Fear. Fear of failure, fear of success. Fear of rejection, fear of embarrassment. Fear of poverty, fear of wealth.

Fear is insidious. It slips in early in life. It builds upon itself. Fear is a demon that grows stronger and larger every time he works his evil. He becomes more vibrant and hideous until he rules your entire life. Fear is a habit, a habit of thought. The more you exercise your ability to fear, the more it shows up. Pretty soon, fear is habitual behavior.

It starts with the best of intentions, mostly:

“Don’t ride too fast, you’ll fall and hurt yourself.”
“Be home before dark–the world is a dangerous place.”
“You stupid clod. Can’t you do anything right?”

Fear brings with it a host of related emotions: worry, hate, doubt, uncertainty, jealousy and more. All these are fear behind a different face.

Fear, in any form, will ruin your life. Stagnation, never moving on, never improving yourself, is rooted in fear. Closing your eyes to opportunity is rooted in fear. What you’re saying when you say this: “Why bother? It’ll never work for me.” is that “I’m afraid that it won’t work. I’ll get my hopes up and it won’t happen. So I’m not going to try.”

The worst thing about fear is that it draws toward you the very thing you fear. Have you ever noticed that many of the things you worried the most about, gave the majority of your attention to, finally came to pass? You have attracted the very thing you were afraid of. How? By paying attention to it with strong emotion. By focusing on what you fear, you put in motion events and circumstances that cause that fear to materialize. It’s the way things work.

Banish the demon

Don’t expect to kill off demon fear. He’ll always be around, and he can actually be useful–at times. But you can banish him away to the furthest recesses of your mind to be called upon only when needed. You can make him so small that his normal efforts will be inconsequential.

How? What is this force that can overcome fear?

Simply put, courage. Courage is the opposite emotion of fear. You can’t deny away fear, for then you are focusing on fear. You have to work on habituating the new, opposite emotion of courage. Don’t say, “I’m not afraid.” Say instead, “I am courageous.” Hold in your mind the image of the courageous person that you want to become. Whenever fear appears, replace it.

It won’t be easy, and it won’t be a task you can accomplish overnight but if you persist your habit of being fearful will become weak, and your habit of courageous behavior will become stronger.

You know that the mind can’t tell the difference between an actual event and a vividly imagined one. Denis Waitley showed us that with his work with Visual Motor Rehearsal techniques with Olympic athletes. So use that in your work to rid yourself of fear.

Vividly imagine yourself in situations that caused fear in the past. Change your behavior in your imagination to what a courageous person would do–what you would do if you were filled with courage, strength, and confidence. See yourself acting, speaking, walking, moving as you would if you were courageous and confident.

Use many different scenarios–as many as you can think of. What would you do if you weren’t afraid? Whenever you have a free moment in the day, take the time to diminish the effect of fear in your life. Make it a project. Make it an important project–one that your life depends upon.

Because your life does depend upon ridding yourself of fear. Your happiness, fulfillment, enjoyment, even playfulness, will increase many-fold when you get rid of your habit of being fearful.

So do your exercises. Strengthen the courage factor, the courage habit. You’ll find that, over a period of time, your thinking will switch from “I can’t” to “I can” just from the absence of fearful thoughts. After “I can” comes “I will”.

“I can and I will”, felt with enthusiasm and confidence, is one of the most powerful thoughts in the universe. “I can and I will” is first cousin to “I AM”. When you know you can, and you know you will, and you know you ARE the person who can and will, you are unstoppable. You’ll have gone from wishing that something was to expecting that something is.

That, dear readers, in case you didn’t catch it, is the Law of Attraction at work.

Get rid of fear and live your life the way it was meant to be lived–in joyous abundance.

Tony Robbins says, “People will do more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure.”

Dan Kennedy says the most reliable approach to selling is to generate some pain in the potential customer: “…This is where the marketer’s greatest opportunity lies: exploiting others’ quiet (suppressed) desperation; their private pain. You see, most people do not like their jobs, their relationships, their lives or even themselves. The savvy marketer understands this and is willing to peel back a scab and rub salt in it to motivate someone to action.”

Seth Godin’s Purple Cow Redux marketing strategy does the same thing–creates a little pain in the reader: “If this were actually milk, it would be pasteurized and homogenized. Pasteurized involves heating it up to kill any new organisms inside, while homogenization involves mixing it to make it all the same. If this sounds like your organization, perhaps you need this book.”

I am obviously not a savvy marketer. When I talk to people about my web design business, or other endeavors I’m taking on, I try to get people excited about what I offer. I try to go from the pleasure side. “Look how you’ll benefit by …”.

Honestly, it doesn’t work very well.

I’ve paid attention to what Tony Robbins says. I know that I’m more likely to achieve results if I associate a lot of pain to the behavior I’m wanting to change. But I missed the connection from a marketing view.

Kennedy continues, “…This is where the marketer’s greatest opportunity lies: exploiting others’ quiet (suppressed) desperation; their private pain. You see, most people do not like their jobs, their relationships, their lives or even themselves. The savvy marketer understands this and is willing to peel back a scab and rub salt in it to motivate someone to action.”

This goes against my grain. I don’t feel comfortable causing people pain intentionally, even if I have the cure.

On the other hand, I know that few people focus on what they want, even if it’s pleasurable. Most of their time is spent focusing on what they don’t want. Kennedy reminded me of this:

It’s worth noting, by the way, that very few people can clearly describe what they want - which, incidentally, is why they don’t get it - but most people know what they don’t want. Rubbing their noses in what they have that they dislike is much more effective than holding a carrot out in front of them. You must make people feel miserable before you can liberate them. Whether selling a kitchen appliance or an annuity, selling to mom at home or the CEO in the tower, you must create despair to ready the person for your solution.

So the question is, “Do I do what works, modifying my own pain/pleasure rules to accommodate that, or do I continue to fail in my marketing efforts?”

I know what the answer is. But still, I resist.

It’s always a challenge for me to live now. To enjoy what’s here. It seems I’m always looking ahead to later. Christine Kane reminded me in Why Your Ego Loves Airline Delay (unintentionally, I’m sure, but who knows?) to do what Mac Davis advised so many years ago: stop and smell the roses along the way. I could see myself in her description of what she observed when her plane was delayed:

I paid attention to the people around me as we de-planed. I listened to what they were saying. I heard the following words and phrases: “Well, this day is ruined.” “They’ve screwed me out of an entire day.” “Ridiculous.” “I hate small planes.” “I hate Charlotte Airport.” “Ridiculous!” “This sucks.” “Five f-ing hours!” “I should’ve just gone to Chicago.” “Ridiculous.”

Reading it reminded me of a story I read in Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention:

Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: “Peter,” he says, “kindly remember Rule Number 6,” whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws. The politicians return to their conversation, only to be interupted yet again twenty minutes later by an hysterical woman gesticulating wildly, her hair flying. Again the intruder is greeted with the words: “Marie, please remember Rule Number 6.” Complete calm descends once more, and she too withdraws with a bow and an apology. When the scene is repeated for a third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: “My dear friend, I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number 6?” “Very simple,” replies the resident prime minister. “Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so damn seriously.’” “Ah,” says his visitor, “that is a fine rule.” After a moment of pondering, he inquires, “And what, may I ask, are the other rules?”
“There aren’t any.”

Stop taking myself so seriously. When I do that, my day seems to go a little better. Why don’t I do it more often? Like all the time? Something to work a little more on, maybe?