"Your fears are not walls, but hurdles. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the conquering of it." -- Dan Millman
And how do we conquer fear? With action. Millman says that action is the ONLY way to move through fear. Although we may dream of becoming fearless, the reality is that fear will always be with us. The question, then, is how do we handle it? Do we let it immobilize us or do we take a deep breath and plunge ahead?
We can find courage within by sharpening our awareness of our feelings. The more we peer closely at our anxiety, discomfort, doubt, etc., the more we will be able to see the fear hiding beneath and face it head-on. The next step is to understand that fear is usually a projection into the future. We typically fear what might happen rather than what is happening now. And Susan Jeffers notes that 90% of what we fear usually never does unfold. So replace your images of disaster with visions of success on the TV screen in your mind, and don't allow it to change channels.
Fear aims to stop us in our tracks. When we step forward anyway, our anxiety eases. We begin to pay attention to what's actually going on instead of being trapped in fearful speculation. And what's actually happening is that we are gaining experience in moving through our fears. Once you've done it once, you can do it again. And again. And again.