Conquer Your Fear: Truths and Solutions
Jen Drago 
Fear is likely holding you back from your true potential. Learn about fear and how to overcome it for personal and business success!
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Is fear holding you back in your business?
It probably doesn't show up as fear, but it may show up as procrastinating on certain tasks, playing smaller than you think you should, or not marketing to groups that you think might be interested in your product or service. It could be a fear of being seen on social media, on video, or even putting out a blog post.
Whatever you're holding back on, there's probably a fear underneath it.
In this article, we’re going to talk about how to conquer the fear once and for all. We’re also going to talk about what fear can teach us and what happens when fear falls away. While it seems counter-intuitive, experiencing fear and learning what fear can teach us can result in achieving the business success that we all truly want and desire.
Truths About Fear
First, let’s explore five truths about fear and these come from Dr. Susan Jeffers in her book called "Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway."
1. Everyone experiences fear in unfamiliar situations. Everyone. Fear can affect your personal life. But what I'm here to tell you is that it's probably wreaking havoc on your business as well. Your business could be more successful and get further and faster if you could work through the fear. So just remember, fear is universal. Everyone feels it.
2. Fear will never go away on its own. There will always be fear in some area of your life and that just shows us that we're growing. Fear shows you that you're at the edge of your comfort zone and helps you get out of your comfort zone so that you can experience even more growth.
3. The only way to conquer fear is to actually do the thing you're fearful of. That is the ONLY way and the reason that Jeffers’ book is called, “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway”! What happens is over time as you act on the thing that you're fearful of and repeat that action, the fear almost decreases and eventually dissipates almost completely.
That's why people who have had a fear of public speaking may go to Toastmasters and work on their confidence around public speaking, first in smaller settings and then in larger ones. As they practice, they overcome their fear of public speaking. They may not like it, but they don't have a fear of it.
4. It feels good to master your fear. However, some people try to delay in order to feel good enough to undertake the action that evokes fear. We need to train ourselves that it works in the reverse. We do the thing that we're fearful of and we feel better. Working through our fear helps us feel better about ourselves and we gain confidence.
5. Moving past the fear is less painful than living with the paralyzing effect of the fear and the associated helplessness. It’s easier to rid yourself of the fear once and for all.
The Underlying Message of Fear
Dr. Jeffers explains that the reason we experience fear is that we are afraid we are going to be dealt something that we won't be able to handle. You fear won't be able to handle the consequences of an action. Let's take public speaking as an example.
A fear of public speaking might lead you to believe that you might completely freeze up on stage, you might forget what you were going to talk about, you might look stupid and might be judged by those in the audience. You certainly wouldn't feel that good about yourself. All of those possibilities, realistic or not, feed into the fear that we have and make it feel even bigger than it is.
Dr. Jeffers explains that the underlying message that we need to always be telling ourselves around fear is:
"I can handle it."
This is important – tell yourself that you can handle it while also doing other things that reduce anxious feelings like breathwork and meditation.
Another important thing to know about fear is its psychological roots. Fear usually comes from a part of you deep inside. It usually dates back to your childhood, when you may have had one or more experiences that conditioned you to be fearful and taught you that it's safer to be in your comfort zone. In your comfort zone, you are in control of everything and it is far less anxiety-producing than putting yourself out there, speaking on stage or on video, showing up on social media, or going for that job promotion.
What is your fear trying to do for you? The deeper desire that fear is calling forward in us is a desire for safety. Your ego is trying to keep you safe by keeping you in your comfort zone.
It's easy to beat ourselves up and judge ourselves because we're feeling fear and we can't take a certain action because we are feeling kind of paralyzed. We can now be compassionate with ourselves in that regard. We can say, I understand why this fear is here and I can still take action and move forward.
How to Overcome Fear
Don’t Wait – Delaying Increases Fear
When you have to do something that you're fearful of, say post a video on social media or make a video, the first thing to know is that you shouldn't wait. When you procrastinate, the fear actually grows in the time while you're waiting. By delaying your action, you might be taking a relatively minor fear and making it much bigger in your mind than it is.
Procrastinating does not cause you to prepare any better and it just robs you of the strength to deal now with this bigger issue than when it started.
Preparation is an Illusion
Don’t buy into the misunderstanding that by delaying, you can prepare more for whatever it is that you're fearful of. The reality is that the preparation likely won't happen and if it does, the impact on your fear will be minimal. In fact, as we just described, waiting makes the fear bigger.
Certainly prepare, limit your preparation time and then move forward.
Lean Into the Discomfort
When you feel fear, it's a sign that your ego wants to keep you safe. The discomfort that you feel when fearful is also a sign that you're nearing a growth edge and you should push forward and continue to grow.
As human beings, we have an unlimited capacity for growth. When you feel that resistance, when you feel that fear, when you're ready to procrastinate and delay, move forward because you're going to move outside your comfort zone a bit and grow.
Do Something Uncomfortable Daily
Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, "Do something every day that scares you." Said another way, do something uncomfortable every single day.
When you do this, you're putting yourself in the situation of not being fearful of anything because you know you can do it. You will know you can handle it. You will be taking little, bite-sized efforts to do that every single day and you'll just build confidence in yourself.
Use Fear Setting
Author Tim Ferriss coined the term "fear setting" to describe a process for considering the consequences of taking the action we are feeling fear around. When there's something big that we're worried about or fearful of, we can benefit from imagining all the possible scenarios that could happen and specifically what's the worst thing that could happen. By doing so, we realize that we can handle any potential outcome and also that the possible consequences are not that bad after all.
Taking that public speaking example, what's the worst thing that could happen? You could freeze and forget exactly what you're talking about.
What will you do in that situation? Well, I'm going to have a plan. I’m going to have my speech written in front of me so that I can remind myself where I was and jump back in. I'm also going to take some deep breaths. I might crack a joke, apologize to the audience and just restart where I was.
Knowing what you're going to do when you experience the fear helps decrease the fear before it ever happens. You will be assuring yourself that you can handle it, as Dr. Jeffers reminds us to do.
I hope these truths and tips will help you in overcoming the fear that may be underlying your procrastination and avoidance tendencies. Remember the most important tip: the only way to get through fear is to just do the thing that you're fearful of. Don’t delay. You can handle it.
By shrinking that fear muscle and building your confidence, you will be moving yourself and your business forward at a rate that you didn't even think was possible.