What Are You Afraid To Do?

"Always, always, always, always, always do what you are afraid to do."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is there something you need to do, but are afraid to do? Join the club. Everyone fears something. As Shakespeare said, "Madmen have no fears."

 But as leadership trainer Dale Carnegie so eloquently put it, "Fear doesn't exist anywhere except in the mind."

 Do the thing you fear. A new venture? A bold gesture? A big change? The risks you do not take haunt more than the risks you do take.

 "Do what you fear and fear disappears," advised motivational expert David Joseph Schwartz. 

 Of course, the advice is easier said than done when fear paralyzes action. Here are some practical steps to overcoming fear:

 Confront the darn thing. Ask yourself, "Why am I afraid?" 

 Your answer will help you make the emotion concrete. Find out the source of your fear and think of actions and emotions that will counteract the fear.

 "Never let the fear of striking out get in your way," said baseball great Babe Ruth, known for his strike outs AND home runs.

 Talk to others who have done the thing you fear. When I was faced with chemotherapy, I was terrified. I talked to others who had successfully gone through the treatment and it helped ease my fears. 

 Once you open your heart and start, the resources you need will come your way.

 As Tibetan Buddhist guru Chögyam Trungpa said, "Discovering fearlessness comes from working with the softness of human heart."
Do the thing you fear the most.

 Copyright © 1999-2017 MsCator, All Rights Reserved

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

W.E.B. Du Bois

Image
"Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader, and fuller lives." ~ W.E.B. Du Bois W.E.B. Du Bois African American writer and teacher William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was born on this day in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, three years after the end of the American Civil War.  He was the most influential black leader of the first half of the 20th century. "One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder," said Du Bois, who was his high school's valedictorian. Educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, he was an advocate for education and equality. He published The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899), the first case study of a U.S. black community which used ethnography, history, and statistics. In his masterpiece The Souls of Black Fol
Read more

Edith Wharton

Image
"Life is either always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tight rope." ~ Edith Wharton Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was born Edith Newbold Jones on this day in New York City, to a privileged family. She spent summers in Rhode Island and traveled throughout Europe. "The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it," she said. Faced with an unhappy marriage, Wharton took up writing, what she described as "an irresistible call," to deal with her heartache and stress. She lived in Paris and had a close relationship with novelist Henry James, a fellow American expatriate. She said, "There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it." Wharton's first major work, The House of Mirth (1905), told the story of ill-fated Lily Bart, 29, and her tragic quest for marriage and wealth. "The only thing to do." she said, "is to hug one's f
Read more

James A. Michener

Image
"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as  they tangle with human emotions." ~ James A. Michener American novelist and short story writer James Albert Michener (1907–1997) was born on this day in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.  Abandoned by his parents, he grew up struggling with poverty and credits his foster mother for fostering his love of books. "I've always been a sucker for a narrative," he said. "The great historical novels. I read all of (Honore de) Balzac when I was 14." Michener followed this passion for history by writing his own sweeping tales. He was known for conducting extensive research ("total immersion". His epic novels focused on specific geographical locations and historical facts across generations, whether Hawaii (1959), Chesapeake (1978), or Texas (1985).  "I never wrote anything that was published until I was 40," he said and won the Pulitzer for his first book of fiction, T
Read more