My post on “5 Steps to Building Confidence in Yourself!” generated so many views that I decided to write a short series of posts on building confidence and conquering fears. They will be rolled out this week and the next, so remember to subscribe to the RSS/Email on the right side of the page!

Let’s talk about fears. What do you fear the most? Spiders, snakes, death? According to many professional counselors such as Shannon Stephens from the Augusta State University, the No.1 fear in the United States is public speaking (death is probably No. 2). Yeah, public speaking – the opportunity to get embarrassed and make a fool out of yourself  by standing in front of an audience and talk. But, it’s also the opportunity to share with the world your ideas and dreams, the chance to get recognized by others for you efforts and knowledge. So, how do you conquer the fear of public speaking?

Speak MORE!

It’s that simple. Do more of what you fear and you’ll conquer the fear. Notice that I said ‘simple’, instead of easy, because it’s NOT easy. You need to have a very clear purpose of why you want to conquer the fear, otherwise it’s just a waste of your time. The easiest way is to just relax and go on a cruise around a beautiful beach. If you want to conquer the fear, you’d better have a strong reason to do it, or it will sound like too much work.

Okay, so you’ve identified your fear and made up your mind to conquer it, that’s the first step. Next, even though you’ve conquered your deepest fear, you need to realize that the fear will still be there. It won’t go away completely. But instead of overpowering you, it will empower you to do great things. You need the adrenaline from fear to keep you going in a speech otherwise you’d look like a robot.

Therefore, the most important thing in conquering fear and building confidence is to take action. The more you wait and postpone, the more afraid you’ll become. You’ll be paralyzed by the thoughts of fear and fail to do anything. Your confidence will take a nose dive and you’ll feel inferior to your own emotions. Every thought of that negative nature is a mind poison. The more poison you take, the less likely you’ll be able to act on your fear and you’ll be a slave to your fears (but remember if the fear is unimportant, don’t sweat it!).

Imagine that you’ve succeeded in acting on your fear. You’ll feel more confident the next time you face the same kind of fear because you’ve done it before, why not the 2nd time? And the 3rd, the 4th, the 5th..you get the idea. And that’s how you’ll boost your confidence, day by day. It’s gonna take some time before you can notice the effect, but if you’re persistent you’ll see the results. I used to fear speaking in public (who isn’t?!) but I think I’m feeling more comfortable now that I’ve chosen to take up the challenge of speaking to an audience whenever possible. Taken out from the book “The Magic of Thinking Big”, I’ve also listed below actions you could take to conquer some of the more common types of fear:

1) Embarrassment because of personal appearance -> Improve it. Go to a barbershop or beauty salon. Shine your shoes. Get your clothes cleaned and pressed. In general, practice better grooming. It doesn’t always take new clothes.

2) Fear of failing an exam -> Convert worry time into study time.

3) Fear of what other people may think and say -> Make sure that what you plan to do is right. Then do it. No one ever does anything worthwhile for which he is not criticized.

This actually relates to myself when I planned to start this blog. I began thinking about what others may think or say if I write about stuffs like these. Eventually I decided to just plunge in, and you know it’s all worth it! I’m enjoying the blogging process and the opportunity to help readers like you to improve your life. Now I don’t really care about what others say any more, because I know this is what I want to do and it’s the right thing to do!

4) Fear of people -> Put them in proper perspective. It’s so important that I will touch more on conquering the fear of people in the next post.

Meanwhile, there’s a 2-step procedure here that you should take away:

First, pin down your fear and determine exactly what you’re afraid of and what you want to accomplish by conquering it.

Second, Take the appropriate action. Think hard about what you can do, there will definitely be an action for your fear.

Act or be acted upon by your fear!

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