Change your perspective on fear.
Is the pain you experience while working out a negative thing? Or is it just the feeling of your body getting stronger? Fear is only a negative thing if you believe that it is. You can choose to think about it simply as the “pain” your body experiences as your character develops and expands. There is very little growth where there is no pain and work.
Instead of seeing the tackling of our fears as nerve-racking, see it as an adventure. An adventure is anything that takes you out of your comfort zone and into unexplored territory. It can be as grand as an African safari or as basic as talking to a stranger. Conquering a fear, big or small, can be downright thrilling. Every man should try to scare himself a little every day.
Change your perspective on risk.
The root of our fear is our fear of trying something and crashing and burning. What if I get rejected? What if I fail? These are short-term risk assessments. Yes, there is a chance that you will fall on your face. And if you don’t take the risk, you’re guaranteed not to face failure.
But in making such a calculation, you are leaving out the long-term risk, a risk that’s far riskier than any short term blow to your ego. The long term risk is this: The risk of never amounting to anything. The risk of living a completely mediocre life. The risk of looking back in 10, 20, or 30 years and feeling your stomach turn with regret.
When I was a kid and was afraid to do something, whether it was slide down the water slide backwards or ride a huge roller coaster, I would ask myself this question: “Which choice are you going to regret more? Doing this thing and being scared for a few minutes or not doing it and missing out on the experience and always wondering what it would have been like?” Even my ten year old brain knew the answer.
Remember, when you skip an opportunity because you’re afraid, you’ll never get that moment back. Never.
Finally, we often fear failure and rejection because it hurts to think that we’re not as suave or talented as we had supposed. This is a blow to the ego. But when we don’t act on our fears, we send a message to ourselves that we are in fact cowardly, and this subconsciously wears away our sense of self and will stick with us far after the sting of any failed enterprise has passed.
Maybe it’s time you updated your criteria for risk assessment.
Act courageous.
Teddy Roosevelt overcame his fears by acting as if he were not afraid. Do the same.
There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to “mean” horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to afraid.
Think about the great men of history.
Our own personal fears and challenges can seem overwhelming and insurmountable. But with the proper perspective, they can seem rightfully manageable. The next time you you feel paralyzed by a fear, think of the courageous men of the past. Think of Edmund Hillary ascending Mt. Everest, the Freedom Riders meeting a crowd of angry Klansmen, the astronauts sitting in Apollo 13. You’ll soon think, “Dammit! And here I am unable to make this flippin’ phone call!”
Kill the fear with logic.
As we mentioned above, fear is not a rational thing. The solution is thus to kill it with logic. The best way to do this is to ask yourself this question: “If I do this, what is the worst that can happen?”
What’s the worst that could happen if you asked someone out and they said no? You didn’t have a date then, you don’t have a date now. Nothing has changed.
What’s the worst that could happen if you apply for a job and don’t get it? You didn’t have the job before, you don’t have the job now. Nothing has changed.
What’s the worst that can happen if I give a speech at the conference and bomb? No one will ever tell you, and you’ll never know you were bad.
And so on and so on. With almost any scenario the worst that could happen might be temporarily unpleasant, but is infinitely manageable.
Memorize this quote.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
There’s no need to feel the fear, just do it.
A lot of self-help gurus recommend that you fully feel the fear and go ahead and tackle it anyway. I disagree. Giving the fear wholesale residency in your body is just going to make you get all tense and freaked out. What I find works is acknowledging the fear, but then immediately going for it, even before your brain has time to dwell on what you’re about to do. Just put your brain on cruise control. Check out a little bit and start down a path you can’t return from. Dial that number. Walk into that office. Once you’re in the mix, you’re forced to carry on, and you’ll find that you do indeed have the strength to pull it off.
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