To Overcome Fear, You Do Not Need Courage

I used to be afraid of failure, and I didn’t take lots of action.

Then I realized that I needed some courage in my life, so that I can take action and move forward, despite my fears.

But how do you acquire courage?

Read a book about daring greatly?

Attend a fire-walking seminar?

Hire a life coach?

Been there. Done that. Didn’t work!

Acquiring courage was too much work, so I decided to use something that I already had an abundant supply of: FEAR!

I needed to create a fear to push me forward that was greater than the fear pushing me back.

To accomplish that, I imagined a terrible scenario happening every time I didn’t take action.

I pictured myself in my mid 50’s, sitting in my cubicle at Innotech, feeling lazy and depressed, pretending to do work that I didn’t like, complaining on the phone about my boss, desperately waiting for my next paycheck, and worrying about my red stapler.

My fear of that scenario was big enough that it propelled me forward every time my fear of failure tried to hold me back.

It was simple physics: to gain momentum against one force, you need a stronger force along the opposite direction.

I used to think that courage was that opposite force. Turns out that fear is a much better one, because we already have plenty of it.

So if you’ve been paralyzed by fear, forget about courage!

Beat fear using a BIGGER fear.

Scare yourself forward.