Your Fears Don’t Stop You. You Stop Yourself

We all fear the future. To say that looking ahead and not having some amount of anxiety for all of the uncertainty that we are going to encounter would simply be a lie. But before you allow your fears to stop you from achieving all that you desire in your life, know that it isn’t actually your fears that will stop you, you stop yourself.

Take a look around you. Every single person that you see both male or female, short or tall, successful or unsuccessful, they all experience fear just like you and I do. The difference between those who achieve the things that they desire in life and those who don’t is their willingness to overcome their fears and to work past them.

That’s the key. It isn’t about skill, it isn’t about inheritance, and it isn’t about any other variable aside from willingness – willingness to never settle at the limitations of one’s fears.

It’s not going to be easy to overcome your fears, but you have to ask yourself what other option do you have. You can either live the life that you were intended to live, one that you enjoy and love, or you can live in the shadows of pain and emptiness. If you want to live the life that you were intended to live and are not yet living it, then you need to do something that you aren’t currently doing. That something, moving past your fears.

How to move past your fears.

Now, I get it. Move past your fears is so much easier said than done. As I said, my fears still limit me on a daily basis. In fact, just the other day I was talking with my parents about my desire to pack up my stuff, load it into my car, and just travel the world.

They didn’t discourage the idea. They actually told me to go ahead and do it, and even said that I could use their camper for as long as I wanted.

What discouraged me, though, were my own fears. How would I pay my bills without having a job? What if I never found a job once I returned and started to “settle down” again? What would I do all alone in an emergency situation?

All of these fears without even taking the first steps towards actually doing it.

But again, it’s not those fears that will stop me. Hundreds of thousands across the world have overcome similar fears. What has stopped me to this point has been my own self. Fears only exist in our minds and unless we actually strive to combat our fears, we won’t know how different our reality might look.

So really, I do get it.

What helps me during times like this, though, are to remember a few things.

1. Everything that we want in life lies on the other side of our fears.

There truly isn’t anything that you can’t accomplish in life. If something has been done before, I assure you that you can achieve it as well. That is, of course, as long as you are willing to work towards your desires and move past your greatest fears.

2. Our fears never play out as we imagine.

Think back on the last time that you feared something and actually did it anyway. The outcome that you imagined before doing that thing, was it anything like the actual outcome? Probably not. Very rarely, if ever, will an outcome be exactly as we imagine it to be. But yet, we let the thought of an uncertain outcome prevent us from even pursuing a desire in the first place.

3. Everybody has to overcome their fears.

No matter who it is, everybody fears the uncertainty for what lies ahead to some extent. Those who become successful do so because they embrace uncertainty for what it is, and they work to overcome their fear of uncertainty. They become successful because they realize that in order to achieve the things that they desire in life, then they have no other option but to overcome their fears.

Quit preventing yourself from living your life.

Nothing is going to get better until you decide that you have had enough and strive to overcome your fears. Coming from someone who has lived their life controlled by fear for twenty-five years, I will be the first to tell you that it isn’t worth living another day in fear.

I’m not saying that you can magically flick a switch in your brain to overcome your fears, but little by little, start to believe in yourself more. The truth is, you are capable of greatness and you are destined to achieve it. All you need to do is simply believe in yourself and to not let your fears stop you from achieving the things that you desire.

Quit preventing yourself from living your life, and make the most out of every opportunity that you have in front of you. This is the only life that you will ever get to live. Why waste any of the precious time that you have left?

Michael Bonnell

5/23/2019

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