A 5-Step Plan For Fighting Panic

“Panic is what fills your head if there’s nothing more productive going on up there.” That’s what a friend used to tell students when we taught whitewater canoeing. Our job, he would say, is to give them something more useful to think about.

I decided months ago to brave some metaphoric rapids. Now the deadline is closing in, and I’m getting nervous. I don’t have time for a full-blown linear panic. Instead, I’ll make do with this 5-step plan for fighting my fears. Here’s how it works:

1. What’s the Worst That Could Happen? List 20 possible consequences. No shortcuts. With fewer, you don’t get to the really scary stuff like “Everyone will see I’m a complete fraud,” “I’ll end up alone and penniless,” and “Even the dog will hate me.”
2. Work Backwards. We taught whitewater students to “read” rapids from the bottom up. In other words, starting with the swim you have to make if things go wrong. On the international scale of difficulty, the situation I’ve put myself into is about a Class III. Challenging but survivable. Write a description of the situation, starting with the Possible End Result and working backwards or upstream to where you are now, the Brink of Utter Doom.
3.  How Well Are You Prepared? What five skills or characteristics prepare you to meet most of the challenges ahead? Come on. You’ve done harder things than this. Use that knowledge.
4. Plan To Hit Some Rocks. It’s not possible to miss all obstacles. Therefore, it may be necessary to choose which ones you’re going to bang into. List five “rocks” you could hit that might leave some dents in your ego but allow you to keep moving toward your goal. Practice saying, “I meant to do that.”
5. Break It Down Into Doable Parts. Once you stem the flow of panic, you can start to see this Big Scary Situation as several connected Small Anxious Moments. In whitewater canoeing, downhill skiing and some other situations, you would target safe places where you can stop and reassess your approach to the next area. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow.

In the meantime, what to you do to fight your fears? Hit the comment button to share.

Are There Monsters Under Your Bed?

Usually the demon under my bed is so busy battling dust bunnies it doesn’t bother me too much. Except now. I’m about to flip the calendar to a new page in a new year. That means a particular deadline is going to boing off the page like a jack-in-the-box and slap me silly.

I agreed to do something, knowing full well the timing would be a challenge. That’s proving to be true. The demon knows this as well as I do, so it taunts me with the one weapon I can’t ignore:

“Sure you’ll get it done. But it won’t be Perfect.” Shudder.

Yes, I’m a recovering perfectionist. It’s been 30 years since I was perfect, but I still take it one day at a time. And I do pretty well, except for one type of situation. You guessed it. That’s what I agreed to.

The world won’t stop rotating on its axis if I don’t excel at each and every one of the unrealistic goals I set for myself with this project. The only one disappointed will be me. And even that is something I could control, to some extent. If that darn demon would just pipe down.

The only way that’s going to happen is if I take drastic measures. This is where my husband says, “You mean, do all the stuff you would have your students do?” Exactly. So for the next few days I’m going to post that stuff – not my specific situation, but the process I use for working around the monster.

But first, I’m going to vacuum under the bed.