39 Ways To Conquer Fear
On Saturday 20 March I delivered a 1-day workshop at Queen’s University called To Boldly Go: How To Be Fearless. Since you ask, it went well, thanks very much. In it, I explored 39 techniques to help participants overcome everyday fear and build their confidence. Many of them I have used myself; some I’m still practising.
As I told the class, some techniques might seem to overlap with or contradict each other…but who cares as long as long as they work? My advice? Pick a few that work for you! But give some of the others a try too even if you are initially sceptical. You might be surprised…
- Use fear as a learning experience about yourself
- Realise that courage is a habit not a gift
- View courage as a ‘mean’ position between cowardice and recklessness
- Realise that there are different types of courage – valour, resilience, authenticity and vitality
- Allow that emotions are a choice between stimulus and response
- Distinguish the emotion of fear from the external thing causing it
- See fear as positive when it warns and focuses your mind
- Reflect that the opposite of fear is love and that love is stronger
- Gain some perspective about how little your fear matters in the universe
- What is the very worst-case scenario?
- Face all the consequences – good and bad – of doing what you fear
- Label your fear to yourself as soon as it starts
- Realise that different degrees of fear require different words
- Argue yourself out of irrational fears and catastrophic thinking
- Adopt positive self-talk or affirmations
- Visualise yourself doing the thing that scares you
- Visualise an inspirational mentor or hero figure
- Imaging you are someone brave or have a ‘brave persona’
- Talk to your body to calm down your fear reactions
- Use movement to calm your body and control you mind
- Relax your body by deep ‘diaphragmatic’ breathing
- Relax you mind by meditation
- Win beforehand (i.e. practice)
- Experience the fear under controlled conditions
- Act ‘as if’ you are unafraid/brave and let the feelings follow
- Make courage a daily behaviour by assertiveness
- Rigorously control your body language
- Don’t think about it. Just do it.
- Determine that you will do it anyway
- Use a mantra or ‘litany’ against fear
- Laugh at what you fear
- Associate performing the feared act with a ritual (‘anchoring’)
- Refer to yourself in the third person before action
- Treat the activity as if it were merely a game
- Use music to sooth your fears (or stimulate your bravery)
- Get yourself out of there so that the fear triggers are removed
- Gain courage in one area and transfer it on to another
- Relish the feeling of being alive that fear grants
- Get involved in a support network with people who have a similar fear
I hope you’ll find some of these “39 steps” useful and/or intersting. Each has a history and life if its own, but for now, introductions are enough.
Image credit: curran.kelleher.
