Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.

Fear is an emotion we all have to deal with, and it is a sign of being alive to show fear. We are all scared of one thing or another; most of us let the fear stop us from moving forward, while the high achievers feel the fear and do it anyway. Fear will be a part of you as long as you are living; the moment you stop getting scared of anything, you are dead. Even the most confident people like Barack Obama, Beyonce, Jayz, Oprah Winfrey and all the most admired people in the world battle with a fear of something or the other.

One of my favourite stories about fear and overcoming it is a story often shared by Motivational Speaker and Author Les Brown in his speeches:

Every day, a boy passed a house, and without fail, a dog there would start barking and chase the kid down the street. After this happened enough times, the boy got tired of it. He told himself he would carry a brick and teach the dog a lesson the next time it chased him. The dog did his usual routine when he passed the house the next day. But the boy stood his ground and swung around with the brick in his hand. He noticed that the dog had no teeth.

I find the above story to be very illuminating and thought-provoking. Most of the time, what we are scared of is also scared of us and taking action is often the antidote to our fears. American Writer and author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell, once quipped, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” What we fear doing or venturing into holds the key to our greatness. That business you have always wanted to start, the call you need to make, the course you need to start, the relationship you need to mend and the initiative you need to take require a step forward.

The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek. – Joseph Campbell

Mike Tyson and Cus D’Amato in training. “I’m not a creator,” D’Amato once said. “What I do is discover a

Constantine “Cus” D’Amato was the boxing manager and trainer who worked on the future heavyweight champion, “Iron” Mike Tyson, before he became famous. Cus adopted Tyson after his mum passed, and he mentored him as a father figure. Cus and Mike were very close, and Tyson considered him one of his life’s most influential people. One of Tyson’s lessons from Cus was how to conquer Fear. In his autobiography, Undisputed Truth: My Autobiography ¹, Iron Mike shared one of the most important lessons that he learnt from Cus on Fear. Mike commented, “The first thing Cus talked about was fear and how to overcome it.”

“Fear is the greatest obstacle to learning. But fear is your best friend. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you let it work for you. If you don’t learn to control it, it’ll destroy you and everything around you. Like a snowball on a hill, you can pick it up and throw it or do anything you want with it before it starts rolling down, but once it rolls down and gets so big, it’ll crush you to death. So one must never allow fear to ”develop and build up without having control over it, because if you don’t you won’t be able to achieve your objective or save your life.

“Consider a deer crossing an open field. On approaching the forest, suddenly instinct tells it there’s danger there, might be a mountain lion there. Once this happens nature begins its survival function where the adrenal glands inject into the bloodstream, causes the heart to beat faster, which in turn enables the body to perform extraordinary feats of agility and strength. Where normally the deer can leap fifteen feet, the adrenaline enables the first leap to be forty or fifty feet, enough to escape from the present danger. The human being is no different. When confronted with a situation of fear of getting hurt or intimidation, the adrenaline speeds up the heart. Under the influence of adrenal glands people can perform extraordinary feats of strength.”

“You think you know the difference between a hero and a coward, Mike? Well, there is no difference between a hero and a coward in what they feel. It’s what they do that makes them different. The hero and the coward feel exactly the same but you have to have the discipline to do what a hero does and to keep yourself from doing what the coward does.”

American industrialist and founder of Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford, is widely regarded as an early pioneer in the automobile industry and developed mass production assembly line techniques. He stated that having an absence of fear of the future and a veneration for the past as one of the guiding principles on which the Ford Company was built. In his autobiography, My Life And Work ², he commented:

One who fears the future, who fears failure, limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again. There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail. What is past is useful only as it suggests ways and means for progress.

Fear is the offspring of a reliance placed on something outside—on a foreman’s goodwill, perhaps, on a shop’s prosperity, on a market’s steadiness. That is just another way of saying that fear is the portion of the man who acknowledges his career to be in the keeping of earthly circumstances. Fear is the result of the body assuming ascendancy over the soul.

Fear is the result of the body assuming ascendancy over the soul. – Henry Ford

The first prime minister of Israel and the first signatory of the Israeli Declaration of Independence, David Ben-Gurion, once said, “Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared, and how not to fear what ought not to be feared. From this knowledge comes an inner strength that subconsciously inspires us to push on in the face of great difficulty. What can seem impossible is often possible, with courage.”

Courage is a special kind of knowledge; the knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared, and how not to fear what ought not to be feared.

So many are preys to fear ³. You fear losing your job. You fear sickness or hard times or failure. But remember, courage is not the absence of fear, it is the conquest of it. Not until you dare to attack will you master your fears. And why dare? Because unless you dare you cannot win. Deep down in every heart is the desire to be somebody, to get somewhere. But so often we sit waiting for the opportunity. I have found that opportunities do not come to those who wait. They are captured by those who attack.

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the conquest of it.

Meditation

Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Kindness at Work
Daily Jay with Jay Shetty – Treat to Self
In our modern life, we are always busy and chasing something, and we hardly have time to check in with ourselves or take a breather.
Develop a treat yourself practice by routinely caring for yourself, which can help prevent being overwhelmed and stressed. This ritual can also help you build self-worth and recognize your value. You deserve kindness, comfort, and care; you don’t have to wait for someone else to give it to you.
Amidst everything you’ve got going on, treat yourself, whatever that means.

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