What’s on Your ‘Afraid To Do List’?

The surprisingly simple power of facing your fears

Woman with a very scary To-Do list. Photo by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash

A few years ago I had a business coaching client who was very fearful of all the things she had to do to start her own practice. She’d worked in the corporate world for many years, and had high-level skills, but when it came to representing herself and asking to get paid she was petrified.

At one of our first sessions she told me that she’d created two separate “To-Do” Lists. One was the basic record of all the things that had to be accomplished. But the other was a new variant altogether: an “Afraid To-Do List.” Here she had written down the steps she was too scared to take but that she knew would help her grow her business.

I’d venture to say that all of us have a running inventory of things that are just too alarming to add to our day-to-day tasks. Reach out to the acquaintance who intimidates me but could help me get my biggest contract. Learn that new technology. Raise my rates. Develop my public speaking skills. Quit my underpaying job.

These are the aspirational to-do’s that sit around in the dusty corners of our subconscious, the personal bogeymen (bogeypeople?) hamstringing our success and motivation. They seem so big and daunting that we don’t dare to think or speak them, much less write them down. These fears become the awkward furniture of our…