Heart to heart: How to push forward in the presence of fear

Also, no matter what kind of face we put on at the beginning of each day, we all have vulnerabilities. Sometimes, these vulnerabilities can get in the way of our progress.

Fear is one of the biggest obstacles in life and it can be one of the biggest barriers to success. It can stop you from going after the things you want and achieving the things you need to achieve in order to move to the next stage of your life.

Everybody is afraid of something, but one of the most important things in life is being able to push forward in the presence of that fear.

The most common fears that people experience,  and which eventually sabotage their success are the fear of failure, poverty, and loss of money.

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” — Nelson Mandela

While fear is very valid and something that we have to face in our lives, we must learn to triumph over it so that we can experience true freedom.

To get past our fear, we must learn to assume a ‘can do’ attitude. The French philosopher René Descartes declared: “I think therefore I am.”

This is the kind of thought process that should follow you around, and especially when you’re faced with the things that scare you. To push through your fear, you must change your mindset.

If, for example, you’ve just been assigned a scary case to handle at work. You’re afraid that if you do something wrong, you may not only be fired, it may be the end of your career.

So, you procrastinate and maybe try to reject the case. You spend a lot of time biting your fingers and imagining worst-case scenarios until the optimal time to solve your problem has passed.

When your worst fears do come to pass, you justify it by saying you were not good enough anyway. That’s wrong!

The right thing to do is to acknowledge your fear and think to yourself that you’re a badass. If you were not qualified enough, you would never have been assigned that project. Then power through the work with this confidence. You’ll be surprised at what you’ll achieve.

Think about it this way: Fear makes you stronger.

When I was younger, I was afraid of spiders and I would never want to go near them. But one day, when a spider climbed my body unknowing to me, I screamed and clawed until someone got it off.

Afterwards, I realized that it was only a tiny thing that couldn’t harm me.

Something interesting happened after that experience though. I learned to not be afraid of spiders so that now, I can touch spiders on my own without any fear.

The more times you confront your fear, the higher your confidence increases. Try it out and see.

Share your own experiences with how you conquered your fears with us in the comments section below.