Programming Yourself Not To Fear Fear
- Visualise your goals and overcome your fears!
- Use intensely desired goals and forget your fears!
- You can’t fail. So just do it!
You can largely neutralise the fears of failure that inhibit effective action, by using positive affirmations and visualisation to reprogram your mind for success.
Visualise Your GoalsÂ
Every time you visualise your goal and see it as obtained in your mind, you intensify your desire and diminish your fears.
This is an extremely important thing to do, because all successful people have a clear mental image of exactly what they want to achieve.
This motivates them, and drives the forward to achieve their goals. It also intensifies their desires, and intense desires will help them overcome any fears they may face.
Using Desire To Overcome Fear
Imagine you had an intense fear of spiders. It’s so bad that you feel uncomfortable looking at them or going near them. Now imagine there is a box full of the biggest, hairiest and hungriest looking spiders you have ever seen!
But, there is also a cheque for £/$ 1 million with your name on it inside the box with the spiders! If your desire for the money was strong enough, you would most likely face your fears and take the money.
This is a good example of how intensely desired goals, can overcome fear. If you can discipline yourself to use visualisation and affirmations daily to support your goals, you will increase your intensity of desire, and simultaneously your ability to control and overcome fear.
Overcoming Fear Requires Mental And Physical Action!
Many people assume that by focusing their thoughts on something (such as through the use of daily visualisation and affirmations) they will make it a reality. However this is only partly true.
Whilst it is extremely important your dominant thoughts are about your goals, it is equally important for you to take physical action.
This is one criticism I have of the excellent movie “The Secret“, as it does not put enough emphasis on the importance of taking physical action to achieve your goals.
In Brief - Act as though it were impossible to fail, and use affirmations and visualisation daily to strengthen the intensity of your desires.
If you would like more information on setting goals or visualisation see these articles.
Guide To Visualisation | Importance Of A Personal Goal
Here are some videos about phobias, and treatments used to overcome them.
Phobias Part 1 : Phobias Part 2
Once you are able to increase your understanding of what causes fear, your power to overcome it will also increase.
I have a very difficult time hitting a golf ball straight if anyone is watching. This is obviously fear. I’d like to overcome this. I’m glad I found your website, I’ll continue to look.
This is actually quite common, and usually indicates some form of social anxiety in addition to low self esteem. In cases like this people feel under pressure to perform, and instead of concentrating on task they focus on what other people may be thinking or expecting of them.
The roots of this usually orginate from childhood.
You may benefit from reading the articles on self esteem and the articles on how childhood effects adult life. By building up your self esteem, or more specifically your sense of self worth, you should be able to overcome this fear.
Although in general, just recognize that you have as much right as anyone else to play, and you will play in your own style and in your own time. Be yourself, and don’t let the pressures of other peoples expectations change who you are.
If you feel some anxiety when people are watching you, breath in and out slowly and deeply, then give your complete focus to the ball. Try and get in the zone, and forget about everything around you.
If people are deliberately saying stuff to you, recognize that this may just be an attempt to put you off, so don’t take it personally. If you have a look at the articles on self discipline, you will find some relaxation techniques there.
Dear Martin:
I am amazed by these articles. I wish I read them when I was younger.
I am 45 years old professional male. I fear direct eye contact and loud human voice during heated conversations. I feel paralysed during these situations.
I read and tried a lot of things but with no success. I have post graduate certificates (MSc, PhD), atheletic muscular body and good at self defence skills. I feel that my fears are so deep that nothing will take them away.
I am embarrased to discuss them with anybody for the fear of laughing at this professional who has a strong athletic body and practises martial arts but crumbles when somebody stares at him or yells at him (which is what is happeining in fact).
I wish if you can give me some practical advice as I am not willing to put up with these fears.
P.S: forgot to mention that during my childhood I do not remeber any day that my parents did not fight and yelled at each other. I also remeber that I always walked away from confrontations and was never brave enough to stand up for myself against the people who mistreated me.
Many thanks in advance
Hi Jimi,
Fear can affect anyone, regardless of the qualifications they may have or how strong they physically are.
Most fears are usually related somehow to your childhood, which appears to be the case for you.
It seems that whenever you are in a situation where there is arguing (loud noises, people fighting etc…) this triggers a subconsciously stored memory you have of your childhood when you heard your parents arguing, or were mistreated by others but were unable to stand up for yourself.
So basically what is happening now, is that this trigger (people arguing, confrontation) is causing you to revert back to your childhood self, thereby making you feel paralysed and helpless to do anything. Its like you are turned into a young boy again.
This may sound strange, but what you need to do is make your mind realise that in these situations you are no longer a boy, but a man, and therefore can respond differently to these situations than you did as a boy.
Something to help you with this process is visualisation.
Take some time each day (ideally at night before bed when you are able to relax without being disturbed) to mentally visualise the time when you were a child and you saw your parents arguing, or times when you were mistreated but were unable to stand up for yourself.
These memories may be painful for you to revisit, so you must be determined to face these fears and be willing to experience any discomfort remembering them may cause.
Picture these negative memories like a movie in your mind, and try to make them seem less intimidating. Try changing the colour, adding silly music to them, making the people in them small or speaking with funny voices. The idea behind this is to mentally reprogramme the movies you have in your mind, thereby making your bad memories seem less intimdating.
Once you have done this revisit those memories, only this time imagine you are you as you currently are today (a physically strong man) dealing with that situation. Change how you remember that memory, by changing what happened. Imagine yourself being strong and responding in a way that you would like to respond.
Also be clear as to exactly what you fear from such situations. For example, ask yourself do you feel physically threatened? If so, during visualisation recognise that you are strong enough to defend yourself if needed. Whatever fear you may have, find a counter to that fear.
This process needs to be repeated for at least 7-14 days, or longer, depending on how well you are able to visualise and change the memories you have stored in your mind, and how long you have been affected by these memories.
Note : It is important that you have an attitude that eventually you will find a solution to your problem, otherwise you will defeat yourself from the very start. Always believe you can do something, you just need to find out how, then keep doing it until you succeed.
Once you feel comfortable with this process, you then need to practice it in the real world. This should be done slowly, where you gradually learn to stand up for yourself for small things and by making an effort to maintain eye contact with people more and more each day.
I am writing about this subject of subconsciously stored memories and emotions right now, and over the next few weeks will be putting these article online. So lookout for the articles that come under the feelings section in mind power, as this will help you to better understand and deal with the feelings you are experiencing.
That is so true! You can replace Fear with Beleif. Beleif you are safe, strong, healthy, accepted, etc. I beleive by changeing your mind, you can completely change your experience.
I like this article on visualising your goal alongside affirmation to reach success, it is vey true. You cannot be successful unless you can imagine success.
Unfortunately, as you said, most people, myself included, experience childhood trauma which prohobit success. Affirmation’s don’t work for everyone, some people have such ingrained fears that they would need to do affirmations for ten years! That is why I think it is profitable to find a Kiniesologist. I’ve been seeing one for about 8 months and have been intensively working to remove fears, Ive also been doing meditation’s to bring up repressed fears, and there are allot of them.
Imagine, we are all living with so much fear, but it is not needed at all! We can live without them, in fact. We would prosper without them!