15 Ways to Overcome Fear
15 Insights To Overcome Your Fears, Doubts And Apprehensions Of Working On Yourself
1 Live With Purpose
If there is one way to override doubt, fear, and apprehension it's with purpose. Your doubt might actually be a symptom of your lack of purpose. The why of what you do is important because the why is what provides you with momentum. If you hone in on that this will help you weather any rough road you encounter.
From here on out, when you feel self-doubt creeping in, check your purpose. Fear, doubt, and apprehension can be crippling. To start overcoming yours, find your purpose, determine your values, and get to know yourself.
That's part of the personal development process, but it's also something you can start separately from self-improvement. That process should help you ease some of those doubts and fears you feel about personal development.
2 Your Inner Circle Matters
Who do you spend the majority of your time with? The company you keep can heavily influence you, whether that is positive or negative. If you spend your time with Debbie Downers, then there's a good chance you are going to turn into something of a Debbie Downer yourself. If you are constantly surrounded by Positive Pattys, then it stands to reason you will also start being a more positive person.
Moods are contagious. Think about it. Have you ever worked somewhere that everyone is on tenterhooks waiting to see what mood the boss is in? If they breeze in with a good morning everyone breathes a sigh of relief and it's a normal day. If they storm in with a face of thunder the mood in the entire building shifts.
Your inner circle has that much sway with you and if they are negative, miserable, or unkind, then they are going to stimulate those fears, doubts, and apprehensions you feel about personal development. Moreover, they might want to hold you back because they won't want to be left behind by your growth.
What you want in your inner circle is people who lift you up, encourage you, motivate you, pick you up, brush you off, and run alongside you cheering you on when you need it most.
Nothing is more important to your journey to overcoming fear, doubt, and apprehension than a strong social network that will support you through anything. It isn't a one-way street, of course, you should be that kind of person to your inner circle as well.
Strong, positive relationships are important so nurture them. Those are the people who will be with you always and it's beneficial to both your personal development and your mental health to take care of those relationships.
3 Avoid Making Comparisons
You cannot rely on other people to make your decisions, nor can you expect them to steer you in the right direction. The only person who knows which direction is right for you is you. Your personal development journey is your own and only you know what is right for you.
With that being said, you cannot grow by making comparisons. It doesn't matter what your next-door neighbor is doing. It doesn't matter what your siblings, best friends, or arch-nemesis is up to either.
Their judgment of you does not matter, their accomplishments do not matter, and if you think they do you will always feel inadequate. That inadequacy will immerse you in fear, doubt, and apprehension, and with those weighing you down, how will you grow?
Success is not a carbon copy of someone else's success. It's different for everyone and you are the person to define what success means to you. You have a wide variety of talents, skills, and abilities, and to walk the right path you need to develop those. Comparison is the thief of joy and that's not what you want for your life. You are unique and you are capable of facing your fears.
Remember, personal development doesn't look the same for everyone and if you constantly compare yourself, you are likely to slip into self-hate and resentment. That's going to hold you back even more. Use yourself as the marker for your growth.
4 Practice Self-Care
How can you beat fear, doubt, and apprehension about personal development when you lack confidence, feel low, and unloved? Self-care is imperative to human success. You have to look after yourself daily to ensure you are at your best. There's no room for doubt, fear, or apprehension when you love yourself.
A lot of people slip into anger and self-hate in response to their self-doubt. They're just mad at themselves for whatever. Beating yourself up to move forward will only push you further backward. That won't help you. Instead, you should aim for kind, constructive motivational self-talk that overrides all of the negative self-talk that is dragging you down.
Self-care looks different for everyone, but the basics are the same for all of us. You have to eat well, get enough sleep, and hydrate.
Those are the big three, from there you can build your self-care regimen to fit your personality and lifestyle. If you feel self-criticism coming on, flip the switch and turn it into self-compassion.
5 Be Consistent
Okay, right now you don't have a plan in place and you might not have a strong idea about the logistics of making things happen. However, you have to start immediately by taking a single step forward towards something that you have fear, doubt, or apprehension about.
It can be anything, though it would be helpful if it was directly related to your desire for personal growth. Having said that, taking a step towards something that terrifies you is an act of personal growth in and of itself.
There's a voice in the back of your mind and it is telling you to go out and do something, so if you keep stalling and ignoring that voice… it will get quieter and quieter until you drown it out altogether with negativity.
One of the reasons we hold back is a fear of vulnerability. The idea that we expose our wants and wishes and risk failure… it's paralyzing! There is only one cure for that and that's to get started!
So, set yourself three small goals and think about what you want to achieve, why you want to achieve them, and what you will need to make it happen. Having strategies and being consistent will make life much easier.
Goals give you direction and if you keep experiencing fear or self-doubt, then your plan might not be fit for purpose. Even if we don't actively pursue personal development, we still evolve constantly as humans.
You are not the same person you were five years ago and you won't be the same person five years from now that you are now. Don't you want to have some control over how you evolve? That's what personal development is.
6 Face Your Fear
It's hard to face your fear when you feel crippled by the risk of failure. It's important to remember that no one is perfect, nothing is perfect, and perfection is unattainable. Once you believe that you will feel freer than you have in years.
Failure is inevitable, but that doesn't mean it is game over! When you fail, you fall, and then you pick yourself up and you go again. Every failure comes with a lesson (or more than one), so you have to think about failure as a learning opportunity rather than the end of the world.
Face it, no failure is the end of the world even if it feels like it at the time. As soon as you realize the power is within you and it has been all along you can start taking responsibility.
It comes down to mindset and if you believe you are worthy then you will do what it takes. If there is something that you have been avoiding because of doubt, fear, or apprehension, now is the time to act. Disrupt your negative thought patterns and take the plunge.
Before you do, ask yourself what's the worst that could happen because it's never as bad as it seems. Start by making a list of why you don't think you can do it and write another list about why you believe you can.
Write it out so you can use it as motivation and ideally, the list of why you can should be longer than the other. Often, doubt makes us rationalize things to fit our emotions. You might be scared to fail, you might be afraid to take on more responsibility or to look bad, but you are capable.
7 Challenge Your Inner Critic
Your inner critic plays a major role in doubt and fear. You see a job listing and you think it sounds like the perfect match for your skills. As soon as you submit your resume you start to question whether you're capable of filling the role. By the time you get a call for an interview, you are filled with doubt and apprehension.
You don't think you have what it takes. You have what it takes and you need to correct your inner critic and let it know it's wrong. The longer you allow yourself to stay stuck in an emotion (or a situation) the harder it becomes to escape it.
So, to overcome your inner critic, start by celebrating past success. You deserve credit for everything you have achieved thus far. You have been through some hard times and even though you can't picture it when it's happening, you always come out on top! When the inevitable uncertainty comes your way, you need to reflect on your successes and push the negatives aside.
As tempting and as easy as it is to focus on the negatives, you have to shift your focus on to what's going right and use that to propel you forward. If your mind is constantly telling you that you can't do a particular thing, then your behavior will believe it and that's why you need to challenge your inner critic.
You have to learn to recognize when your subconscious thoughts are veering in the wrong direction. It will take time, but it's a great way to monitor your state of mind.
Don't let your inner critic hijack your personal development journey.
8 Failure Beats Regret
When you feel a twinge of fear at the prospect of failure, there is one certain way to stop it right in its tracks and that is to remember that regrets are far worse than a failure could ever be.
I wish that I had… If only I… I should have… forget that. Grab hold of one of those I's and flip it on its head to become an I will.
Between the two, one will last far longer than the other and deep down, you know that failure fades while regret lingers. Think about both, the failures you have experienced and the regrets that you hold onto. Which ones hurt more? For me, it doesn't matter how much distance I put between myself and those regrets, they still sting.
When I look at my failures it's much easier to shrug them off as something that simply wasn't mean to be. It might have been difficult at the time, it was disappointing, but at least I gave it my best shot.
The regrets are the things you never bothered to put yourself out there to try or do or act on. When you reach the end of your life, you won't be thinking about your failures, but you will likely consider those regrets.
There won't be a "what if" if you go out and do whatever it is you're so afraid of failing at. Put yourself in the best position to succeed and go for it.
9 The Root
What is it that you are so afraid of? Why are you holding onto those doubts or apprehensions? What is it that is holding you back? Where does this fear or doubt regarding failure originate? Find the root cause, acknowledge it, and then overcome your fear.
Everyone has a different way to figure it out but find a quiet place to relax and think about when your fear or doubt started. Once you have determined a timeline, you can drill down into why it started.
For example, you may have a fear of public speaking and the reason for this stretches back to junior high when you flubbed your lines delivering your oral book report. It wasn't that big a deal, but you were facing an audience of 12-year-olds and they giggled as you slipped up and struggled to get yourself back on track. You walked away with an A, but all you could focus on was the tittering laughs of your classmates.
It didn't matter that almost everyone had similar issues when it was their turn. All you could focus on was your experience and how awful it felt to be laughed at. You didn't fail, but you walked away feeling as though you had.
It might not have been something like that, it could have been getting caught in an elevator breakdown or almost drowning as a small child. Those types of fears often follow us around and if you don't take steps to expose yourself to your fears, they will follow you forever. Afraid of water? Spend time in the shallow end splashing around. If that's too scary, fill up a kiddie pool and start there. Go get in an elevator, if that's too much at once, then start with a small closet and work up to the bigger step of riding the elevator.
Whatever the root, if you examine it now through different eyes, you might realize what little impact it should have had on your life rather than taking over every facet of who you are. You deserve to be the best you possible and you can't become that version of yourself until you invest in personal development.
10 Eyes on the Prize
Once you identify the cause of your fear or doubt, you can focus on your goals. Keep your eyes on the prize! When your mind starts whispering you can't do this because… then you have to recalibrate and tackle some smaller tasks that feed your ultimate goal and keep you moving forward.
If you want to conquer your fears and doubts, then you have to set your mind solely on the outcome that you would like to create. The more you focus on the prize, the easier it is to eradicate pessimism.
Avoiding your fears and indulging your doubts only makes it that much scarier. What it is, by facing it, it will fade. So, make your plans and do what it takes to carry them out.
11 Eyes Forward, Keep Moving Ahead
Once you improve your mindset and recognize that you are in control and not the victim that you have painted yourself as, you can focus on moving forward. Your destiny is in your hands and the only way to make it happen is to take action.
No one else can do that for you. No one can enroll you in further education and complete the degree you want to pursue. Nobody is going to apply for your dream job and ace the interview for you. No one will carry out your self-reflection and learn what you want from life. It's all up to you. With that in mind, you need to keep your eyes forward (on that prize) and keep moving ahead.
12 It's Never a No
And by that, I mean that you should never say never. If you constantly say no or never to yourself, then you steal away any chance of hope you have. You have to be your own best motivator and that makes sense because you're definitely already your own worst detractor. It's time to flip the script! There are two ways you can do that.
13 The Worst-Case
What is the worst thing that can happen? Is it a panic attack that triggers a heart attack? Because the likelihood of that happening is… so low I don't think there would be a statistic available to prove how unlikely that is. The more you chase your fears the more they will run at the sight of you. Sometimes you have to let the worst-case scenario play out in your mind just to prove how ridiculous the fear is.
14 The Evidence
If the worst-case scenario exercise isn't enough to change your mind, try challenging your fears by looking at the evidence. You're worried about getting trapped in an elevator and suffocating? Is there a single case of this happening? No, because elevators aren't airtight! You are more likely to die at the hands of a bear than you are in an elevator-related accident. If your friend shared a similar fear, how would you advise them?
15 Follow Your Inner Guide
Once you're in tune with yourself you have to learn to trust your instinct and follow your inner guide. You have to trust yourself, both to take the plunge and to control the plunge you take.
The doubts that whisper in the background have to stay in the background because that isn't your inner guide, it's your inner critic. It's imperative that you can distinguish between the two. You have to trust yourself instead of listening to opposition or arguments waging war against you. If you're wrong? Who cares? Again, what's the worst-case scenario? Wouldn't you rather be wrong than living with regrets?
When you feel overcome by fear or doubts, you have to trust your inner guide. You are in possession of the solutions to all of your problems, past, present, and future. That inner guide is far more powerful than any other influence could...
Transcript
Hey guys and gals, welcome back to another Monday evening live stream. I'm Ken, your host as always, and I've had a little bit of change of plans tonight. I was going to have a guest who was a lady that I've known since I was, I don't know, this big maybe. And she was having some internet issues. So we've rescheduled. And we're gonna do that chat with Lorene Hostetler on Wednesday at 10 a.m. Central Time.
Speaker:Is what I think I've scheduled it for. You can go check on YouTube, go check on my personal YouTube, or in the Empowering Ford Momentum Facebook group. It should show up in there. I believe it is 10
Speaker:o'clock Central Time on Wednesday when I'll be chatting with Lorene Hostetler. Had some technical issues tonight, so she's not going to be joining me. Instead, I'm going to pivot and we're going to,
Speaker:talk a little about fear and how to overcome fear. I've got 15 things that you can try to overcome fear in your life. Fear can affect us in so many ways. It can cause you to not try things because
Speaker:you fear failure. Sometimes we fear success. We might fear commitment. We might fear what's going.
Speaker:To happen if we lose our job. We might fear what's going to happen if we don't quit our job.
Speaker:It's kind of ironic how fear has two sides of a coin. How can you fear losing a job, but fear being stuck in that job at the same time. Like both sides can drive you absolutely.
Speaker:Baddie. And it's, I don't know how you kick all fears out, but there's things that you can do to, I guess, overcome the fear or to lessen the fear or to move past the fear, to go from
Speaker:fear into courage. And I have a sticky note up here. I've got lots of sticky notes up here, but one in particular says, unrealized growth equals untapped potential. And fear holds us back from trying things. Fear holds us back
Speaker:back from doing the things that we really want to do. Fear holds me back.
Speaker:Keeps me in my construction business because I'm afraid of what will happen if I quit. It keeps me pushing forward on that and it's not allowing another business that I really
Speaker:want to work in full time, sorry about that, is not allowing that to grow because I'm afraid to let go of the security of the construction business.
Speaker:So unrealized growth and untapped potential, that's two sides of fear there.
Speaker:Once you move through the fear, you can get past the unrealized growth.
Speaker:The other part of that sticky note says, perpetual growth equals unlimited impact.
Speaker:So you go from fear into courage. Fear keeps you from growing.
Speaker:Fear holds you back from doing the things that you know you need to be doing.
Speaker:Fear is a clenched fist, holding tight to the rags that we have when if we let go of the fear, who knows what God's gonna give us?
Speaker:Who knows what's gonna be out there? And that is part of the fear is the unknown.
Speaker:It's part of moving from fear into faith, moving from fear into courage. Fear causes unrealized growth.
Speaker:When you let go of the fear, or when you're hanging on to your fears, you have unrealized growth and untapped potential.
Speaker:When you move from fear into courage or into faith, that brings perpetual growth and unlimited impact.
Speaker:Growth and impact, you'll notice, is a theme of so many videos and posts and podcasts and blogs.
Speaker:It is a theme of everything I do, so much so, I don't know if you can see this. I got two.
Speaker:One says growth and the other one says impact. Everything that I do, I try to make so that everything I do,
Speaker:not everything I do, but I try to make so that everything I do in life goes back to either growth, personally, business-wise, spiritually, or impact.
Speaker:And that is how I utilize my God-given gifts to impact other people, to reach out, make a difference in the lives of other people.
Speaker:When we move from fear that holds us back from our impact and move to the faith or the courage side of things, that's where we can utilize our God-given gifts.
Speaker:We can fully become everything that God has created us to be when we let go of that fear and move into faith, that perpetual growth and unlimited impact.
Speaker:I don't remember where I saw that or came up with it. I don't know if that's original with me, but I love it.
Speaker:Unrealized growth equals untapped potential. Perpetual growth equals unlimited impact.
Speaker:That's the difference between fear and faith or courage or whatever you wanna call it.
Speaker:Before we get into talking more about that, I wanna invite you guys, if you're a guy, I created a group on an app called Mighty Networks.
Speaker:This group is called Empowering Forward Momentum. the name of my coaching business. And the reason I use that name is because I want to be someone who empowers the.
Speaker:Forward momentum in life of everybody that I come into contact with. So this group that I created is for guys much like myself. And here, I'm going to read you the mission statement that I came up with for that, is to help guys,
Speaker:find purpose, fulfill their God-given potential and reach the next level of growth and impact in their personal professional and spiritual lives. So if you're interested, if you're a guy and you're interested in joining me in that group,
Speaker:it's still a brand new group. There's actually only three of us in there. So you can be on the ground floor of that. If you're interested in that, send me an email to coach at kennevash.com and we'll chat about it. I'll send you a link where you can join. Again, that's coach at kennevash.com. Just say you want to join know what you're talking about.
Speaker:Let's talk about fear.
Speaker:First, I want to share with you some of what the Bible says about fear. I was reading a few minutes.
Speaker:365 places in the Bible that say fear not.
Speaker:I found that kind of interesting. There's 365 days in a year, and there's 365 places in the Bible that tell us to not have fear.
Speaker:I don't know what we do on the 366th day when it's leap year. I guess maybe you can have a little bit of fear, but I don't know.
Speaker:Do with that what you will. I've got a few Bible verses here and I'm gonna read, I'm gonna pull this over here so it doesn't look like I'm looking off to the side.
Speaker:Isaiah 41 10 says, fear not for I am with you. Be not dismayed for I'm your God.
Speaker:I will strengthen you, I will help you. I will uphold you. Second Timothy 1 7, and this is all the ESV, if you care about versions.
Speaker:This says, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of self-control or of a sound mind. sound mind being the opposite of fear.
Speaker:1 John 4, 18 says, there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.
Speaker:Psalm 34, four says, I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Joshua.
Speaker:You be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened. Do not be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
Speaker:Proverbs 29, 25, the fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe. You've got to trust in the Lord.
Speaker:I want to talk a little bit about that. God says, I'll direct your steps. And we talked a little about that in the fear thing.
Speaker:Says Philippians four, verse six says, Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known to God.
Speaker:So often we fear where we're going.
Speaker:Our fear comes from the unknown because we don't know what to do next or we're afraid of who we are or what we might discover about ourselves or there's so many things that you can be afraid of.
Speaker:Says, I will direct your steps. Psalms 32 verse 8 says, I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will counsel you with my eye upon you. We
Speaker:have to be digging into the Bible. We have to be seeking those answers. We can't sit by waiting on them to come to us. You can't sit there expecting that it's all gonna fall into your lap. You have to be seeking. That's active. Bible,
Speaker:says, ask and it will be given you. Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door will be open to you.
Speaker:You have to be going out actively doing the thing. You have to take a step. You have to move forward.
Speaker:Proverbs 16, 9 says, the heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps. So I wanted to throw those in there that for everything that we are afraid of, for every step...
Speaker:Take. If we rely on God, if we call on God, if we focus on Him, He will direct our step. So 15 ways that we can overcome fear. And if you've got anything to add to it, if you want to talk about,
Speaker:something that you're afraid of or a way that you've managed to overcome your own fears, go ahead and drop a comment down wherever you're watching on YouTube or Facebook or Twitter, I probably can't see your comments if you're on Twitter, but YouTube and Facebook,
Speaker:I can see those. So feel free to drop in at any time. We've got 15 ways that you can overcome fear,
Speaker:doubts and apprehensions while working on yourself. Because, hey, we're called to do the work.
Speaker:Right? So what are some things that cause us to fear? You know, fear holds us back, like we talked about from doing so many different things. And it's natural for doubt to come in when we're trying,
Speaker:new things. But we have to actively move forward. You have to actively work on those things.
Speaker:One of the first things, and I talked about this a good bit last week, the first step is to live with purpose. When you have purpose in your life, when you know where you're going, what you're
Speaker:living for, what your purpose is, when you know those things, you don't have to fear.
Speaker:Like fear does not affect you nearly as much because you know where you're going, you know who you are.
Speaker:It's just natural. It's like you're setting out on a road trip and you have a GPS.
Speaker:If you're guessing how to get to, I don't know, Timbuktu, I don't even know what state that's in.
Speaker:I don't even, I think that's a real town. But if I wanna go to Timbuktu and I don't get my road Atlas out or set a GPS coordinates or something, I don't know where I'm going. So I don't know which turn I should take.
Speaker:I'm like, well, do I turn here or do I keep going straight or do I go north or south or east or west?
Speaker:I don't know. And so I have some fear or some apprehension because I don't know what to do or where to go.
Speaker:If I don't even have a destination in mind, if I don't even know where I wanna go, I can drive any direction that I want to in the moment,
Speaker:and sure, some good things might happen, But am I going to get to places that I want to see?
Speaker:Life is the same way.
Speaker:If we're not living with purpose, if we don't know where we wanna go, then your fear creeps in.
Speaker:Because we don't know the next steps to take. The next thing that you can do is to take a look at your inner circle.
Speaker:And I talk a lot about the five people that you hang out with, or you are the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with. So your inner circle matters. Who you spend the majority of your time with matters.
Speaker:The company that you keep heavily influences how we think, it influences the things you do, who we become, whether that's positive or negative.
Speaker:So if you spend your time with a lot of negative people, you're probably going to be a negative person.
Speaker:But if you spend your time with a lot of positive people, with a lot of people who are good.
Speaker:Are very spiritual, if you spend your time with people who are more how you want to become in life.
Speaker:Then you'll be more like them. You'll start to be more like they are because let's just face it, people are contagious. Moods are contagious, actions are contagious.
Speaker:If we spend time with people who are living a life who have some traits that we want to have, we will become more like them. There's no getting around that.
Speaker:The next thing you can do, number three, is to avoid making comparisons. We can't compare our lives to other people.
Speaker:I say we can't. We can. We shouldn't compare our lives to other people because we don't know what their history is. We don't know what their journey is.
Speaker:We don't know what their story is. We don't know how far they've come. I can look at people who have a thriving content creation business, who have a thriving coaching business, who have a thriving membership, blog, podcast, you name it.
Speaker:I can look at people who have a thriving whatever it is that I want to have. And I can be like, man, that's what I want. Why don't I have that? I'm not good enough.
Speaker:I can't do it. But I'm comparing my maybe year one or two, I don't know how far they are. They might be 15 years in.
Speaker:Because the journey doesn't look the same for each and every person, right?
Speaker:Their year two might be farther ahead than my year five because it's not a linear progress.
Speaker:They might've started from farther ahead than where I started.
Speaker:They might've had more resources to help them get started. That's not the point. The point is to know your purpose, like we talked about in the first step, and to keep moving forward. not compare your journey to somebody else to be like.
Speaker:But to look at theirs and be inspired to keep working on your own journey, to keep moving forward with the path that you're walking, not compare to be negative with it.
Speaker:The next thing you can do is to practice self-care.
Speaker:That might look like sleeping enough, getting enough sleep. We need rest, we need sleep.
Speaker:There's no doubt about it. You've got to sleep.
Speaker:And that's coming from somebody who has always said, I wish I wouldn't ever have to sleep.
Speaker:I wish I could exist without sleeping ever, but I need sleep or I'm a grouch.
Speaker:If I'm tired, I don't want to be around people. I don't want to hear people talking.
Speaker:I don't even want to hear my wife talking when I'm tired and not feeling good. I need to be well rested as part of self care.
Speaker:It might be journaling. It might be listening to soothing music for you. It might be taking a bubble bath.
Speaker:It might be working out.
Speaker:Might be going for a jog. It might be spending time with your closest friend, sharing, connecting.
Speaker:Whatever that looks like for you to get yourself back to 100%, you know, well rested.
Speaker:Negative thoughts out of your mind, enough people time, all of those things, whatever that looks like for you, you need to figure that out and then take care of yourself. That's just all there is to it. Number five is to be consistent.
Speaker:Okay, so if you if you don't have a plan in place, if you don't know where you want to go, what it is you want to do, it's hard to be consistent in order to reach that. So when you have your purpose,
Speaker:when you have the roadmap or the GPS coordinates set, you know how to get there and what you need to do and you can be consistent with doing the things you need to do to get there. You can be consistent with taking the.
Speaker:To reach that destination. You can be consistent with your self-care. Step number five is to be consistent.
Speaker:Number six is to face your fear, okay? We're talking about 15 insights to overcome your fear.
Speaker:We have to face our fear in order to overcome it. There's a lot of things that I'm afraid of, you know.
Speaker:I am not really afraid of heights, But there's certain things when it reaches a certain height and a certain precariousness. I'm a little afraid of it,
Speaker:But I can't overcome that unless I face it, you know I can't overcome my fear of jumping off of a cliff unless I strap on a parachute or,
Speaker:Strap on a bungee cord and jump off the cliff can't overcome my fear of jumping out of an airplane Unless I strap on that parachute jump out of an airplane My wife can't overcome her fear of not hitting a golf ball good enough unless she just picks up the golf club and hits the dang golf ball.
Speaker:Like you have to do the thing you're afraid of in order to overcome it. That's not saying, oh, I'm afraid of lions, so I should go get in a cage with a lion.
Speaker:That's not saying to be stupid with it. stupid with it, but fears that are holding us back from reaching our full potential.
Speaker:That God created us to be, we have to face those fears. Number seven is to challenge your inner critic.
Speaker:I don't know if there's anybody who's more critical of themselves than me. Almost everything I do, I nitpick it to death. I'm like, that's not good enough. You're not good enough.
Speaker:You can't do this. I have some very negative self-talk and I'm working on that. that's part of overcoming your fear is challenging that inner critic. Like, what am I telling myself?
Speaker:Grab that thought in the moment. See it for what it is.
Speaker:Like, am I really not good enough or what's the truth of this? Did I just mess up a little bit in that thing that I was doing?
Speaker:Separate yourself from that thought, challenge it and ask yourself if it's true. Is it really true?
Speaker:What can I do to change that thought into, okay, it's not that I'm not good enough. It's that I did a little bit of, I could have changed how I approach that.
Speaker:And then maybe I would have succeeded. Challenge your inner critic. Number eight, failure beats regret. Failure is one of the things that holds us back so often because we're afraid to fail. I don't like to fail.
Speaker:Like, failure sucks because we think that if we fail at something, it means that we're a failure. Because I don't know why, but we associate who we are with our actions or with our outcomes, really.
Speaker:So even if we're consistently performing actions that will lead us to success, we're going to experience failure along the way. The most successful people in the world would say that they fail about nine times out of 10. And that's crazy to me.
Speaker:I was just listening to a podcast the other day, a successful guy who said, he fails nine times out of 10.
Speaker:90 things out of 100 that he tries don't go anywhere. In my mind, like, have I even tried 100 things? I tried two things and I'm like, dang, I failed.
Speaker:What now? guess, well, I'll just go back and I don't know, I'll sit in my corner for a little bit.
Speaker:Life without trying anything. But if you don't try, that brings up so many regrets. Talk to all the old people you want. Find any old person who can't do,
Speaker:things anymore. Ask them, when they look back on their life, what do they wish they would have changed. And 90% of the time, they'll say, I wish I would have done something. I wish I would have tried to start a business. I,
Speaker:wish I would have, you know, bought some houses, took out a mortgage on the house and, and rented it out. I wish I would have, you know quit that job and tried this thing. So many regrets because they were
Speaker:afraid of failure and I see your comment it says we are conditioned to fear failure all the way back into grade school. That's so true like we try so,
Speaker:hard to memorize a test. Try to memorize all these facts because you better not fail but the instant it's over the instant you get past that quiz or that test or whatever it is you can let it go. You no longer have to fear the.
Speaker:Failure, you know, but we're conditioned to fear failure.
Speaker:Yeah, from little on up. And I think that we should allow kids to fail, push kids to fail.
Speaker:Like if you're trying, who cares if you're failing? What did you learn from that failure?
Speaker:What did you learn from what you did? Okay, nobody died.
Speaker:You didn't blow up any property or maybe you did. That was kind of a cool explosion, but what did you learn from what happened?
Speaker:As long as nobody got hurt, what'd you learn from it? Doesn't matter about the failure part. It only matters about the learning.
Speaker:Number nine is to go back to the root. So what is it really that we're so afraid of? Why are we holding on to all of that self doubt?
Speaker:What's holding us back? Where does it really come from? If we can get to the root of the fear, like for my wife, it wasn't swinging the golf club.
Speaker:She wasn't afraid to swing the golf club. She was afraid of what I would think of her if she couldn't hit the golf ball very good.
Speaker:And that's laughable because I suck at golf.
Speaker:Like the ball might go far, but it don't go straight. Trust me. And her fear wasn't trying.
Speaker:It wasn't not being able to hit the golf ball. It wasn't missing. It was what she would look like in my eyes. She was afraid of what I would think of her if
Speaker:she tried and messed up. You know sometimes for some of the things that we do like for snowboarding or extreme sports you know the fear might the root of the fear might be death. You know we don't want to die or be maimed or,
Speaker:something. But often our fear is being laughed at or being ridiculed or it's what other people think of us. You know, I remember a year ago, I was at a an event that a friend puts on every year. And we had a little introduction time where,
Speaker:everybody could get up and say their spiel in five minutes, kind of introduce who they are. I was called on, you know, everybody, you put your name on the board and she would randomly call people up to to give their little spiel and,
Speaker:I was thinking she was going through the list linearly and I got called out of order and was not prepared and I stood up there and couldn't speak and I shook. My knees literally were shaking. I was like, what is going on?
Speaker:I was like, ah, what are these people thinking of me? I felt stupid. I felt this big.
Speaker:Nobody cared. Nobody even remembers that. I bet you there's not one person that was there that remembers that. Not one person.
Speaker:And yes, what would you change for next time? Talking about kids, going back to the thing that you tried, the thing that you failed at, what did you learn and what would you change for next time?
Speaker:Exactly. a good, good point. Number 10 is to keep your eye on the prize. That goes back to our purpose. It goes back to the destination that we set for ourselves. You know, if I want to get to Timbuktu, keep your eye on the prize. So you
Speaker:missed your exit. So you took a wrong turn. So you went east for a couple of hours. Speaking of, I did that once,
Speaker:the first road trip I ever went on. All right, we lived in a little town down in South. Cousins lived about six hours away, four and a half hours if I was driving. But we're not going to get into that.
Speaker:The first time I ever made that road trip, this was before the time of GPS, okay? I memorized the roads that I needed to go. But I got to this one road, this one where I had to go from one interstate
Speaker:to the next. And all of a sudden there was a sign and I was like, oh shoot. And I took the exit and,
Speaker:and I'm driving along and I'm like, ah, this just doesn't feel right.
Speaker:I think I'm going the wrong direction. So I called my dad and I'm like, did I go the wrong way? I'm heading east. He's like, nope, you gotta go west.
Speaker:So 30 minutes the wrong direction, turn around, you're back on the interstate going the right direction. Sometimes we make the wrong turn. But if you keep your.
Speaker:Putting one foot in front of the other, keep taking the steps you know you need to take, you're gonna get there eventually.
Speaker:Okay, so keep your eye on the ultimate prize. Number 11 is eyes forward and keep moving ahead. That's pretty much the same thing. Just keep taking one step at a time.
Speaker:Nobody else can take those steps except for you. So if you keep focused on what it is that you're trying to accomplish, what it is you're trying to achieve,
Speaker:Keep looking towards that ultimate goal and putting one foot in front of the other.
Speaker:You're gonna get there, you'll reach it. Number 12, it's never a no. Okay, and yeah, never say never, they say. But if you always say no or like, I'm not gonna do that.
Speaker:Always tell yourself, no, no, no, no, no. Don't try that, don't do that thing. You steal potential from yourself. If you remember, I said fear leads to unrealized growth and untapped potential.
Speaker:If you always tell yourself no, because of fear, you steal that potential and that growth from yourself.
Speaker:You steal the potential for impact when you do grow. So you can look at the worst case scenario, like what's the worst thing that could happen?
Speaker:Okay, could I die? Okay, really, is there a lot of evidence for that?
Speaker:You can make your decisions based off of that, but don't just be like, no, out of fear. Look at it, examine it, go back to the root cause of it that we talked about, and then maybe it's probably a yes.
Speaker:Don't let fear hold you back from it.
Speaker:Number 13, follow-
Speaker:And that's not just your inner guy. You know, that's...
Speaker:When we are in tune with God, when we are working at becoming everything that God has created us to be.
Speaker:Oftentimes we don't know where the voice comes from that directs us one direction or another.
Speaker:But it's that little intuition or the little voice in the back of your mind telling you to try it, to go do that, to face the doubts or to push through the doubts and the fear.
Speaker:You know, you can follow that, but you have to be in tune with God to know which voice to follow.
Speaker:But when you are in that place, you can follow that. Number 14, we've got just two more. Patience is a virtue.
Speaker:Thomas Edison knows this as well as anybody in history. Patience is a virtue. He tried and failed, what?
Speaker:10,000 times to create a light bulb. And I've got light bulbs there. I've got a chain of-
Speaker:LEDs there and there and probably need more lights, but it is what it is.
Speaker:He said, he said, I didn't fail. I merely found 10,000 ways or however many it was that didn't work. I don't know about you, but after that many tries, I'd be pretty discouraged. If I tried to hit a golf ball that many times and it just, I barely ticked it and it rolled like a couple inches,
Speaker:I think I'd have given up long before that many tries.
Speaker:But he said, I didn't fail.
Speaker:I just learned what to try differently. I just learned what didn't work. Take that failure and turn it into a lesson. And the last one is to just breathe.
Speaker:Sometimes fear makes you clam up. Fear makes you stand in front of a crowd and shake and not be able to speak.
Speaker:Fear brings the doubt. out, it brings apprehension, you lock up.
Speaker:But if you calm yourself, just breathe. Take a deep breath.
Speaker:Calm yourself. Slow your heart rate down a little bit. Let yourself know that you're not going to die.
Speaker:Always ask yourself, but will I die? If you're afraid of public speaking, if you're afraid of hitting a golf ball, if you're afraid of whatever the thing is that you are afraid of, that you want to try so bad, but you can't,
Speaker:make yourself push forward and reach for it, whatever that thing is, just breathe.
Speaker:Ask yourself if you're going to die.
Speaker:What is the worst case scenario? What's the best case scenario?
Speaker:What could possibly go wrong? What could go right? if I don't do this then what will happen? What will my life be like if I don't do this? If I in five years.
Speaker:So bad right now. If I don't try for it, in five years am I going to look back with regret? If I try and don't succeed, will I look back and be like, but I tried and that was good,
Speaker:times. If I try and do succeed, how much better will your life be? How much different will you be? That's that is my 15 things that you can try to overcome fear and move from that fear into,
Speaker:courage, move from that unrealized growth into perpetual growth, go from untapped potential into unlimited impact. Try those things. Read those verses that I mentioned earlier. I'll try to drop a link down in the notes where you can see all of those verses about fear. Now,
Speaker:humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God so that he can exalt you. Cast all your anxieties and fears on him because he cares for you. So many verses.
Speaker:In the Bible tell us to not fear. So you don't have to be afraid. Don't fear. Just move forward one step at a time. If you know your destination, it starts with
Speaker:purpose. And you can go back and listen to the live stream I did last Monday night. It came out on the Constructive Liberty podcast this morning. So if you want to just listen to the audio version of it, you can listen to that. I,
Speaker:talked about purpose and fulfillment. I asked a lot of questions. I don't know that I came up with a whole lot of,
Speaker:answers. But it might help you if you're struggling to find purpose and fulfillment, it might help you to ask the to write questions to find what your destination is and help you to move past the fear into purpose, into potential,
Speaker:into growth, into courage, into faith.
Speaker:Just move forward in faith.
Speaker:I want to invite you again, if you're a guy and you want to join a group for guys that I started, it's like a week old, if even that, it's over on Mighty Networks.
Speaker:Just reach out to me Ken at constructiveliberty.com. The purpose of the group,
Speaker:I wanna read the mission statement again, I should have this memorized, is to help guys find purpose, fulfill their God given potential and reach the next level of growth and impact in their personal, professional and spiritual lives.
Speaker:That sounds like something that interests you, reach out to me coach at kennefash.com.
