How to Overcome Fear and Move On with your Life

Do you need to overcome a fear that is holding you back in life? Maybe it is the fear of failure, success, heights or even the fear of too much or not enough money.

Fears stop us from taking the steps that we need to move ahead in our lives. They prevent us from going after our dreams. But what if you knew you cannot F.A.I.L. That it is just your First Attempt In Learning. Overcoming fears really is a win, win.

Fear Prevents Us From Moving Forward

Have you ever gone for a job interview for a position that you felt was maybe above you? What happened? If you are anything like I was, you probably sabotaged it. I sure did. I had a fear of failure.

It wasn’t until much later in life that I found out that fears are a learned behaviour. No one is born with them. This is something that you can overcome with the right tools and determination.

What Happens When We Don’t Overcome Fear

If we choose to let the fear control us, we are not living up to our full potential.

We tend to be stuck in victim-hood. Blaming others for our life rather than taking the necessary steps to change. Repeating the same behaviours hoping for a different result.

What is it that we exactly are afraid of? Is is rational? Most likely not and is based on past experiences that are holding us back from being our authentic self.

How To Overcome Fear

Face it head on

This is a very popular one that absolutely does work. When faced with a fear of writing, there is only so much learning you can do, you eventually have to write.

How did I get over this fear? Having coaches and accountability partners certainly helped. Also just asking myself, do I want to let this stop me from fulfilling my dreams? The answer was a no.

Is my writing awesome? No. But I am doing it anyway because the only way to get better is to keep writing and the more you do it, the less hold your fears have on you.

Don’t feed the wrong wolf

Do you want to be feeding the ego, the anger, or would your life be better feeding the good side.

What have you been thinking over the past week. Which wolf have you been feeding. Work on listening to your self talk. See if you may have to feed the other wolf.

Be in the now

Eckhart Tolle’s quote “People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.” sums it up beautifully. You need to live in the now, not the past or the future.

How can you achieve this, to turn off the mind? Meditation is a great one. Don’t let your fear rule your life. Overcome fear by being in the present, the now.

Remove limiting beliefs

Limiting beliefs are supposed “truths” that you believe to be true but are holding you back in some way.

Let’s take the example of the job interview from above. I had a fear of not being good enough. Of failing . My limiting belief was “I am not good enough”.

Limiting beliefs get installed into our subconscious from a very young age with repetition. If you hear that “you are not good enough” over and over again, then you start to believe it. You then carry this with you until you clear it and replace it with a more positive one.

Kylego

Kylego is a technique developed by Kyle Cease and his friend Diego. It’s an exercise that puts you into the feeling of already having achieved what it is you want to achieve.

Have a fear of public speaking? Use this exercise to imagine having already completed your speaking arrangement and how excited and happy you were that it all went well.

Try it out and see how it goes.

Act “As If”

This technique I learn’t from Karl Moore and goes along the lines of “fake it until you make it”.

Act as if you already have what you want. Eventually this will make you feel the way that you want to feel.

I have tried all of these techniques and some work better than others. My goal for you is to try them for yourself and eventually deal with the fear that is holding you back from living your dreams.

Have you tried any of these approaches? Leave a message in the comments as I would love to hear how you got on and which one worked the best for you.