Fear is the most destructive feeling that is holding lots of talented, smart, educated, even physically strong people from achieving their goals, from making a first step to the lifetime happiness, from opening a door to the wonder land where all dreams can come true. Fear is one of the causes of low self-esteem and low self confidence. Overcoming your fears creates your confidence; and the more fears you are able to overcome the more confidence you will gain. So let’s see through the problem and find out how to develop self confidence by facing your fear.
First of all we will learn a little from the etiology of fear. Fear is the trained habit from our childhood. We all have been born only with two fears: fear of falling and fear of loud noises. Other fears are adopted from our parents and social environment we live in. People around us are always afraid of something and mostly absolutely unreasonably. As we watch them reacting to different life situations with fear, we learn this reaction model and use it in our life too. For example fear of asking someone about something, going in to the boss’s office, asking a girl out or inviting to dinner, fear of looking like a fool, fear of public performance. There are countless fears like that and they are called social, because mainly we are afraid of people’s reaction.
Why are we so afraid of these social fears? The history goes very far to ancestors who lived in caves. The only fear that time was the fear of wild animals that could kill. Fear was very important reaction to man, so he could save his life. If he did not fear, he would be dead.
Nowadays there are no wild animals on the streets, but there are different social situations which we fear a lot. The reason we are so frightened is because subconsciously we think that we can die. Evolution has brought that association to our subconscious: fear equals death. With the cold mind we all understand that nobody will kill us if we say something funny in front of the audience, but we are afraid so much that we become paralyzed and can not act, like we are actually dead. That is where we lack our confidence.
Self confidence is the art of understanding, that social fears can not kill you. Confident people are addicted to facing their fears. They are looking for fear to confront it, to beat it and overcome it. Every faced fear adds one credit into their confidence bank.
Now let’s talk about how to develop the habit of facing the fears. First of all you have to determine you fear, otherwise how will you know whom to fight? To see them better - write them down. Then categorize your fears beginning from tiny little fear, ending with the most frightful fear. Now you have a working plan.
Start confronting the fear that looks very small to you. For example you wanted to say “sorry” to someone, but were afraid to call and say three words - “I am sorry”. Do that right now. You wanted to sing karaoke, but always were “voiceless” every time you took a microphone. Remember nobody is going to kill you. So just take a microphone and sing. People will respect you for your courage, but you will become more confident.
As I already said the more fears you overcome, the more confidence you develop. By facing lots of you small fears, you will gain enough confidence to confront your bigger fears, than much bigger until you are out of fears and anxieties and feel absolutely free in every life situation.
So now it’s the time to act, act, act, cause losers talk and winners act and do! Your mission is very easy: Develop your self confidence, facing your fears!
