Feel the fear and do it anyway: A Guide to Beating the Fears That Are Holding You Back

Fear of something bad happening in the future is one of the things that make us human.

Animals might fear an immediate danger, that is happening right now, but only we fear something that might happen, that isn’t happening now, that isn’t even showing its ugly face at the moment.

This fear, some might say, is necessary … it stops us from doing something stupid. But I’ve found most of these fears to be unnecessary, to be baseless, to be holding us back from achieving something.

I recently asked my Twitter friends: “What fear is holding you back?” Their responses included:

• failure
• abandonment/rejection
• intimacy
• success
• being broke
• not being good enough

I think the last one — not being good enough — is actually at the root of all the others. We fear we’ll fail because we’re not good enough. We fear we’ll lose our relationships, that we’ll be abandoned, that we’ll be rejected … because we’re not good enough. We fear intimacy for the very same reason — we might get rejected because we’re not good enough. Even the fear of success is based on the worry that we’re not good enough.

Read the full article on Zen Habits: A Guide to Beating the Fears That Are Holding You Back.

I also recommend following Leo Babauta on Twitter