We have fears. It is actually normal to have elements of fear. Yet what do you do when you let fear run your life? That is what happened to Ruth Soukup. She saw something scary around every corner. She found herself homeless and on the verge of a panic attack just thinking of going to the grocery store. Yet 2 years later she is a functioning human. She is married with kids and active in her community. So what changed? How did Ruth change from being a broken human to talking on the TED circuit? She is now a successful woman who has her own blog and books written by her. She teaches courses on how to be a better human.
Yet her students still tell her that they are stuck. That darn indulgent emotion of confusion and spinning is chasing right after them. When you listen to Ruth talk about her students is interesting to hear her talk about how they are afraid that they will mess up a planner. This is a book of blank paper. How do you mess it up? You can’t, but these people, who turn to Ruth, have minds that have convinced them that they can mess up a planner. Are these people dumb? No, they are human and they are living their life with an unintentional mind.
So did Ruth just throw up her hands thinking that humans are just nothing but walking talking bags of fear? Of course not she started studying the underlying problem. She got a whole team of researchers together and got to looking.
She found that people perceive fear to be different and there are 7 fear archetypes that we all seem to experience.
- Procrastination
- People Pleaser – I will say I don’t agree with their pros
- Rule Follower
- Outcast
- Self-doubt
- Excuse maker
- Pessimist
Now she does have a point they are all emotions based on fear, and fear causes each of those people to play small in their own way.