How to Conquer Your Fears
Have you ever felt besieged by fear – so much so that it stopped you from doing something you wanted to do? This is a common predicament faced by many people daily.
Fear has the strength to hold you back from taking risks, following your dreams, or becoming successful at anything you try to do. If you allow it to control you for long enough, it can eventually eat away at your quality of life and keep you locked in inactivity.
What many people fail to realise is that fear is nothing more than a conditioned response. It's a natural reaction to a frightening or unfamiliar situation. While it is usually habitual, there are things you can do to conquer it.
1) Check your expectations
One major benefactor of fear is the regularity of negative expectations:
- Do you usually find yourself expecting the worst in every situation?
- Do you worry fanatically about what could go wrong, rather than focusing on your strengths and abilities?
If you make a mindful effort to anticipate the best, see the optimistic side of each situation and keep reminding yourself that you can handle more than you frequently think, you'll find yourself with much less fear to deal with. Even if beliefs of fear do manage to sneak into your consciousness, you'll still be able to keep them in perspective and balance them against a fundamental sense of confidence.
2) Shame your fears
Experts will tell you that the bulk of things you fear will never come to pass. While this may be true, it doesn't feel that way when fear has a grip on you! However, if you look a little more closely at your fears when they occur, you may be able to release at least a few.
For example, if you have a fear of public speaking and you are required to give a presentation at work, you might feel like your life (and perhaps your livelihood) is on the line. You may fear getting fired, or worry that your contemporaries will lose respect for you if you don't do a good job.
But is any of this likely to happen? In most cases, no. Rather than worrying about what "might" happen if you don't give a solid presentation, you might brainstorm ways to help improve your performance, such as being well prepared, practicing your delivery on friends and family members, writing notes to yourself and so on.
3) Do the very thing you fear
When you remember that fear is simply a feeling, it loses much of its power. It can't harm you and except in truly intimidating situations you can choose to ignore it and move forward anyway.
If you weigh the pros and cons in any situation, you may decide that the possibility of negative consequences is trivial so there's nothing to stop you from ignoring your fear and going for it! This will be determined by you on a case by case basis. The point isn't to become irresponsible with your decision-making but to empower yourself to know when a fear is unfounded and easily conquered.