d fit in with certain social groups (taking on a more formal tenor, dropping the pitch of my voice, and using fancier words — essentially, speaking the Queen’s English).

I didn’t want anyone to see my imperfections or my vulnerabilities. I desperately wanted to fit in, and I wanted to protect myself from the pain of being negatively judged by others. All the while, I felt deeply flawed, damaged, and effed up on the inside.

And let me tell you — it was exhausting.

Protecting My Wounds From Childhood

When I think about why I was so dedicated to upholding this image of perfection, I know it’s connected to the feelings of social alienation, rejection, and inferiority that I felt because of the childhood bullying I experienced and the parenting I received. A lot of research has been done about the numerous long-term impacts of childhood bullying. Bullying can have a profound adverse impact on mental health and other areas for those who experience it.

Being bullied because of who I was (Brown, smart, not as wealthy as the other kids), coupled with messages from my parents that I needed to be quieter, less outspoken, and less expressive (basically someone other than who I was), caused me to carry feelings of woundedness and worthlessness into adulthood.

It’s no wonder I wanted to protect myself from feeling more of this pain. But the truth is that, instead of protecting me, striving for perfection was actually causing more damage, because I wasn’t living my truth.

Nobody’s Perfect

I’ve come a long way in embracing my imperfections and allowing them to show by being my Authentic Self, but from time to time I’ll catch myself saying some version of, “I’m so fucked up,” and berating myself for my flaws. My boyfriend will often catch me when I’m self-flogging and remind me that I’m “amazing” just the way I am and that everyone is imperfect — and that it’s possible to be both imperfect and amazing.

A lot of us do this to ourselves. We believe we should be perfect, and we measure ourselves against an impossible standard. While believing this, we also worry that if we show others that we don’t live up to this standard, we’ll experience rejection and alienation. But every single one of us is imperfect — perfectly imperfect and imperfectly perfect. The greatest gift we can give ourselves is the acceptance of this fact.

Transformative Things Happen When We Accept Our Imperfections

When we accept our imperfections, our lives can transform in amazing ways. Firstly, we can practice self-compassion: that is, show ourselves the compassion we would show others, which has numerous mental, physical, and spiritual benefits. In her book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, Dr. Kristin Neff teaches that self-compassion flows from both being kind to ourselves and recognizing our common humanity — that each of us is imperfect and experiences suffering.

Secondly, when we accept our imperfections, we’re better able to practice authenticity. When we’re committed to living as our whole, true, authentic selves (the good, bad, and ugly), we’re free of the exhausting dance that is performing. And when we’re tuned in to our authenticity, we know how to behave at any given moment because we’re anchored to our values. We no longer have to pour our energy into being, doing, and saying what we think others want us to. We’re free to be imperfect.

So what can you do to take a step towards living as your authentic, imperfect self? Start by tuning into the areas of your life where you might be performing (the Seven Behavioral Dimensions, as I call them) and start making small changes. Embrace the things that make you unique and different! Be smart or outspoken or wear bright colors if that’s what feels right for you.

There’s no right way to live. Nobody’s perfect!

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