Ways To Deal With And Conquer Your Fears [Part 1]

It is true that humans are born with a proclivity to be afraid and that is because of the need for survival. For example; your fear for harmful objects (like knife, fire, etc) will prevent you from playing around it and then stop you from being hurt. However, there are other fears that have limited people from taking steps towards their dreams and more often than not, these fears are irrational and only exist in the person's mind. This is the kind we are focused on here. Obviously, with fear in the heart, taking of risks will be almost impossible and that will also mean that success may become nonexistent. So let us take a look at the ways one can effectively conquer their fears.

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1. Do what scares you

If you do not face the fear, you will not know if you can conquer it or not. But when you face it, you will discover how little it is, and how you have been scared of what does not exist. More often than not, what people fear the most is what holds the breakthrough that they have been hoping for. It is true that a lot of people are scared of taking the first step towards the pursuit of their dreams, but this step is actually very crucial because without it, then it will be almost impossible to achieve success.

It is impossible to conquer your fears by avoiding it, rather it will tend to grow and multiply and then become your major bane. However, when you take a step to face your fears, then your fears will leave you. The truth is that what many people are scare of were acquire. That is, they were not born with that particular fear. If this is so, then it is still possible to live above the fear, but only if you will be able to face it. I had a friend that shared with me how she was scared of height and it was one of her greatest fears until she made up her mind to overcome it. She braved it and entered a high ferris wheel. At first, it looked so scary and she shouted all through.

Then subsequently, over the span of days, the discovered that the more she entered the ferris wheel and other high-towering structures, her fear for height kept reducing and now, she has overcome the fear of height. If she had not moved to face what she feared the most, she would have lived her whole life seeing heights as an enemy and that would have affected her in ways she cannot even imagine. Now, she is an airline cabin crew and doing well in the job. Imagine if she had had the fear of height, she would not have even considered taking a job as cabin crew and she may have even lived with the fear. So to conquer your fears, you have to learn to face it.

2. Consider the consequences of your actions (or inactions)

Just like it is usually said; "if you can bear the consequences, then take the actions." More often than not, not taking actions has more negative consequences than taking the action. So if you consider this, it will help you to realise that you need to take that action that you have been scared of. When you consider the "worse case scenario" of the action that you are about to take, you will realise that you have been scared of very little. You will hear some people say "what if I attempt this action and the result is not what I intended?" Well, have you thought about what if you attempt it and succeed excellently at it? Or what if you do not attempt it and face heavier consequences?

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When the only option left is to be strong and take the risk, you will be surprised how strong you can be. If you are faced with two terrible choices: one, to take a risky step towards achieving something even though you do not know the outcome of that step, or being inactive and facing a much bigger consequence resulting from dormancy and stagnancy, you will realise that the choice of going with the lesser evil (taking a step without knowing the outcome) will be a better choice. Most of the people that have made impact in life, at some points in their lives, took risks without recourse to the consequences thereafter.

If what is at stake when taking a step is bigger than what you stand to lose, you will not need anyone to motivate you to take that step. For example; before Neil Armstrong and his crew landed on the near side of moon, the first attempt met catastrophe, but it did not stop him from taking the risk. He knew that the future of space exploration rests on that one step and so he took the risk. Now his name has been engraved on the history book and out of that one step of his, humankind have witnessed a giant leap in space exploration.

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