How to Overcome Fear and Take Action

Have you ever known something you needed to do but avoided it out of fear? Procrastination is usually a result of fear. Here are 5 tips on how to overcome fear and take action today.

Recognize the Source of the Fear

In his over 20 years of studying over 500 successful individuals and thousands that considered themselves failures, Napoleon Hill identified six basic fears that the hold people back. Those fears are poverty, criticism, ill health, loss of love, old age and death. To overcome fear, you must first identify the source or root of the fear. You may be avoiding taking an action… but chances are it is not the action itself that is holding you back. It is the potential result. You want to speak up but fear looking bad (criticism). Fear of losing money stops you from making that investment, or starting that new venture (poverty). Your life is not how you would design it but you fear rejection from those you love (loss of love). What is the underlying fear that is holding you back from becoming #1 in your field, living your legacy, or creating maximum impact?

Separate Fact from Fiction

In his written work, Hill identified fears as ghosts, because they only exist in your mind. To overcome fear, first identify if your fear is based on fact or fiction. Is it caused by a personal experience or the experience of someone else? Or is it based on your perception or forecasting of a worst case scenario? Eliminate emotion from your evaluation by taking an analytical approach. Analytical thinking examines a problem piece by piece, moving from one established fact to the next. It checks, verifies and insists on specific answers. Once you have conducted analytical thinking to collect and arrange information, you can then make judgments based on fact rather than emotion to overcome fear.

Identify One Action Step

While it seems difficult to see yourself in a position of having overcome fear, it is much more manageable to take one action step towards your desired end. W. Clement Stone said, “Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.” Action is empowering. Switch your focus from the result to the process and rather than one big thing… there are many smaller steps that will give you a sense of accomplishment and momentum. Start at the beginning.

Visualize What it Looks Like to Overcome Fear

Your mind is an incredible tool. In fact, research has shown that merely imaging yourself completing an action trains your brain for the actual performance of that action. Improvements include increased motivation, confidence and motor performance. If you cannot visualize yourself doing something, how are you actually going to do it? You can let your imagination terrorize you or be your tool to overcome fear.

Take Another Step… and Then Another

You started at the beginning. The process is under way. Keep taking the next step… no matter how small. Progress is progress. Don’t expect the fear to go away but keep pushing. You overcome fear by acting despite it. It is human nature to experience fear. It is an evolutionary phenomenon that serves a purpose for survival. In the instances when it is based on fiction rather than actual danger- let the purpose it serves be to empower you when you achieve your goals amid your fear.

Resources

Learn more about how you can overcome fear by outwitting the six ghosts of fear and removing self-limiting beliefs with Outwitting the Devil. Hidden away for over 70 years, Napoleon Hill’s sequel to Think and Grow Rich helps you identify the source and overcome fear by addressing how you are programmed for self limiting beliefs and how you can replace them with focused thoughts on your definite purpose so that you can live your legacy and create maximum impact!