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.