Fear is the primary keeping you from pursuing what you want. Think about all you would try if you were assured success. How different would your life be? Conquering fear is perhaps the most important obstacles to self-development goal anyone could achieve.
Use these tips to kick fear to the curb and get what you really want:
Realize what fear really is. Realize that fear is a just a name you give to a certain physical feeling. Fear really is more of a psychologically created construct.
Fear is there to serve you, not to guide you. It can be useful to think of fear as a message from your subconscious. The message states, “Hey, we think something might be wrong.” It is then your job to rationally determine if there really is something to be concerned about.
- Hanging of the side of a cliff would be a legitimate cause for concern in most cases. In this case, your life may be in danger so there is something to fear.
- However, being afraid of speaking to a group of people may be uncomfortable, but there is no real danger. What is the worst that could happen other than a little embarrassment if it doesn’t go well?
Build your bravery “muscle.” Each time you push through fear, your fear-conquering muscle gets stronger. Unfortunately, the opposite is equally true. Every time you avoid taking an action due to fear, you’re strengthening your fear.
- Psychologists call this type of avoidance negative reinforcement. This is a fancy way of referring to avoidance being psychologically rewarding. If you run away from the scary thing, you do feel better.
- While you may feel better at first, it also increases the fear felt the next time in a similar situation.
- If you avoid what frightens you, your brain realizes the fear manipulated you and will use the same strategy against you the next time.
Focus on what you want. Keep the desired end result in mind. No human is capable of thinking of two things simultaneously. You might be able to switch back and forth between several things rapidly, but that’s not the same thing.
- Only focus on your goal and it is impossible to feel the fear.
- It’s easier said than done, but that’s what meditation really is: the ability to focus on something to the exclusion of everything else.
Just get started. The hardest part of facing your fear is getting started. Avoid getting bogged down with the details. Most people never get out of the planning stage. Take the first step, and the next step will reveal itself.
Remember that you’ve already done more difficult things. Consider how long it took you to learn to walk and talk. If you can learn to do those things, you can certainly learn how to face and eliminate your fears. Be confident in yourself and you will succeed.
In this day and age, fear has limited usefulness. We live in a civilized society where most of us are safe and secure. We no longer have to live in caves and fear the wild animals lurking outside.
Fear is more like a state of mind. If you let it, fear will hold you back. Let today be the day that you stop using fear as an excuse and go after what you really want.
Linda,
Love that you’re looking fear in the face and rendering it benign! So many things we could be doing if we would move past our fears. Some fears are there for a reason – and it’s important to listen to our intuition – but more often, our fears are self-imposed and based on old stories we’ve heard or told ourselves about what’s possible.
Evelyn
No matter how self imposed our fears are they feel very real. One of the things I read recently is you must create a safe comfortable feeling for you self in order to step forward away from fear.