This week the mainstream media, social media and every day conversations have been flooded with stories of terrorism in Paris and Beirut. A quick Google search will show you that acts of terrorism are a regular occurrence at this time in history; some claiming many lives, others smaller in scale that tend to go unreported by mainstream media.

It can make the world look like a scary place. It can be debilitating, wondering what the future holds and living in fear of what might happen.

My personal Facebook profile picture is an image of a head, with the quote “A head full of fears has no space for dreams”. Although I have had this profile image for quite a while, it seems very pertinent now. When we are witness to so many atrocities around the world, and in our own backyard, it can be easy to let fear fill our heads.

But now more than ever, I think it is an important mantra to remind ourselves of, both in our personal lives and in business. If we let fear cripple us, we will never move forward and achieve our goals and dreams. If we let fear cripple us, the source of that fear is victorious.

Sometimes for business owners, that fear is related to external factors: will I get enough clients to make ends meet? Will that change in government policy adversely affect my business? Sometimes, the fear is simply of the unknown. Or a fear of not being ‘good enough’ to succeed.

Wherever your fear stems from, don’t let it rule you. In the same way most of us believe that today’s terrorists ‘win’ if we succumb to our fears, don’t fill your head with fears and worries that most likely will never happen. Shift your thoughts, filter out the fears, and focus on your dreams. Your dreams are what has got you this far, not your fears. Focus on the dreams, the good and what you want to achieve, and leave no space for fear.

Michelle Grice writes a weekly column for business women in The Western Weekender

Most of us don’t really like change, do we? We tend to err on the side of comfort and safety, and will often choose the ‘known’ over the ‘unknown’ just because it’s familiar, even if the ‘unknown’ holds some great possibilities.

You may have seen the diagram of two circles: one small one with ‘your comfort zone’ written inside it, and another larger one, set apart from the small one, with the words ‘where the magic happens’ (or ‘learning zone’). It is expressing in visual form the fact that you have to move outside of your comfort zone in order for better things, or more valuable experiences, to happen.

There is nothing wrong with staying in your comfort zone. But often the people who do are the same ones who lament that ‘nothing good ever comes my way’ or ‘why are other people so lucky?’. So although there is always a choice to stay comfortable, it comes at a cost.

Sometimes change is forced upon us, and although it can be unpleasant, it should always be viewed as an opportunity to grow and learn. The learning might simply be ‘I don’t want to go through that again!’ and putting safeguards in place to ensure that it doesn’t. But hopefully, it also gives you some impetus to make some intentional change. Not just change for the sake of it, but using what might appear to be a negative turn of events as a catalyst for some positive change.

So often, it is not the changes themselves that stops us (that is, we can often think of positive reasons why the change is good), but it’s the fear of doing something we haven’t done before.

How do you know if it’s the right direction to take? You won’t always know. How do you know it’s going to OK? You don’t. But don’t let that stop you taking action and learning valuable lessons in the process. In the words of George Bernard Shaw: “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything”.

Michelle Grice writes a weekly column for business women in The Western Weekender