 October is the time for Halloween and scary things! This month's challenge will help you understand the fears that might be holding you back. Welcome back, and congratulations on taking one more step towards becoming one of the great leaders of tomorrow. Halloween is coming up, and this month at Evil Genius Leadership, we're exploring all the things that we're a little afraid of, and how those fears might be holding us back from achieving the awesome goals that we've set for ourselves. We're all afraid of something. If we weren't, we wouldn't be human. And it's important to recognize what scares us and have a healthy relationship with us. When we run away from our fears or try to avoid being put in scary situations, that's when we start to miss out on great opportunities and experiences. By trying to protect ourselves from being hurt or embarrassed, we can actually be holding ourselves back. In our challenge this month, we'll be asking you to embrace and understand what scares you so you can start to develop a healthy relationship with it and make it a little less scary. This challenge is going to take a little bit of self-reflection and some personal exploration. You may face a little resistance from your ego in this exercise, so make sure you block out a good bit of time to do it, maybe like 20 or 30 minutes. And if you don't feel like you delved all the way into it after the first session, you can always go back and dig a little deeper later on. Find yourself a nice quiet place where you won't be interrupted, and make sure you have something to write with. I suggest a notebook or a pad and pen, because I think you'll get more out of the exercise and feel more connected if you hand write it out. But if using a computer, tablet, or even your phone works for you, go ahead and use that. Once you're settled in, take a few minutes and think about doing something that scares you. Is it public speaking, which is a big fear for a lot of people so you're not alone? Is it meeting new people, or maybe it's telling others some bad news? We'll be talking about ways to deal with all of these situations this month, so don't worry about how to deal with these fears. Today we're going to just interested in identifying what you're afraid of, and the second part of the exercise is to write down what it is that scares you about doing that activity. If you're afraid of public speaking, maybe you're afraid that you'll mess up and people will laugh at you. Maybe you're afraid that you'll forget everything you're trying to say, or maybe you're just afraid that people just don't care what you have to say. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't have these fears. All I'm asking you to do is take some time and write down everything you can think of that scares you about your personal fear. Try not to have any judgment of what others might think of it, or if you should or shouldn't be afraid of it, just get it all down on paper. The goal here is to get you to recognize first that there are things that scare you and that's okay. And then to start to explore what it is that scares you about it, and that's okay too. In order to start having a healthy relationship with our fears, we need to recognize them and accept them as part of us. Later on we'll talk about steps we can take to become more comfortable with what scares us and use it to our advantage, but for now pat yourself on the back for being honest and not judging yourself about what scares you and for taking the time to get to know yourself a little better. If you found this helpful, please share it with a friend or co-worker. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and click off on that globe to the right. That'll get you connected to our email list and that'll bring all of our content direct to your inbox. If you have any leadership or business questions you'd like us to answer, reach out to us on social media or email us at info at evilgeniusleadership.com. Thanks for watching. I really appreciate it. And remember, the future is out there. Lead the way.