The 3-Part Proactive Plan to Permanently Overcome Your Fears

Fear is a natural emotion that activates our fight or flight response, which prepares us for danger.

But when fear stops you from living a regular life, it becomes a psychological box that prevents you from taking action.

Fear can practically convince you to settle for life beneath your potential.

“You always get out of life exactly what you tolerate,” says Tony Robbins.

Whether it’s the fear of public speaking, rejection, failure or the fear of change, we all experience and conquer our fears in different ways.

It is important to remember that many fears are learned, and we can overcome them with time and patience.

Life is only truly lived when we are in flow, and our fears don’t restrict our experiences. More often than not, self-doubt and inhibitions of thought prevent us from making significant leaps in the right direction.

Opportunities for a better life increase when we connect with ourselves.

When you give in to fear a lot of the time, it creates its own self-self-fulfilling patterns that become your only reality in life.

Fear is the only thing you should really fear in your life.

“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” says Franklin Roosevelt.

Fear is supposed to protect us, but more often than not, it holds us back. It limits what we’re able to do and who we can be.

The first step in overcoming your fear is acknowledging that you have it. The next step is understanding why you have this fear.

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less,” says Marie Curie.

Understanding the root of your fear will make overcoming it easier because you’ll know where the fears are coming from and how they affect your life.

After understanding why you have these fears, take small steps towards confronting them head-on. For example, if you fear rejection, you have to learn to overcome your constant need to be accepted quickly.

Expose yourself to more experiences without getting attached to the outcome. Learn from them and keep moving.

Afraid to write or publish? Put yourself out there. Write more. Publish more. Learn in public. And do more of what’s working.

James Altucher says fear is psychological imprisonment.

“When we are not chosen, we feel bad. When we are chosen — even by idiots — we feel good. We need to unlearn this imprisonment. Not dissect and analyze it. Just completely unlearn it,” he said.

Choose and accept yourself unapologetically. Live your life for yourself, not others. Pursue your true north without waiting for approval.

When we are afraid, we hold back from life

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” Marcus Aurelius

The only way out of fear is confrontation. Fear never goes away if you

You can only live life to the fullest if you expose yourself directly to your fears.

If you fear launching, shipping, creating or publishing your creative project, you will never know what it feels like to ship and learn from something you deeply care about. Every confrontation creates new strength.

Tim Ferriss encourages us to write down our fears and confront them one by one. He calls this exercise “fear-setting.”

“I can trace all of my biggest wins and all of my biggest disasters averted back to doing fear-setting,” Tim said. “The hard choices — what we most fear doing, asking, saying — these are very often exactly what we most need to do.”

Here’s a simple but effective approach to recondition your brain to overcome your fears

1. For every fear, list everything you are afraid will or might happen when you take action or make a decision. Don’t hold back.
2. For every fear, write down what you can do now (a proactive action you can take and repeat) to prevent an unwanted outcome or the outcome that scare you. Prepare thoroughly.
3. Finally, write down how you might handle or find a solution to the worst-case scenario.

Your best future self is on the other side of fear.

“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free,” says Aristotle.

Naming your fears and confronting them head-on is the beginning of the overcoming process.

Once you repeat a few actions of the same process, you will accumulate enough confidence to conquer your next fear.

The more you identify with your fear, the more mindful you become of them. But if you separate yourself from your fear, it loses its power over you.

Facing your fears is one of the most challenging but rewarding things you can do. When you confront your fears, you take control of your life and strive for a meaningful and fulfilling life.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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