Human beings are capable of achieving great things, but sometimes we tend to overthink and to worry about what family or friends are going to say if we chase our dreams. We become worriers, and then fear paralyzes us to the point that we get stuck and unable to realize our true potential.

The book, “Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway” by Susan Jeffers provides great insights for turning fear into action. It helped me a lot and I wish I had known about it early in my career. The first statement that grabbed my attention was, “You know that you don’t like the fact that lack of trust in yourself is stopping you from getting what you want out of life. Knowing this creates a very clear, even laser like, focus on what needs to be changed. You don’t have to scatter your energy wondering why. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you begin now to develop your trust in yourself, until you reach the point where you will be able to say: Whatever happens to me, given any situation, I can handle it!”¹ We need to fight through fear, trusting that we are capable of more.

Five Truths about Fear²

1. The fear will never go away as long as I continue to grow. As long as I continued to push out into the world, as long as I continued to stretch my capabilities, as long as I continued to take new risks in making my dreams come true, I’m going to experience fear.
2. The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it. Fear of particular situations dissolved when I finally confronted them.
3. The only way to feel better about myself is to go out…and do it. When you make something happen, not only does the fear of the situation go away, but also you get a big bonus: you do a lot toward building your self-confidence
4. Not only Am I going to experience fear whenever I’m on unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else.
5. Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness. Not matter how “secure” any of us feel in the little cocoon we have built for ourselves, we live, consciously or unconsciously, with the fear that the day of reckoning will eventually come.

So now that you know the truths about fear, go out, embrace the feeling, and chase your dreams.

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1. Jeffers, Susan. Feel The Fear and Do it Anyway. (P. 10). New York: Harcourt Trade Publishers, 2007. ↩︎
2. Jeffers, Susan. Feel The Fear and Do it Anyway. (P. 14-19). New York: Harcourt Trade Publishers, 2007. ↩︎

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• Ed’s Notes