How To Be Fearless

How To Be Fearless

By Mark Thomas

r-FEARLESS-LIVING-large570Fearless people are bulletproof, and nine times out of ten the fearless people are the ones who succeed. People who are too afraid and intimidated by life will remain meek observers who stick to their comfort zones and don’t break outside of them, while the fearless will challenge convention, take risks, make bets and live life to the fullest. Fear holds you back – not only in that it freezes you and prevents you from going ahead with your plans, but also in that it stops you from performing with the same confidence and nonchalance that you could if you were truly fearless. Being fearless is what will allow you to approach members of the opposite sex, what will enable you to ask for a raise or to go self employed, what will enable you to go travelling for a year and what will enable you to make high risk investments and make high profits as a result.

Of course though if you were born this way, or had the fear put into you by your experience of life, then just wanting to be fearless probably isn’t going to cut it. So how can you eradicate that fear and make yourself truly fearless, confident and unstoppable? Here we will look at what it takes to become fearless.

Forget Failure and Enjoy Challenges

One of the big problems a lot of us have is to like our current situation too much, or to be too afraid of the consequences of trying something new. This is because we are afraid of failure, and it is because we see challenges as obstacles. This is just a bit of faulty thinking however and if you can re-frame those concepts in your mind then you’ll find it possible to show yourself that these are not things to be feared.

For instance failure is not something that you should be afraid of as it is the way that we learn the best and the fastest, and it is the best way to measure our successes. All of the most successful people in the world have had failures in their life, but it’s just by ploughing forward that it’s possible to make the successes outweigh them. And during the time they went through the failures they will have found them to be character building, to be interesting and to be a learning opportunity. And if you fail you can of course just try again…

The same goes for ‘obstacles’. The people who are truly fearless see these as challenges – as an opportunity to test their metal and see if they can achieve something. Without these challenges life would be very boring. Just think of it as a challenge in a computer game – it’s something you can keep trying at to test yourself, and if you fail it just doesn’t matter as you still had the experience and the credit for trying.

Think of the Alternative

Let us look at the alternative to facing your fears – which is to simply let them control you. To stay doing the same job forever, to never invest any money, to avoid going on adventures and to just let yourself continue in a ‘happy bubble’. To do this is to never experience a range of different experiences and emotions and you can still find that failures come to you.

To face your fears and your concerns however is to live a life of adventure and excitement, to have at least the potential of making it big and being highly successful and to have epic tales of how things went wrong. Imagine your life to be like a film where you keep moving from one challenge to the next – in any film it’s the challenges and the failures that create the drama and wouldn’t you rather have a life that was interesting and could be made a film? It’s staying still and not moving forward you should be afraid of… to use an old cliché the only fear should be of fear itself.

 

 

S2 Tip

The people who are truly fearless see tasks as challenges – as an opportunity to test their mental fitness and see if they can achieve something.

 

 

Success Story

Congratulations to freelance toy maker Stephen Key for having the courage to make a change in his life and reach out to Dakin Toys (one of the largest plush toy makers in the country). Key, by making a simple phone call to the company, landed an interview of a lifetime at Dakin. They instantly offered him a spot on their team once they saw his work. Dakin mass-produced his one of a kind, lifelike, handmade, Golden Retriever, which the company named Sandy. In February, he flew to New York for a Toy Fair. After the show, he stopped by FAO Schwarz, the oldest toy store in the U.S. Inside, there was Sandy. Nice job Stephen!

 

 

In Another’s Words

The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become fearless is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly – indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.

– Ariana Huffington (Creator: The Huffington Post)