Let’s talk about anxiety, about apprehension, about procrastination; let’s talk about fear. We might as well. We experience it every time we pick up the phone to ask for an appointment. We live with it every time we meet with our manager for a performance review. We face it every time we ask for a gift.
We’re often so afraid that we avoid opportunities to face our fears, to analyze and learn from them. We bypass opportunities to turn our fears into opportunities for growth.
In some circumstances fear is a useful emotion. Fear of getting killed is valuable; it triggers the “fight or flight response,” and might save your life.
But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the sort of fear that causes problems for the fundraising professional. I have identified three key fears we live with – in varying degrees – throughout our careers.
Fear of Failure is when we allow anxiety or apprehension to stop us from trying the things that can move us forward to achieve our goals. What we really fear is failing to do something right the first time. (Read that last sentence again) Unlike the fear of being killed, do you see why “fear of failure” is not a useful fear at all? Is “all or nothing” or “now or never” a rational way to work, a healthy way to live?
Fear of the Unknown can be explained like this: you tell yourself that in order to move forward, you must know what is waiting for you, because ‘if I don’t know, then I am not in control. So I don’t think I’ll bother to take a look’. The risk of losing control is what scares us the most.
Fear of Rejection is prevalent in areas of interpersonal relationships, like in fundraising, which depends on skillful relationship-building. Sometimes overcoming the mental obstacle of fear of rejection depends on recognizing that the fear is really just a slap in the face from the necessity to set realistic goals for yourself. When you do actually get rejected, examine the circumstances of the situation carefully and individually. Embrace the simple truth that rejection isn’t personal. After all, you aren’t asking for personal gifts, are you?
Symptoms of the fears fundraisers face include
• A reluctance to try new things, to proactively reach out to strangers, or get involved in challenging projects.
• Self-sabotage – procrastination, excessive anxiety, or a failure to follow through with goals.
• Low self-esteem or self-confidence – commonly using negative statements such as “I’ll never be able to learn all this,” or “What if my prospect says NO?”
• Perfectionism – A willingness to try only those things that you know you’ll finish perfectly and successfully. Reflect on how many times Edison failed at making a functional light bulb.
Here are a few ways to manage your fundraising fears:
• Study and practice your craft. Identify what you believe you don’t know sufficiently, and make a plan to learn it. Competence breeds confidence.
• Work incrementally. Eat the elephant of your fears the only way you can – one bite at a time.
• Analyze all potential outcomes – Many people experience fear of failure because they fear the unknown. Remove those fears by considering all of the potential outcomes of your decision. Prior planning prevents poor performance.
• Use goal setting & visualization. Learn to think more positively – Positive thinking is an incredibly powerful way to build self-confidence and neutralize self-sabotage, especially in the face of rejection.
• Look at failure as the learning experience it often is. Every time you fail at something, you can choose to look for the lesson that’s there to learn.
• Look at the worse-case scenario – In some cases, the worst case scenario may be genuinely disastrous, and it may be perfectly rational to fear the unknown. In other cases, however, this worst case may actually not be that bad, and recognizing this can help.
• Sympathize – understand that a charitable gift will not be important to each person you speak with. Sometimes the potential donor’s agenda — circumstances, issues of timing and other priorities, take precedence over your agenda. If you were asking for a gift or a favor for yourself, it would be personal. But you aren’t, so it isn’t.
• Have a contingency plan – If you’re afraid of failing at something or being rejected, having a “Plan B” in place can help you feel more confident about moving forward.
Convert the energy of your anxiety to eagerness. We often confuse these two words as synonymous. In fact, they have distinctly different effects on us.
Anxiety is a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome
Eagerness is a feeling of enthusiasm to do or to have something; keenness, accompanied by excitement and energy.
Embrace a sense of eagerness to face and work with your fears. Your fear may never totally go away. But, like the fear of getting killed, a little bit of pre-meeting jitters can be a good thing, by giving you the energy you need to make your case, to invite that big gift.