“Fear is inevitable, I have to accept that, but I cannot allow it to paralyze me.” ~Isabel Allende
When you think of a fearless person, you might imagine a real-life James Bond who performs death-defying stunts knowing he could die at any second.
But for most of us living “normal” lives, fear operates at a subconscious level and prevents us from being the best we can be.
For a long time, I struggled with these fears. I could not get myself to speak in front of people without experiencing extreme nervousness. When it came to talking to girls I liked, I could list 100 reasons why I would get rejected.
As I got older, I learned that these fears affected me not because I wasn’t talented or likable, but because I was limiting myself with my thinking.
By training our minds, we can control our fears instead of letting them control us. Below are some tips that have helped me fear less and live more (which I hope will help you too).
1. Be more vulnerable. (Tackle the fear of rejection and intimacy.)
None of us want to have our hearts broken, but when we’ve experienced this before, we may be afraid of entering new relationships for fear of getting hurt.
Being vulnerable means accepting yourself for who you are and accepting your imperfections. Revealing your authentic self is a powerful way to combat the fear of rejection because you don’t try to be an ideal person; instead, you learn to be confident in yourself, regardless of who accepts or rejects you.
2. Work hard and expect nothing. (Tackle the fear of failure.)
As harsh as it sounds, expectations set us up for failure. A lot of the things we plan and expect to happen never happen. The potential for failure hurts our egos and keeps us from trying new things.
Your task is to discover what your heart wants and work really hard at it. Whether things actually work out how you planned is not under your control. Trust that life will take care of that, and that you can be happy regardless of what happens.
This mindset helps you do your best; and even if you fail, you’ll still feel good about doing what you love.
3. Know that you are capable of achievement. (Tackle the fear of success.)
It’s not always fear of failure that stops us. Sometimes it’s the fear of success. As ridiculous as it may sound, sometimes even if we’ve worked hard at something, we are afraid of putting ourselves out there because we feel we don’t deserve it.
As I mentioned before, I used to be afraid of public speaking and thought it was because of the fear of failing. But really, I was saying to myself, “You are not good enough; just leave it to the experts.” Then I changed my inner voice to, “Why not me? I deserve this and am fully capable of doing this.” This helped me get rid of my fear of public speaking.
4. Let go. (Tackle the fear of losing control.)
We like to be in control of everything in our lives. It’s easy to think of someone like Sherlock Holmes who plans everything out in detail; and even when things don’t seem to be going according to plan, he really had that planned all along too.
But real life just doesn’t work this way. For example, one of the things I liked to control was time. I would try to plan my entire day on Outlook, and when things didn’t go that way, I’d be disappointed. When I stopped doing this, I felt less stressed, and many of the things I feared would happen if I didn’t plan things out never happened.
I’m sure many of you have had similar experiences trying to control things. It is important to realize that you don’t need to control life to be happy; and if you try to control life, you definitely won’t be.
5. Focus on the present. (Tackle the fear of the past repeating itself.)
Sometimes, we let our past experiences prevent us from succeeding. Because you failed so many times before, you start to expect failure this time too.
You hear people telling you to let go of the past all the time. But how exactly do you do it? By being fully absorbed in the present. Focus on your breathing right now. See what you are seeing right now and feel what you are feeling right now.
For those who practice meditation, this may sound familiar. This is how you let go of attachment to the past and the fear of it repeating itself.
6. Realize you can handle whatever happens. (Tackle the fearing of worst-case scenarios.)
We humans like to picture the worst scenario that could arise out of a situation. In our minds, we may fear going bankrupt or something bad happening to our loved ones.
I’m not saying we should be naïve and not expect bad things to happen at all. But to live in fear of these scenarios is a waste of time and energy, because many times the things we fear never end up happening, and when they do happen, it’s not quite as bad as we imagined it would be.
We can’t control whether the worst will happen to us or not. But if it does happen, the only thing we can do is take action, knowing we can handle whatever comes at us, as we’ve handled every obstacle we’ve faced up until now.
About Charu Chandra
Charu Chandra loves writing and blogs about his two favorite activities, yoga and strength training. If you are new to yoga, you can check out his free yoga program e-book on his blog at strongyogi.com. You can also find him on Google Plus.
Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 
Thank you for this amazing post, Charu!
… As I was growing up there was this idea planted in my mind that fear was something that indicated my weaknesses, that it was something to be ashamed of and ridiculed about. And I spend many years in the belief that fear equals weakness so I always avoided situations that I was afraid of under various pretences.
We all have fears. No exceptions. Some of those fears are nothing but reflections of the past experiences we wish to avoid in the present and the future. Some of those fears turn into anxiety of facing an uncertain future. Whatever this is, I bet we all know what fear feels like…
What we need to remember is that in the moments of great despair we are capable of turning our fears into power that gives us energy to turn ourselves around.
First we need to look in the face of our fears with honesty. One fear at a time. What does that fear really mean?
Marilyn French once said: “Fear is a question. What are you afraid of and why? Our fears are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them”.
In my case, I’ve started my journey of overcoming fears by first identifying where they were coming from and why. And I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process… ;-]
Hi Lesya,
I’m glad that you liked the article and thank you for sharing your own experience with fear! It is said that we usually fear what is unknown or what we do not understand. So as you said, instead of thinking of fear as a weakness we should instead try and understand better what we fear.
When people first start doing this, they, like you and me, end up learning more about themselves which helps them tackle more of their fears. And that’s how we learn to stop thinking of fear as an enemy but rather as a learning tool. Thanks again for your comment!
Thank you, I’m going to print out these tips and put them on my wall!
GREAT post!!!!!! Wonderful advice, thank you for sharing!!! 🙂
The ways of tacking fears presented here are straight to the point. This was nice to read, especially during a moment when I seem to be most in need of it. #2 kinda made me realize how I got into a funk earlier today and almost let it ruin my entire afternoon. It was all because of expectations not being met the way I had thought or planned they would be. This is directly related to #4 because the expectations of today involved other people and I failed to keep in mind the fact that other people’s actions are out of our control.
Hi Charu! Nice post! I especially point six…. that fear is a scenario. Because though we feel fear as a feeling or an emotion, it is the fictitious stories that we spin on top of it that gives fear its power. And by holding it in awareness we can weaken it and/or become its friend… !!
Yes! This post has so many profound lessons. Every single one of those points resonates with me deeply. They all fit together very nicely.
I used to try to control things because I wanted them to be “perfect.” Because of this I would have high expectations as well. I would also try to “hide my craziness” as I now know only makes you look crazier. I finally realized that once you let go of your expectations and your control over things they work out more perfectly than you could have ever planned.
It is quite the revelation when you realize that the successful people, the greats, are no different than you. As Steve Jobs said, “The world was created by people no smarter than you.”
Great post!
I’m glad they were helpful to you Nicole!
Hi Sagara, glad you enjoyed the post. And I agree, In most cases with fear in my experience, it is usually our imagination running wild.
Hi Jules, thank you for your comment and I am happy that the post was helpful to you!
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I really needed this today. I’ve been so stressed worrying about what might happen, rather than just calming down and trust that everything will turn out as it should.
Awesome tips! I so needed this reminder!
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Thank you for this post! I know all of these fears, I have seen all of them, and it is like your post is allowing me to let them go. At least I’m motivated to do so in the future 😉
Hey guys, what do you suggest to a guy who feel like he’s the biggest wuss in the entire universe?, a guy who wants to beat up the street urchins for causing disturbance outside his house everyday, but is too afraid to do so? a guy who wishes this day would be his last?
I would go against what you said in point no. 2. “Expectations set us up for failure” Really you mean it?? You are giving negative dose to readers.
You are advising readers to drive on a highway without caring and expecting where it would lead them and just count the miles. Life is about Quality what we need and expect from it, not what it throws and give to us as mercy.
If you do not have expectations how would you be able to judge if you really have what you want to have?
Sure, we feel dejected when the results doesn’t meet the what we wanted i.e, Expectations. Rest of the 5 points speaks about coping with yourself in such situation while that point no.2 contradict them. If you do not expect from life then why think at all or feel sad about anything wrong happened to you in life because you are OK with whatever life throws at you.
It would be a great favor if you can modify that point no. 2 and give right direction to the readers rather making them ride on a highway without any expectation of finding a nice motel to stay for night.