The million-dollar question here: Now that I know what my fears are, how do I overcome fear?

Very good question, with no one size, fits all answer. I’m sorry!

The answer to this is that it takes time, intention, and effort, and here’s the worst part; from YOU!

It takes courage to go 1000% for your goals and growing through your fears is one of those elements of accomplishing it. You have to look at what is holding you back and not moving you forward.

It’s all about creating the courage to be curious about your fears and creating awareness around it. With this awareness, you can specifically take steps to overcome and work through your fears.

Only then you can overcome it.  

“The fears we don’t climb, become our walls”
- Noah Benshea

You can better work on this sooner than later. Think about all the chances and opportunities you might miss just because you don’t address your fears.

In what areas are you holding back or consciously keeping away from because you know it’s one of your fears.

Take deliberate steps and work through them, take baby steps if you need to.

You don’t have to be scared of public speaking today and speak at a conference next week. Look at the steps you can take now and see what is related to your current fear and find steps to grow closer to your biggest goal.

Make a plan for this and grow every little step of the way. Make sure you are not making excuses and sabotaging yourself by procrastinating. Someday is mostly not anytime soon.

“Someday is not a day in the week”
- Janet Dailey

This article is actually the grand finale of 2 other “building blogs” I’ve written about fear (sorry couldn’t help myself). If you want to dive into them as well, here are the links to the blogs:

3 Steps To Forget Fear And Become More Confident

Fear Its True Face

In these blogs, you will find steps to make yourself more confident and bite fear in the butt. You can find an 8 step plan on how to get a grip on your fears.

So, what is there to find in this blog I hear you think. Well, here is where all the things come together.

Here I present the Fear Fight Plan.

Fear Fighting Plan:

1)      Get to know your fears

The article ‘Fear Its True Face’ is basically about this. If you haven’t read it yet. This is the time to do it. What is it exactly that you are so afraid of and in what category would you place it.

2)      Validate your fears

Hardly anyone likes this, however, it will give you so much understanding. Feel your fears. What is meant with this, also depends on what your fear is. Is there any way you can make yourself feel the fear? Get into the uncomfortable zone with this and just stay there for a while.

“Become comfortable with being uncomfortable”
- someone smart.

No matter how scared you get, do it anyway. It will make you grow tremendously and will give you confidence.

3)      Putting a voice to your fear

Start talking about your fears. This doesn’t mean that you should blow your own horn and tell everybody how you are going to overcome your fears. This is about talking about what scares you with people you can trust. They might give you some good advice but what is most important here, is that you make your fear smaller. When you are always nervous or scared to talk about it. You make your fear bigger because it’s controlling you. When you’re talking about it you make it smaller and you will ventilate the pressure it is holding on you. This will help you make it more bite-size and workable.

4)      Correspondence to fear

What always helps with anything that’s bothering you is to write it down. Write in a journal or what is even better, write a letter. Write a letter to your fear and write like it is especially for them, as you would write a letter to a person. This will clean a lot of mental clutter for yourself and you will be able to make it more tangible and you can tell him or her whatever is on your mind. Be sure you end your letter in a positive way so that it isn’t an open-end or leaves you with a negative feeling.

5)      Execute intelligence around fear

I heard a story once that inspired me so much that I wanted to get it in here. The story is about a man that was always scared of dogs and did want to go near them if he didn’t have to. Once he was at a friend’s house. His friend had two big aggressive dogs that also didn’t seem to like him for some reason. The dogs remained outside on a chain so they couldn’t bother anyone.  After a while, the man stood up and wanted to leave. For some reason, the big aggressive dogs were loose and approach the man with great speed and aggression. What the man did next was quite astonishing. He didn’t back down, run away, or folded himself up to a small ball but he actually ran towards them with great speed as well. The dogs couldn’t believe what happened and they actually backed down from their attack and rage.

The man, even though he was really afraid, approached his fears and went for it. His result was that he didn’t have to leave with any scars and that his fear actually seems very small in hindsight. This might sound very silly to you but this gave me an insight. If we all went for what we really want and face our fear like a tiger, nothing that stands in our way will actually be too big.

6)      Fear Vision board

If you have something in your life that you really want to accomplish and it’s so compelling that you want to work on your fear for this. Make a vision board about it!

Make it as goal-oriented as possible. Your goal is what you want to accomplish, you only have to go past some hurdles. Which is ‘drumroll’…………. your fear. Make it as specific and as bite-size as possible. Preferably you can do something at least every week to become better at something or break a barrier towards your fear. Even if it’s just one little step. Be consistent with this and at the end of let’s say 6 months, you would believe what kind of progress you made.

7)      Tell yourself new stories

Affirmations are true game changers! What we tell ourselves is SO crucial in accomplishing our goals and dreams.

We have to learn to ‘flip the switch’ every time we think something negative about ourselves or our goal. It’s very hard to flip the switch when we know that we are not good at something. Of course, we have to be realistic and keep it real. Here is an example:

I’m so bad at writing. I’ll never write that book.

Your new thought and affirmation: I’m amazing at writing now that I figured out how to write properly.

Now I hear you think: Well, that’s easy!

Nooooooooooooooooo, now you actually have to do something, take a course on writing i.e. to make this affirmation true. You will be more motivated to start, pursue and finish the course because your brain is wired to make what you say to yourself come true. We as humans are wired like that.

8)      Love

Love is the antidote to fear. This has to do with step 7 as well. If you love something enough you are willing to go the extra mile and go past your fear.

When the tide is high and you really need to make an important step forward or approach a milestone, do what would be the biggest gesture of love in this case.

Choose love.

This is of course one of the ways to overcome your fears and I’m not saying this is the best or only way. I do truly believe that this will take you so much further than sitting around and just waiting for life to be over [let’s over dramatize]. I know from my own experience that this helped me a lot!

This Fear Fight Plan is inspired by the material of Robin Sharma, Terry Savele Foy, Les Brown, and other motivational speakers.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes here and there. We, humans, are just not flawless and this is a process of growing. So, don’t expect to do everything right the first time. You will get better at it over time.

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one”
- Elbert Hubbard

 I wish you good luck and growth while going through the steps above. Leave a comment if you feel like it and let me know what it did for you if you took this Fight Fear Plan on.  I would love to hear from you.