When you overcome fear, you have the world by your hand. It’s not the right way to live to live in fear all the time. Yes, these careful people get to avoid dangers. By avoiding danger, they also avoid the upsides of life. Don’t think about avoiding losses when you should be thinking about having gains.
Fear is afraid of logic. Fear is our emotional side of our brain talking. It’s not the part that makes rational, objective decisions. It’s the side that makes irrational, spur of the moment decisions. Sometimes, we look to our emotions to guide our decision making. However, sometimes they hinder our abilities.
When you think and look at things from a logical and objective standpoint, then you don’t let emotions dictate your life. When you control your emotions, other people can’t control you. The easiest way the media, politicians, and others control you is by using your fear against you.
If not against you, they at least use it for their own benefit. That was actually one of my teachings in a self advocacy class. If anything, make sure to use their fear against them. That’s how you control and emotionally manipulate others. Don’t let them do it.
Sometimes, their message is so convincing that you don’t even know that they’re doing it. This manipulation can all be solved if you just overcome fear. Sometimes, you just have to simply stop caring. For one, the fear may not even apply or matter to you. For another, it’s not in your best interest to be afraid.
How to Overcome Fear and Come Out on Top
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SO with that said, let’s get into how to not let fear dictate your life!
1) Admit Your Fear
The first step to overcome fear is to admit that you have one in the first place. You don’t have to publicly admit it. You can just admit it privately and not let anyone else know as well. Everyone has fears. It’s what makes us human. Even sociopaths have fears.
I have fears, the president of the United States has fears, and everyone else does as well. Emotions are apparent in all of us. The more you admit that you have a fear of something, the less it has power over you. Fear is silencing you if you refuse to admit or even talk about it.
It’s time to take the power back and admit that you have one. Then that’s the first step into destroying whatever is plaguing your mind. It can be simple things such as a fear of heights or it can be a deeper fear of dying alone. Once you admit that to yourself, then can you go to the next step.
2) Overcome Fear by Talking About It
Don’t let fear silence you. Overcome fear by talking about it. After you admit it to yourself that you have a fear, now is the time to talk about it more with others. You don’t have to talk about it with everyone, you can just talk about it with close friends who you trust.
Don’t let fear win by letting you cower and sit by in silence. One of my fears is ending up poor. Of letting everything that I build up to my life vanish into thin air. That’s why I hustle and make as much money as I can now so that I don’t have to be poor later. I don’t make any YOLO bets that’ll make me lose everything.
I overcome fear by talking about it. The more that I can talk about it, the more ideas I can gather of how to combat it. It doesn’t always just have to be from me. I can learn from others’ ideas so that I can forge on ahead. Talk about it. You don’t want to go through your whole life with something having all this power over you.
3) Find Out Why Your Heartbeat is Racing
It could be because of the fear itself. It could be because of some other factor. Whatever the reason is, something is causing abnormalities within your biological rhythm. For me, my heartbeat skyrockets when I eat and/or drink. Not a specific drink like alcohol. But any drink like even water.
I don’t know what the condition is. However, it’s something that I think I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. It’s not a good feeling. I will have to see a GI soon to figure out what the problem is but I hope that I can get it fixed. Whatever the reason is, you should be relaxed at all points of the day.
If there are abnormalities during the day, then there’s something that’s causing it. You should not be experiencing abnormalities of any kind during the day. If you are, then there’s something wrong that needs to be fixed. Overcome fear by taking care of your pulse and thinking how to make it be normal.
4) Accept the Worst Case Scenario
The easiest way to overcome fear is by asking yourself what’s the worst that can happen. After asking yourself that, accept the worst case scenario. For example, I had a job offer in college. The salary was way too low for me to consider. So I wanted to negotiate it.
My negotiations professor asked me, “what’s the worst that can happen?”. I immediately answered back, “they could pull the offer away”. Then that got me thinking after the meeting. Is it really a bad thing if they pull the offer away? Am I really going to be unemployed that I won’t have a job?
That didn’t turn out to be case. I had numerous job offers after that. Whatever the worst case scenario is, as long as it doesn’t result in serious loss of limbs, you’re fine. It’s just in your head. You think something is bad but it’s not as bad as you think once you think about it.
5) Look at Historical Results
To overcome fear, look at whether your fears are valid. There are people who thought after a breakup their lives were over. Then 5 years later, they find the love of their life and keep going on life as usual. Look at it from a historical angle. Think about when you thought your life was over.
Was your life actually and really over? I think not. After you got the job rejection, you kept on going like no one’s business. People are more resilient than you think. You are more resilient than you think. You’re built to withstand pressure and all of life’s struggles along your way.
There were so many times that I thought my future was in jeopardy in college. I was paranoid that I won’t get to where I want to. Then six years after I graduated college, I built a top 2% net worth of $450,000. Every bad thing that I thought would happen, didn’t happen.
6) Be Logical
Logic is the number one fear that fear has. This is how you easily overcome fear. Logic is when you think about it from a cost/benefit analysis. Sociopaths don’t have a lot of fear because they think in logical terms. They don’t care about rejections because they don’t let it feel anything.
Let logic dictate your decisions and thinking process instead of your emotions. Before going into a decision, admit and accept that you already have a risk of losing something. When you invest, it’s only logical to have a chance at losing your money. However, the idea is all about your gains exceeding your losses over the long term.
Think about what your best decision is. The best decisions aren’t the ones that always let you avoid pain and losses. The best decisions are the ones that have a chance of losing something, but have a whole lot of chance at gaining a whole lot more. Then it’s only logical to make that bet.
7) Avoid Stimulants
External stimulants affect your mind in more ways than one. Overcome fear by avoiding them. Drugs will make you warp your mind. Alcohol warps your mind and makes you feel so bad afterwards. Whatever the external stimuli is, eliminate them. They affect you more than you know.
For me, I used to only drink alcohol twice a year. These days, I never drink alcohol. Not even once. Alcohol is disgusting to me, nothing wrong with those who enjoy alcohol. Alcohol affects my mood and emotions and it sharpens my feelings to one extreme or another.
Stimulants will make you afraid out of your mind. They will force you to feel extreme things and push you one side or another. If you don’t need it for daily survival and it doesn’t help you in any way, don’t waste money or your health trying to put them in your body. Your natural self is the best self.
8) Get in a Relaxing Position
The most relaxing position is when you lay down on your bed with your heartbeat in resting position. Then you can stare at the ceiling or do whatever it is in order to relax and rest. You feeling fear may just be because you’re not in a good position right now.
Overcome fear by getting in a relaxing position. You will be pleasantly surprised at how in control you feel. We are in a constant state of business that we forget to take care of ourselves once in a while. We always think about what we have to do next that we forget what we really should be doing in the moment.
Which is to take care of ourselves. Every weekend is an opportunity for you to relax, rebound, and think about how great your life is so far. Be proud of your accomplishments and think about just how awesome you are. Little things like how you’re sitting matters and goes a long way.
9) Face Your Fears and Overcome Fear
Now, you tried everything else on the list. Now it’s time to actually overcome fear by tackling it head on. You can’t overcome fear if you just cower and let the thoughts win over you. It’s time to actually attack it head on. It could be that you’re afraid of approaching that pretty girl.
So you take a weekend and actually go about doing it. After 100s of rejections, rejections start to feel like nothing. In fact, you actually look forward to rejections. Because it means that you’re trying and putting in the work. Job rejections work the same. These days, every job that rejects me feels like nothing.
It’s just another Tuesday. It makes it easier for me to reject them as well. Whatever your fears are, expose yourself. Exposure therapy does wonders for your psyche in ways that you haven’t even imagined. Once you get used to it, you become unstoppable and nothing bothers you.
Overcome Fear and Take Life by the Horns
It’s not fun to live in fear. I remember when I was afraid and feeling so bad about my life. At my future and what my life was going to look like in five years. I painted a great picture for myself. And it would’ve been an even better picture had I just overcome fear earlier rather than later.
Your fears are holding you back. Which means, it’s not even others trying to take you down that’s holding you back. It’s you. Don’t let yourself be the reason that’s holding you back. Take life by the horns. You’re deserving of more things than you realize.
You deserve happiness, you deserve money, and you deserve everything that you’re going for. Fear is just a bump in the road that you have to squash before you move on to the next step of your life. Overcome fear by squashing it and making it be nonexistent for the rest of your life.
I’ve been there before. And it sucks. I’ve also felt the effects of imposter syndrome with each new job that I took on. Sometimes, I can’t help but think what I did to deserve this. Why is my life so great while other people’s lives are not so great? It takes 3 – 6 months to get over it but I do eventually get over it.
Overcome fear and show the world what you’re made of. You are more resilient and deserving of success than you think you are. Don’t be afraid to fail. The difference between the student and the master is that the master failed more times than the student ever tried.
How to Overcome Fear Shortlist:
- Admit your fear
- Overcome fear by talking about it
- Find out why your heartbeat is racing
- Accept the worst case scenario
- Look at historical results
- Be logical
- Avoid stimulants
- Get in a relaxing position
- Face your fears
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.” – Jack Canfield
Great post, David! All bullet points on your shortlist are actionable, and useful. Thing I like about your list, is your points all address ‘uncertainty’.
Recently had a conversation about ‘fear’ with a longtime (40+ years!) friend. He was an NCAA D1 athlete, and LEO, an EMT, and the scariest thing he did was work as a liquor store clerk near LAX on the night-shift in the ’80s. ‘Adrenaline dump’, indeed!:-) My takeaway from his life experience is he differentiated ‘fear’ into categories: 1) ego/shame – a girl will shoot you down or you won’t get the job offer; 2) damage/loss – the stock market craters, your business is robbed/vandalized; and 3) physical danger – injury or death.
Whoa, I can only imagine what kind of stress it induces, especially late at night. I went into a convenience store the other day in a very nice part of down but it was late at night and I was worried that something was going to happen.
The less ego we have, the better off we are because it takes away our “fear” of not looking great in someone else’s eyes!