“Courage is not absence of fear; it is control of fear, mastery of fear.”
—MARK TWAIN
You need large amounts of self-discipline to deal courageously with all the fear-inducing events of your life. This is probably why Churchill said, “Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.”
The fact is that everyone is afraid—and usually of many things. This is normal and natural. Often, fear is necessary to preserve life, prevent injury, and guard against financial mistakes.
So if everyone is afraid, what is the difference between the brave person and the coward? The only difference is that the brave person disciplines himself to confront, deal with, and act in spite of the fear. In contrast, the coward allows himself to be dominated and controlled by the fear. Someone once said that—with regard to warfare, although it applies to any situation—“The difference between the hero and the coward is that the hero sticks in there five minutes longer".
1. Fears Can Be Unlearned
Fortunately, all fears are learned; no one is born with fears. Fears can therefore be unlearned by practicing self-discipline repeatedly with regard to fear until it goes away. The most common fears that we experience, which often sabotage all hope for success, are the fears of failure, poverty, and loss of money. These fears cause people to avoid risk of any kind and toreject opportunity when it is presented to them. They are so afraid of failure that they are almost paralyzed when it comes to taking any chances at all. There are many other fears that interfere with our happiness. People fear the loss of love or the loss of their jobs and their financial security. People fear embarrassment or ridicule. People fear rejection and criticism of any kind. People fear the loss of respect or esteem of others. These and many other fears hold us back throughout life.
2. Fear Paralyzes Action
The most common reaction in a fear situation is the attitude of, “I can’t!” This is the fear of failure and loss that stops us from taking action. It is experienced physically, starting in the solar plexus. When people are really afraid, their mouth and throat go dry, their heart starts pounding. Sometimes they breathe shallowly and their stomach churns. Often they feel like getting up and running to the bathroom.
These are all physical manifestations of the inhibitive negative habit pattern, which we all experience from time to time. Whenever a person is in the grip of fear, he feels like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. This fear paralyzes action. It often shuts down the brain and causes the individual to revert to the “fight-or-flight” reaction. Fear is a terrible emotion that undermines our happiness and can hold us back throughout our live.
3.Do the Opposite
Aristotle described courage as the “Golden Mean” between the extremes of cowardice and impetuousness. He taught that “to develop a quality that you lack, act as if you already had that quality in every situation where it is called for.” In modern terms, however, we say, “Fake it until you make it.”
You can actually change your behavior by affirming, visualizing, and acting as if you already have the quality you desire. By affirming, by repeating the words, “I can do it!” emphatically whenever you feel afraid for any reason, you can cancel the feeling of “I can’t.”
Every time you repeat the words “I can do it!” with conviction, you override your fear and increase your confidence. By repeating this affirmation over and over again, you can eventually build your courage and confidence to the point where you are unafraid.
4. Visualize Yourself as Unafraid
By visualizing yourself performing with confidence and competence in an area where you are fearful, your visual image will eventually be accepted by your subconscious mind as instructions for your performance. Your self-image, the way you see yourself and think about yourself, is eventually altered by feeding your mind these positive mental pictures of yourself performing at your best.
By using the “act as if” method, you walk, talk, and carry yourself exactly as you would if you were completely unafraid in a particular situation. You stand up straight, smile, move quickly and confidently, and in every respect act as if you already had the courage that you desire.
The Law of Reversibility says that “if you feel a certain way, you will act in a manner consistent
with that feeling.” But if you act in a manner consistent with that feeling, even if you don’t feel it, the Law of Reversibility will create the feeling that is consistent with your actions.
This is one of the greatest breakthroughs in success psychology. You develop the courage you desire by disciplining yourself repeatedly to do the thing you fear until that fear eventually disappears —and it will.
5. Blow the fear away
When I work with sales organizations, they often ask me how to help a salesperson break out of a sales slump, especially in a tough economy. I give them a simple formula that is guaranteed to work, every single time. It is called the “100-Call Method.” In practicing this method, I instruct the salesperson to go out and call on one hundred prospects as fast as he can, without caring at all whether or not he makes a sale. When the salesperson doesn’t care if he makes a sale, his fear of rejection largely disappears. He stops caring if the prospect he is speaking to is interested or not interested. He has a single focus. It is to make one hundred calls as fast as he possibly can.
One sales organization I work with has a daily prize for the first salesperson who gets rejected ten times each morning. At 8:30 A.M., all the sales people sit down at their desks and start making calls to try to win the prize. By the time the contest is over, usually by 10 A.M., everyone’s fears of rejection have been blown out of their systems. They’re ready to call on prospects all day long, not caring at all about the reactions they get.
6.Learn to Speak on Your Feet
In 1923, Toastmasters International was formed. Its express purpose was to take people who were terrified of public speaking and help them to become confident and competent when speaking on their feet in front of an audience.
According to The Book of Lists, 54 percent of adults rate the fear of public speaking ahead of the fear of death. But Toastmasters International had a solution. They created a system based on what psychologists call “systematic desensitization.”
Once a week, at a luncheon or dinner meeting, small groups of Toastmasters come together. Each person is required to stand up and give a short talk on a specified subject in front of a group of his peers. At the end of each talk, the speaker receives applause, positive input, and comments from the other members. At the end of the evening, each person is given a grade on his talk, even if it was only for thirty or sixty seconds. After six months of attending Toastmaster’s meetings, the individual will have stood on his feet and spoken twenty-six times, receiving positive applause and feedback each time. Because of this continuous positive reinforcement, his confidence increases dramatically. As a result of this process, countless Toastmasters have gone on to become excellent public speakers and prominent people in their businesses, organizations, and communities. Their fears of public speaking are gone forever.
7. Eliminate Two Fears at Once
Psychologists have found that certain fears are bundled together in the subconscious mind, like wires on the same circuit. If you can overcome your fears in one of these areas, you will also eliminate other fears on the same circuit.
The fear of rejection, or call reluctance, seems to be bundled together with the fear of public speaking. When you discipline yourself to join Toastmasters or take a Dale Carnegie course to learn to speak confidently on your feet, your fears of rejection disappear as well. Your level of self-confidence in all your interactions with others increases dramatically. Your whole life changes in a positive way.
8. Confront Your Fears
Your ability to confront, deal with, and act in spite of your fears is the key to happiness and success. One of the best exercises you can practice is to identify a person or situation in your life of which you are afraid and resolve to deal with that fear situation immediately. Do not allow it to make you unhappy for another minute. Resolve to confront the situation or person and put the fear behind you.
Brian tracy wrote;
A woman in one of my seminars told me that her boss was a very negative person. He was constantly criticizing and berating her about her work, even though she was one of the highest-rated employees in the organization. He was making her life miserable. She didn’t want to give up her job, but she was afraid of confronting him. She asked me what she should do. I gave her this advice, which I have subsequently given to many other people: The only reason that one person bullies another is he feels he can get away with it. The only way to deal with a bully is to confront him. Bullies are actually cowards at heart, and they will flee from a confrontation. I told her to do this: The next time your boss criticizes you for any reason, turn to him and say,quite firmly, “I would appreciate if you not talk to me like that ever again. It hurts my feelings and stops me from doing my job the way you want.” I told her to look him straight in the eye after she had finished making this statement. She had tremendous courage. Rather than putting up with this situation any longer, the next time her boss began to berate her, she squared off with him and said those words.
She wrote to me and told me what had happened. Just as I had predicted, he stopped dead in his tracks. He immediately apologized and mumbled and then quickly went back to his office. He never criticized her again. She told me that she could have ended his bad treatment of her many months before if she had only had the courage to confront him directly the first time it happened.
As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
9. Move Toward the Fear
When you identify a fear and discipline yourself to move toward it, it grows smaller and more manageable. What’s more, as your fears grow smaller, your confidence grows. Soon, your fears lose their control over you.
In contrast, when you back away from a fear-inducing situation or person, your fear grows larger and larger. Soon it dominates your thinking and feeling, preoccupies you during the day, and often keeps you awake at night.
10. Deal With the Fear Directly
The only way to deal with a fear is to address it head-on. Remind yourself that “denial” is not a river in Egypt. The natural tendency of many people is to deny that they have a problem caused by fear of some kind. They’re afraid of confronting it. In turn, it becomes a major source of stress, unhappiness, and psychosomatic illness.
Be willing to deal with the situation or person directly. As Shakespeare said, “Take arms against a sea of troubles, and in so doing, end them.”
The companion of fear is worry. Like twin sisters, fear and worry go around together. Mark Twain once wrote, “I have worried about a lot of things in life, and most of them never happened.”
It has been estimated that 99 percent of the things that you worry about never happen. And most of the things that do happen, happen so quickly that you didn’t have time to worry about them in the first place.
Conclusion
In the final analysis, the only real cure for fear or worry is disciplined, purposeful action in the direction of your goals. Get so busy working on your goals or the solutions to your problems that you have no time to be afraid or to worry about anything. When you practice the self-discipline of courage and force yourself to face any fear-inducing situation in your life, your self-esteem goes up, your self-respect increases, and your sense of personal pride grows. You eventually reach the point in life where you are not afraid of anything. Once you have developed the courage to step out in faith, you must then develop the self-discipline of persistence.
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