Conquering Fear Archives - Jeff Havens | Keynote Speaker | Leadership Keynote Speaker

What’s the Best Stress Management Technique

Jeff Havens — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:16:40 +0000

Sometimes when I’m stressed I like to go down into my basement and play the drums. I’ve been playing them since I was 10, and one of the things I’ve always liked about them is that you can hit them as hard as you want. You’re supposed to hit them, in fact – that’s the…

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Understanding What Failure Is (And Isn’t)

Jeff Havens — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 18:13:28 +0000

I recently had a conversation with my 8-year-old son about how to deal with failure – and then had an almost identical conversation with a 37-year-old friend about the same thing. It made me realize that, for many of us, our attitude toward failure doesn’t change much as we get older – we don’t like…

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Overcoming Impostor Syndrome

Jeff Havens — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 15:33:04 +0000

Impostor syndrome is one of the most insidious challenges to our mental well-being. In case you aren’t familiar with the phrase (although I’m guessing you are), impostor syndrome is a fairly common phenomenon in which individuals doubt their abilities and/or feel like they don’t deserve their accomplishments. Put another way, you think you’re in over…

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Will AI Eventually Destroy Humanity?

Jeff Havens — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 21:16:26 +0000

Last month I wrote an article about the way that technology impacts the nature of human work. (You can read that article here if you care to, which you should – it’s awesome.) But I realized later that nothing I said is especially valuable if computers eventually destroy all of humanity. And since that particular…

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The Most Important Sentence in Leadership

Jeff Havens — Mon, 31 Oct 2022 15:17:39 +0000

At its most basic, effective leadership consists of two key components. One of them is the human element – that’s the part where you’re showing and telling the people who work for you that you’re glad they’re there. This is the piece of leadership that gets the most attention, because there are an endless number…

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How to Overcome the Fear of Public Speaking

Jeff Havens — Thu, 15 Sep 2022 17:51:41 +0000

Last month, something happened to me at an event that hasn’t happened in well over a decade. I wish it were something cool like audience members throwing money and candy at me as they cheered “Bravo!” and “Encore!” But that’s never happened, and probably never will. No, this thing was far more mundane, and far…

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Why We Sometimes Give Up On Our Goals (And Why That’s OK)

Jeff Havens — Wed, 04 May 2022 15:00:13 +0000

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. I also wanted to be a builder (which was my Lego-inspired term for ‘construction worker’), and I also wanted to dig up dinosaurs. I have done none of those things, and it’s perfectly OK. I chose a different path, and I’m happy with it. …

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Reimagining the Power of Positive Thinking

Jeff Havens — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 15:03:43 +0000

Everybody’s heard of the power of positive thinking – and if you’re like me, then the phrase is vaguely annoying. “So I’m just supposed to think happy thoughts and everything will magically work out?” That’s kind of how it’s presented, but life doesn’t exactly work that way. For example, I once had a happy thought…

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The Upside of Catastrophe

Jeff Havens — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 21:06:05 +0000

I’m not saying anything especially ground-breaking when I say that the last several months have been catastrophic for just about everyone. There’s the pandemic, obviously. But that’s not the only catastrophe I’m referring to. There’s the murder of George Floyd in broad daylight on a busy street, which was not the first time a person…

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Can Risk Be Eliminated?

Jeff Havens — Tue, 05 May 2020 18:59:43 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about risk lately. In all fairness, as I near the end of my second month in quarantine I have been thinking a lot about all kinds of things – poetry, weasels, gymnastics, pancakes, mulch, and you get the idea. But as far as business goes, my brain keeps circling back…

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