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.

Why do you get up in the morning?

Is it just to get through this day, and the next, just trying to make it through to the weekend? Do you wake with a sense of futility—a sense that this day is going to be just like yesterday, and tomorrow just like today? You come home, eat a little dinner, drink a few pops, watch some tv, wander off to bed after you get on the kids for not finishing their homework.

On the weekend, maybe you’ll get out to play a little golf, or cut the grass, or plant some veggies in the garden. But all through those two days, in the back of your mind, like a nagging little shrew, is the thought that on Monday morning, it’ll start all over again. And, in another 30 or 35 years, you’ll get a gold watch as a reward for all your hard work. That oughta get you a few bucks at the pawn shop.

What if…?

Have you played that children’s game with yourself since you ‘grew up’? What if I could learn to fly like I’ve always wanted to? What if I really could have that car I’ve always wanted? What if I owned the company and could play golf in the middle of the week?Why don’t you take a few minutes and play ‘what if’ with yourself? Go ahead, write a few things down. Just play along with me here for a little bit. I’ll wait.

Wouldn’t it be nice…?

I want you to do a little exercise here. Take a look at what you just wrote. Now, instead of asking “What if?”, ask yourself, “Wouldn’t it be nice if …?” Go ahead, take your time. Really think about it. Wouldn’t it be nice to be sitting in that airplane seat, watching the propeller go around and around, feeling the vibrations, anticipating smoothly pushing the throttle in…picking up speed, feeling the expansion joints in the runway hit faster and faster…then, in an instant, you’re free from the confines of the ground, floating…flying.

Why have you given up on yourself?

Why is it that you’ve believed the people, including yourself, who’ve told you that what you want is impossible, that you should just ‘get real’? That’s what I want you to do, the next step. Get real. Get real in your mind what it’s like to do what you want. But you have to get real. Really, really, real. You have to feel the butterflies and excitement as you pull into the parking lot of the motel in Las Vegas, the thrill of knowing that the next morning you’ll be in the seat of a 200 mph race car as you go through the Richard Petty Driving Experience on the one and a half mile oval of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Do you know what it’s like to have 600 horsepower at your fingertips?

So take the time to get real with your dreams, your goals, your deepest desires. Do it every day. Don’t wish it. Be there. Be at the speaker’s podium of a blogger’s conference, talking to hundreds of your fellow bloggers that have paid lots of money to hear what you have to say. Be in the seat of the race car, watching the bleachers go flashing past at 150mph.Be there in your mind, and believe that it’s a foregone conclusion, and the doors will open for you. Because you’re attuned to it, you’ll see possibilities you’ve never seen before. You don’t know exactly how it will happen, but you know it will. And when the way is shown to you, jump on it. Do whatever is required. You may have to do some prep work first. You might have to actually learn to drive before you can drive a race car. But don’t worry about that, and don’t overly question the roadmap when you see it, because that really is exactly what you’re seeing now–a roadmap for you to follow to make your dreams a reality.You think maybe now there’s a better reason to get out of bed in the morning? Just a little?

That’s ok—it’s a start.