As a long-time boxing fan, and having trained for two years in the techniques of the sweet science, I recently took up sparring training. This entails stepping in the ring with ladies with a heck of a lot more experience and fights under their belt than I do, and taking hits for two-minute rounds.

Sound brutal? It is, when you’re starting out. I’ve been training for quite a while, but drills, techniques and combinations tend to go out the window when someone is hitting you back!

One of the biggest problems is being what’s known as head shy. That means, when someone is punching you in the face, your instinct is to close your eyes and move your head away. But that is about the worst thing you can do in boxing. You need to learn to stand strong, keep your eyes open, get your hands up, and face that punch head on.

Flinching can cost you everything in a match that can end instantly with one well-timed hit.

How do you stop being head shy? You take a lot of punches to the face – that’s the only way. Eventually, you get used to it. You stop flinching. You plant your feet, then you counter punch.

Is Fear Holding You Back?

The great Anthony Robbins has a saying – “if you can’t, you must”. If your first instinct when faced with a challenge is to think you can’t do it, you know that’s something you need to do.

Fear is a natural emotion, one we developed to keep us safe from predators, to stop us walking off cliffs and burning ourselves with fire. It’s a vital part of our existence and our evolution. But it also holds us back from things we want, things that can make our lives better. I really want to be a great boxer – but the primal part of me is afraid of being hurt, even if the conscious part of me isn’t. It is, of course, perfectly normal and healthy to be afraid of taking a strong punch to the face. But that’s the obstacle I need to overcome in order to get where I want to go.

In business we encounter fear constantly, around all matter of situations. People are afraid of success, of failure, of being judged, being embarrassed, losing everything, winning it all, being satisfied or unsatisfied. They are afraid of sales, of advertising, of marketing, of doing the books. It’s easy to walk around every day in a constant state of fear!

When our company runs sales training seminars, we encounter many, many people who are afraid to get on the phone and make a sales call. There’s a lot of psychology tied up in sales. For many people, there’s a strong fear of rejection, of the perceived humiliation that goes along with it. It can be an extremely confronting thing, regardless of how confident you normally are, or how long you’ve been in business.

The people who are afraid of sales at our events always fall into two categories. First, there are those who freak out. They let the fear win and they make any excuse they can to get out of the room.

Then there are the others. The ones who pick up the phone despite the fear. They know the more they do it, the easier it will be. They know they have to go through a period of discomfort before they become good, then great. They are, naturally, the ones who dominate at the seminars and beyond.

Who Do You Choose To Be?

I say choose, because there is always a choice. You can’t choose what scares you, but you can decide what you want to do next.

Will you be the person who lets fear rule, who runs away and refuses to confront what scares them? Or will you be the one who gets into the ring and learns to take the punches?

Because only one of those people will ever win the match.