Your fears are wrecking your life
In this blog post, I’ll be discussing what it takes to overcome your fears and become fearless. It takes hard work and dedication, but the rewards are well worth it. So if you’re ready to take on your fears and become a badass, read on!
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. ~ H. P. Lovecraft
Can a person be completely fearless? In my opinion, no – I’ve never met such a person. One of the secrets of FEARLESS is that it’s not actually about getting rid of fear. It’s about feeling the fear and stepping into adventures and creativity anyway – acting in spite of the fear.
People who are perceived as “fearless” have become masters of managing their fears. They’ve developed a different relationship with fear. Instead of fear crippling them, they enjoy the rush of it. It makes them feel more alive.
But let’s take a step back. No matter how much fear you face, you have two choices: you can use it to your advantage to expand your life to new levels, or you can let it cripple you into a miserable existence that you hate.
I see it every single day. Extraordinary people just like you holding themselves back because the pain of putting in the work is bigger than their burning desire for the results they claim they want – getting to where and who they want to be.
We waste a ridiculous amount of time trying to navigate around those fears instead of facing them head on. To be fearless you have to learn to enjoy the tension of facing your fears – sit in that tension and truly enjoy it.
There’s a quote I love from Frank Hubert’s movie, Dune:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
~Frank Herbert
Change Your Relationship To Fear by Stepping into Tension
I am an avid skydiver and am currently working on the next big step up: BASE jumping. But just a few years ago, I wasn’t very good with facing my fears. Prior to my skydiving career, I couldn’t even get on a plane without having a panic attack.
Without air travel, my life was shrinking and I was slowly dwindling into a pathetic tiny existence. I literally felt like the world was closing in on me, and all I wanted was to explore the world. I had this massive fear of flying and at the same time a strong desire to travel. While I was fulfilling part of that desire with cross country travel by vehicle, it wasn’t enough and I hated myself for having created this life.
One of the fundamental lessons we teach our coaching students is that having a strong desire isn’t enough! In addition to strong desire, you need to have strong self-esteem and a good attitude towards your life.
That’s how I was able to move past my fear of flying. I had a strong desire for travel and adventure, and I had developed a rock solid self-esteem from being an entrepreneur and an athlete. Instead of focusing on this fear of flying, I focused on and felt the joy and happiness that going on adventures and exploring the world gave me. And I focused on how much stepping into my fear (tension) of flying would expand those feelings of joy and happiness and expand my life as a whole. That was a giant turning point for me. I made a choice to act even when flying terrified me, and it was the most liberating thing I have ever done for myself.
“Success comes after you take the action.”
~Brian Begin
Today, I hangout with extreme sport athletes that have become masters at managing fear. You get to this point with consistent action of stepping into fear over and over again until you condition your nervous system to have a different relationship with fear.
Every successful person who I’ve met has mastered stepping into tension.
How To Cultivate Real Confidence and Become FEARLESS
Most men dream of having a satisfying and fulfilling career and a great love, sex and social life, filled with diverse adventures and beautiful women.
But very few have developed the ability to handle tension and pursue this dream life. So they settle. They opt for a safe, secure job with few risks, and they get stuck in middle management with a steady paycheck and benefits. Same thing day after day. Working for the weekend…to spend weekend after weekend numbing out the pain of your week with beer and watching other men (athletes & actors) step into tension on your big screen.
That’s a good life, right?
For some it is. But what if you don’t want to settle?
As a success coach, I am committed to helping students identify their fears, discovering those fears’ roots, and strengthening their personal power with inner work. You have given fear the power to control you. But that also means you have the ability to take this power back.
I recently worked with a client who hated his life. When Brian and I explored this with him, we found out that he spent just 10% of his day doing things he wanted to do – the things that made him happy. 20% of his day was spent doing tasks he had to (i.e., go to work), and the remaining 70% of his day was wasted wallowing in avoidance and fear. Seventy percent.
Can you imagine waking up every day and only enjoying 10% of it? For many of you reading this, this actually is reality; for some of you things may be even darker.
I assigned this client the task of documenting his day with a “fear journal” for two weeks. Every sixty minutes he would journal (1) the current task he was working on, and (2) how he felt about tha
t task – was he avoiding the task, was he doing the task because he had to, or was he enjoying the task.We quickly discovered what his avoidances and fears were, and his journal also revealed where he had unconsciously picked up some of those negative beliefs to begin with. We then went to work to shifting his perception — changing thought patterns we’ve unconsciously repeated to ourselves — about the strong feelings and emotions holding him back, one-by-one.
It wasn’t easy, but the funny thing about anticipatory pain… the reality often isn’t that painful at all, and not nearly as bad as the agony we’ve played it in our heads.
The anticipation of fear was far more painful than the client’s fear itself.
So how do we become FEARLESS and unshackle ourselves from these unnecessary obstacles?
Becoming fearless in life first starts with trusting yourself: the less trust you have, the more fear you have. If you can’t be fearless with yourself, how can you launch that new idea, plan that strategy or find a new way to make a profit in your business… hell, even start your own business?
Successful people don’t avoid fear — they seek it out! They run head on towards it, tackle it and rip its head off. And another thing – they don’t think too much about it beforehand; they jump in, and, as the popular saying goes, “just do it.”
Fear can be debilitating, but it doesn’t have to be. You can overcome your fears and become fearless with the right tools and a little practice. We hope this article has given you some helpful tips for overcoming your fears and becoming more confident in yourself.
