How I Learned to have Fear and LOVE it
May 24th, 2007 | by the MDB |“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do”
Eleanor Roosevelt
This is part 3 of a 3 part series about creating the mindset for achievement (please also check out “The Power of Questions” and “Why You Should be Your Best Friend”). These ideas are at the foundation of really achieving goals and improving your life.
This is something of a personal issue for me as I used to be completely under the spell of fear. I was stuck at home unable to leave the house and scared to go to work. That was 5 years ago and I have learned a lot about the power of fear and how to live with it since then.
We all know about fear and how it can make us feel, how it can sometimes paralyze us. If you get deep into NLP there is some stuff that claims to remove fear, but I haven’t found anything that works yet for me, so I’m not going to write about it.
Instead I want to chat with you about something that can work for everyone. This is about learning to feel the fear and just doing it anyway. When you first learn to use this powerful idea you will quickly find yourself able to use it in more and situations for great results. Just imagine feeling scared yet having the personal power to march right through it. It feels great doesn’t it.
Anyway, so let’s get moving, here are the basic steps to this:
- You have to disassociate yourself from the fear. So often we say “I’m scared” … “I’m paralyzed with fear”. However, understand that YOU are not the fear. Whenever you feel scared, just change that thought to “I have a thought that -I am scared-”. This automatically removes you from the fear and can allow you to react more rationally. This is a great sentence structure to use, simply saying “I have a thought that ______”, can help you rapidly dissolve any gut feeling.
- I just take a deep breath and before its over, walk in and do it anyway. The key idea here is that ts important not to let the fear escalate, so don’t think about it, just do it.Thats the simple way, the fastest way, I read about that one and it works … sometimes … but not all the time.
- So I added one more step for myself. This is the idea of testing all your natural reactions. Sometimes for example you might think “that guy will never talk to me”. Thats basically your thought, so you tell yourself “I recognize my thought that I’m scared, but I’m going to see if its true or not just for fun”. Finished. Simply, tell yourself to test to see if your fear or reaction was correct. 99% of the time it is incorrect. So just turn fear into a little game.
The thing about fear is that you feel it when you go into the unknown. It means you are learning and discovering and pushing your boundaries. When you feel fear you should love yourself and smile because it means you are making progress. You are developing and moving towards your goals.
Doesn’t fear just make you smile. Feel fear and LOVE it.
The Task:
When you feel the fear. Straightaway turn it into “I have a thought that _____”. Next test if that thought is true or not. Make this a habit and you will soon love when you feel fear because it means you are learning something new.
Best of Luck & Thank you,
P.S. If you enjoyed this post, remember you can help contribute in many ways, from a click on an ad, to a donation, to writing an article or providing a link. Help make a difference and give something now :)
Tags: Goals, mind hacks
8 Responses to “How I Learned to have Fear and LOVE it”
By Francis on May 26, 2007 | Reply
I don’t think its possible to deal with fear so easily, I think the only way is by going to a hypnotherapist or something. There are so many conmen out there who prey on people who believe fear can just be magically removed. I don’t think there is such a magic key to anything in life.
By Sibbia on Aug 8, 2007 | Reply
Since the author didn’t comment, I will.
He never said a thing about REMOVING the fear, just getting past the feeling — which I can testify does work.
I’ve been plagued by all sorts of foolish fears over the years, but not many know it, because I accept that *I* am not controlled by an emotion and do it anyway!
By the MDB on Aug 8, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for stepping in Sibbia. I think I have lost a lot of stuff transferring over from blogger to here
I agree with you that the key idea is learning or tricking yourself to have the fear and do it anyway.
By Nick Pagan on Aug 20, 2007 | Reply
All fears occur when we imagine that we will incur some kind of loss. It’s the minds way of saying take care and prepare thoroughly. In the past we could have lost physical well-being but usually these days we fear a loss of self-esteem or loss of possessions.
Analysing and rationalising fear can help but the best way to deal with fear is to develop high levels of competence in whatever you want or need to do. We most greatly fear public demonstrations of incompetence so only operate in the public domain well within your capabilities so that fear never arises in the first place.
If your current capabilities don’t match your desired aims then work on building competence in excess of what you need to so that you act with the true confidence that comes from knowing that you do something extremely well.
By the MDB on Aug 21, 2007 | Reply
Nick, it’s true and you bring up a lot of good points, that is definately the most thorough and the best way to do it in the long run.
I feel when you are learning to do something with a high level of competence though, there are going to be stages where you just have to risk making a mistake and people seeing you make that mistake.
You need to take a step into the unknown to learn and being able to deal effectively with sometimes irrational fears can help that. What do you think?