If you are a human, odds are you are bound to make mistakes in your life. When stuff like this happens, it can be very debilitating . You feel inferior, insecure and sometimes just plain stupid. “Worry” becomes the predominant emotion at this time.

What has helped me in such situations is the gift of perspective and zooming out of the situation. I learned this trick from Robin Sharma. When we are too close too a situation- it seems a huge disaster that we are unable to overcome. But when we try to zoom out and look at things from a distance, we are able to see it for what its worth.

Here are a few questions to help you put things in perspective.

Did someone die? [ Extreme Gravity of the Impact]

Will this matter 10 years from now? [Extreme Distance from the event

When you look at your mistakes from these lenses and try to compare it – either with a serious impact such as death Or a really long time perspective- you start to see that the thing you are bothered about seems very tiny in comparison.

I use the time distance question a lot and if something its not going to matter in ten years, then its only a matter of time before it passes.

So next time you make a mistake or are worried about a situation, try Zooming out, comparing them from a different lens and pretty soon you will return to a much better mental space.

I learnt the concept of running towards ones fear from a beautiful story that I heard from Robin Sharma. It’s a simple story, but I keep coming back to it from time to time whenever I catch myself fearful of doing something or facing a tough situation.

There was once a wise Master who was walking through the gardens of a monastery. As the monks took the Master on a walk through the beautiful gardens, they passed through a section where there were three large ferocious looking dogs who were bound by chains. The monks quietly passed by and kept walking on showing the wise Master, the other beautiful flowers and plants that were adorning the garden. As they reached the other end of the garden, suddenly they heard loud howling and barking and when the Master and the other monks turned around to see, they were horrified – the wild dogs had broken through their chains and were running towards them.

While all the other monks were still gaping for breath, they suddenly witnessed another puzzling sight. The Master had starting running towards the direction of the dogs with amazing speed. The dogs had never seen anything like this. They were used to being the aggressors but seeing the Master running towards them, they quickly stopped barking, slowed down and turned back to where they came from.

The moral of the story was when you run towards your fears instead of away from them – you are taking away the power of fear and you realise that what you originally feared didn’t bother you at all once you had taken the action to face it.

I’ve listened to this story time and again on Robin’s podcast and this has become a go to hack for me whenever im stuck with inaction and afraid to face a difficult scenario.

So next time you come across a similar situation – Try Running directly towards your fears and see how quickly you can gain control of your emotions and become a stronger individual mentally.