There are numerous instances of fears that keep people from getting what they want every day. A guy, who wants to be a race car driver, watches all the nascar and formula 1 race and never misses one, but is afraid of accidents. A guy standing next to a girl who likes him but he’s afraid of asking out. So he walks away, leaving himself and the girl disappointed. A person who wants to start a business but sees all the problems before they even manifest. Ultimately, he decides against it because these problems seem so insurmountable, leaving himself and his potential clients unhappy. Every day, many people are prevented from accomplishing their dreams due to these imaginary obstacles.

If you would make a list of things that you didn’t do coz you can’t handle failure, you can have hundreds of such events in your life. You have taken the decision based upon your fear and have lost the game without even playing the game. You didn’t give yourself a chance to find out your true potential. Without self-confidence, we have a tendency to make poor decisions. If you lack confidence, you might fill your life with self-destructive behaviour. You might work at a job you hate. You may allow yourself to get deep in debt. You may find yourself moving from one bad relationship to another. Without confidence, you don’t allow yourself to pursue your dreams.

Remember when you are doing something for the first time, there are quite a few chances of your failure. It’s normal; nobody can become perfect at the first time. When you fail for the first time you have made yourself closer to your goal. How? You have strike out the one of the possibilities of failure and you won’t repeat it again. When you pursue your dream to achieve your goal despite the failures, there will be a time when you don’t have ways left out for failure and finally you achieve the success you have always dreamed of.

My goal is to continually improve myself, to become better than I am today. One way to do that is to do the things that scare me, to take them on as challenges, and to learn from them even if I fail.

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be”. - Lao Tzu

Recognize Your Fears - First, you need to recognize that this is indeed one of the fears you have. If you already accept this particular fear as the absolute truth, then there is no need to face that particular fear and hence no need to overcome it. Write down the reasons you have and the fears associated with those reasons.

Once you have recognized your fears, you can now work towards defeating them. These are the things that are holding you back from exploring more possibilities and limiting your growth as a person.

If your fear is truly dangerous, find a way to treat it. I wouldn’t recommend doing previous step in this situation. Although, you can find some safety rules and put yourself in a condition where you can be safe even if the fear is in front of you. Other most important rule here is not to panic. Just act cool and assure yourself that as long as you follow the safety guidelines, your fear is harmless and nothing to be afraid of.

Understanding The Root Of Your Fears - With your list of fears that are holding you back, you can now try to figure out where these fears come from. For each item on the list, examine whether this fear is the result of some other fears. Your goal is to consolidate your list to as few fears as possible, so that you can better understand where the root of all your fears are coming from.

When you start this exercise, your list will probably grow bigger and bigger as you discover more and more of your fears. However, like finding bugs in software engineering (and then fixing them), you eventually will hit a peak and the number on that list will start to decrease. Try to find as many common base fears as possible, so that you have a smaller number of fears to work on. I have also found this exercise really helpful in knowing myself better.

Don’t dwell on failures. Draw from the things you’ve done right.

Do not procrastinate. Procrastination promotes fear. When you’re afraid, thinking is your enemy. Act. Do what you think is best, and do it quickly. The longer you take to act, the more time you have to talk yourself out of it, the longer you have to imagine the things that might go wrong. It’s not enough to hope. Take action.

Look sharp. A lot of us experience poor self-esteem because we don’t like the way we look. But we exacerbate the problem when we dress sloppily or are not well-groomed.

Don’t compare yourself to others. Be yourself. I’ll tell you a secret. There are a lot of personal finance blogs out there. I don’t get to read them as often as I used to, but I do try to make the rounds once every week. Sometimes when I do this, I feel like giving up. I feel like quitting. I lose confidence. I can’t write that well, I think. Comparing myself to others is counter-productive. It only makes me feel inadequate. Who cares what other people write, or how well? What’s important is simply producing the best work I can. All I can be is myself.

Change the way you think and you change the way you act. You can control your thoughts. Since you’re only able to consciously think about one thing at a time, only allow positive thoughts to go through your mind. Whenever a negative thought or fear enters, simply choose to stop it right in its tracks and immediately change that thought to something positive.

Overcoming Your Fears - Fear, as far as I can tell, is the result of uncertainty about a situation. We fear death because we don’t know what happens after it. We fear losing our jobs because we don’t know if there is another way we’ll be able to support ourselves. We fear asking a person out on a date because we don’t know what the other person’s expectations are and whether they would say yes or no. In all of these instances, fear comes from not knowing what we would do if some particular situation happens.

To get rid of the fear, simply figure out what you will do in each of these possible scenarios.

When you have a definite purpose that encompasses all situations, then you will always have something fall back on if you don’t know exactly what to do.

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering.  – Yoda

Figure out your purpose and fear will never control you!

Related posts:

1. 9 easy steps to build your self-confidence in 30 minutes