“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
~Eleanor Roosevelt

There’s no feeling like it. It is real and it is powerful. It creates intense physical sensations that cause our brains to scream “RETREAT!” It is also useful because it keeps us alert and keeps us safe. It is the emotion of fear and it can be one of our greatest adversaries, if we allow it.

Growing up, I was never once accused of being a major risk taker. I was not interested in being adventurous or exploratory. I remember being terrified of going on roller coasters as a child, and later in life, being afraid to drive a car and fly by plane (I just noticed a theme: all of those experiences were forms of transportation, of moving from one place or point to another—and each requires some element of taking a risk. I find that interesting to note that I now work in helping people move from “point A to point B” figuratively speaking.). For whatever reason, I was very much controlled by my fears.

Justin Shares His Fears

A client of mine, Justin, came to me to work on moving forward in his life. One of the questions I posed to him involved the fears he had about taking the steps he felt he needed to take to see the changes he wanted become a reality. To help him get clear on the present, he related this experience from his past:

“I’ll never forget a specific incident that occurred over 17 years ago. I was in the 7^th grade and my teacher recognized me as one of the top spellers in the school. He invited me to participate in the spelling bee which would take place in the auditorium in front of the entire school. I can still vividly remember the crippling sensations of fear as I visualized myself spelling a word incorrectly in front of the entire school. Without hesitation, I declined his invite and told him it’s really not something I’m interested in. Yeah right! This was exactly something I was interested in, but the fear kept me in the bleachers. What made the whole event so tough to swallow was that I actually would have won had I participated. I knew how to spell every word in the competition including the word that eliminated the final participant. Fear took me out of the game before it started. Fear cost me a huge win, personal success and school fame.”

Justin learned, through sharing this experience, that when he approaches a new situation and it brings up a fear response, there’s that 7^th grade experience coming to surface to be healed. Justin no longer wanted to be sitting “on the bleachers,” letting his fears make him a spectator in his own life. As he put it, “I want to be in the game—I can only win the game if I actually take a chance and play it.”

How I Overcame My Fears…And You Can Too

When I finally adopted the same mindset and made a commitment to take action in spite of fear, I was able to take full control of my life and implement lasting change. As I began to work on myself and learned what my fears were and why they existed, I started to truly understand the limitations that fear had created in my life. Once I placed my focus on what my fears had been costing me, the motivation to overcome the fears seemed to blossom. I actually felt angry because I was now associating the pain of missing out on life’s adventures with my inability to transcend my fears.

I now see fear, doubt and worry for what they truly are: imagined catastrophes. I once heard an author say that fear stands for Fantasized Expectations Appearing Real and I could not agree more. When I am feeling fearful, I can effectively deal with the emotion because I now understand that I am literally using my imagination to contemplate a disastrous outcome to a situation. Having this awareness allows me to move forward, experience the physical sensations being caused by the fear and ultimately overcome the feeling.

The best part about learning how to overcome fear is the true sense of liberation. To set the record straight, yes I was a fearful kid but I still had some amazing experiences and many came when I mustered up enough courage to do something that scared me. The same could be said from those fears I mentioned as a young adult. For instance, my fear of roller coasters was overcome when I went to Disney World for the first time with a group of friends. I mustered up the courage to ride Space Mountain. Was I afraid? You bet. My friends recall that I screamed my head off the entire ride, and boy, did they take great pleasure in laughing at me about it! I also remember being so happy to get back on solid ground that I actually got on the ground and kissed Mother Earth in front of all the people who were waiting to get on the ride. To overcome my fear of flying, when I took my first flight, I made myself take a window seat so I could look out the window often during the flight. When I moved to an area which forced me to learn to drive, I then had to face the fears I had about harming others and myself being behind the wheel. The experience was a blessing in disguise for two reasons: first, it enabled me to discover that sense of liberation I mentioned earlier; and second, it got me to move from being a “passenger” in my own life, to the “driver’s seat,” both literally and figuratively.

From a professional perspective, I have had to work extremely hard at dealing with fear when it comes to public speaking, which is a common fear shared by many people. Despite the fact that I quit my grocery retail career to pursue a business in personal development coaching and speaking, I had a significant amount of anxiety when it came to standing up in front of an audience. You see, my ultimate goal is to be a top ranked platform speaker like so many of my mentors. But I set this goal with the awareness that I had a fear of speaking and that I would have to transform and reinvent myself completely to fulfill this desire.

I would consider this particular task to be a work in progress. I continue to get up and speak in front of audiences. The size of the audience is progressively growing larger and the size of my fear is progressively getting smaller. Instead of worrying about my next presentation, I am eagerly practicing and preparing to deliver a performance to the best of my ability. The audience feedback is indicating that I am on the right track.

It is the culmination of these positive indicators that continue to chip away at my fear and move me towards liberation. While I accept and embrace fear as a part of the equation that keeps me sharp, I am able to continually move forward and develop myself to new levels and plateaus.

Life is much more exciting now that I have learned to step into the fear! And, if I can do it, so can you. I invite you to consider the ways you have chosen to let your fears keep you sidelined in your own life. And then, ask yourself what could you do to let those fears motivate you toward taking the next action step needed to begin changing your life—rather than keeping you in stuck in standstill. And then, if need be, as Susan Jeffers suggests, “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”

Your partner in moving past the fear,

James