“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.”  Mark Twain

What would you attempt to do if fear was banished from your thoughts? Is there a fire burning deep inside telling you that you were meant for something greater, and If so, what’s stopping you?

Fear of failure is loud; I have let it impose its will on me for years. Even though I believed that there was an entrepreneurial seed in me that needed to flourish, there was something inside that said: You cannot succeed at that! Who do you think you are? You’re not qualified for that, and you will fail!

This is the voice of fear; it’s a bully voice that will track you down, haunt you and intimidate you if you allow it to. Its sole purpose is to suppress your ambition and limit you to mediocrity; it is relentless and defeats ninety-eight percent of our people. The only ones who escape fear, are those who overpower it and rely on positivity and faith to break free from its grips.

The voice of fear comes from external forces to our natural self; we are not born with them, but often, we allow them to enter our consciousness as soon as we have the ability to reason cognitively. Fear is a spirit – an energy or dark force if you prefer. It desires to oppress us and tear us down, but we have the power to break its energy.

Most individuals allow fear to conquer their psyche and dominate their life. These individuals will likely live a life of scarcity and selfishness until the day they pass if they do not confront the fear that robs them of their limitless ability. The spirit of fear is responsible for the wrecking of families, cities and entire populations. It is imperative to recognize fear as a spirit and a foreign force that can be stopped through our innate power of thought.

Once we recognize that fear is only as harmful as we allow it to be, we can open various avenues of opportunity and live a life of freedom and abundance.

We must realize that the only sovereign control that man has is the power over his own thoughts, and if we fail to use the only sovereign power, we choose to live subject to fear. This is an idea that was adapted from Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant, who grew up in poverty and went on to become one of the wealthiest men of all time. Carnegie went on to use his wealth to establish 2,509 libraries across the nation; he founded what is now Carnegie Mellon University and funded many other institutions throughout history. Andrew Carnegie is of the two percent of our population that decided to eliminate fear through the power of his own mind. Carnegie attributes his massive success to conquering fear.

Eliminating fear

So how exactly do we eliminate fear? The first step in conquering fear is to believe that we have the power within us to do so. Once we believe, we can then move into action, of which our first action should be eliminating fear inputs.

What are fear inputs? Fear inputs are people and things that promulgate fear. The most common fear input are people who we have allowed to enter and speak negatively into our life. The individuals who constantly speak of fear are being dominated by the very substance of their conversation. We must eliminate these negative inputs and create healthy boundaries in our life. The question is – can we eliminate the negativity, without breaking relationship with the person?

The answer is yes – most of the time, but we must boldly confront the problem. When one attempts to spread their fear to us, we must have the integrity to stand up to them and say, “I am not interested in sharing your negativity”. Depending on the source’s level of ego and fear domination, this will either stop them from speaking fear into our life, or it will offend them. Through standing up and confronting this type of negativity, we can eliminate the most common and pervasive fear inputs.

Quit buying fear

All other fear inputs are either from our own thinking or through habits that we have the power to eliminate. The best example of a fear input that can easily be eliminated is the listening or watching of mainstream news media. The news industry is the largest and most powerful fear selling machine to ever exist. It is rare to find subjective journalism in today’s news media. What we are sold today by news outlets is a cycle of fear and negativity. Don’t experiment with mainstream news media; its sole objective is to addict you to its fear inputs.

Defeating negative self-talk

Intrinsic negative self-talk may be the greatest enemy of anyone trying to break out fear and its grips of mediocrity. What we continually tell ourselves, will ultimately become a self fulfilling prophecy. If we tell ourselves we are unqualified or unable, we self impose a false ceiling on our abilities. Action is always based on preconceived thought, whether it be conscious or subconscious recall, and the thought is based on ideas we have constructed or have allowed others to construct for us.

The fear of failure and how to combat it

A proactive measure to defeat negative self-talk is taking up the practice of positive affirmations. Everyone should read the timeless classic As A Man Thinketh by James Allen. This is a book that artfully explains – we receive from life exactly what we request from it through our thoughts and actions.    

The best writing on the fear of failure that I’ve encountered is from author Napoleon Hill. Mr. Hill was an early 1900’s writer who single handedly attempted to change the course of thought while America was still reeling from the catastrophic Great Depression. He writes about fear of failure by saying,

“failure is a man-made circumstance. It is never real until it has been accepted by man as permanent. Stating it another way, failure is a state of mind; therefore, it is something an individual can control until he neglects to exercise this privilege. Nature does not force people to fail.”

Therefore, if we accept this statement, fear of failure is in fact fearing a possible future decision that we and only we are capable of deciding. It is a psychological fallacy that we either construct or deconstruct.

Rely on fact

When confronting fear we must rely on fact. When we rely on fact, fear quickly dissipates. When we find ourselves bound by fear, we should ask ourselves, “what are the facts that validate this fear?” When we confront fear with fact, the strawman of fear quickly falls.

Rely on faith and love

Lastly and most importantly in my opinion and experience, we of the faith who believe in God as the sovereign creator Who gave us an inspired inerrant word, can rest on His promises. We quickly realize that fear is a spirit that is not of us. We realize that we can overcome fear through our God given choice of thought. The Apostle Paul, while serving a death sentence, shared these words about fear “For God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.”