Think about your biggest goal. What’s holding you back from achieving it? If you’re like most people, the answer is simple: fear. Fear is a limiting factor that keeps you from moving in the direction you desire. It diverts our focus and leads to excuses—but it doesn’t have to be that way. Learning to overcome fear is one of the most liberating pursuits you can undertake.
It’s easy to pretend fear isn’t affecting you and make excuses for not reaching your potential. Instead of turning away, view fear as a signal to take action, not an excuse. Look at your goals. If you let fear drive you away from them, you are in fact surrendering.
The fear of uncertainty, fear of failure, and other common fears all stem from one thing: limiting beliefs that hinder your progress. These ten steps will teach you how to overcome fear, bringing you closer to the life you desire.
The Psychology Behind Fear
Understanding the mechanisms behind fear and anxiety can seem daunting, but before you blame yourself for feeling scared, realize that fear is a normal evolutionary response. Though it might not feel like it in the moment, your body and brain are communicating with you. When you learn to read these signals, overcoming fear becomes natural.
Tony Robbins has helped millions learn how to overcome fear and start living lives they love. In his extensive experience, fear goes beyond the physical signals we often feel in scary situations. Some types of fear are more insidious.
1. Physical Fear
When most of us think of fear, we think of physical threats triggered by known external events—a loud noise, looking over the edge from a great height, or standing in front of a crowd. Physical fear can even manifest in the form of phobias—up to 12% of adults experience a phobia at some point. Phobias are extreme fears of very specific situations, objects, or animals. Spiders, heights, public speaking, and enclosed spaces are some well-known phobias.
During a physical fear response, you might experience an increased heart rate, faster breathing, a sinking feeling in your stomach, dizziness, sweating, or a dry mouth. Your muscles might feel tenser or weaker. These are all results of your body’s “fight or flight” response. Without this fear response, you would leave yourself open to danger. However, in the modern world, fear can take many other forms—some not so obvious.
2. Anxiety
Think of anxiety as prolonged fear. It often focuses on the future rather than the present. Anxiety is on the rise in the United States, affecting up to 18% of the population each year. Anxiety and stress can have long-term consequences: when you’re in a state of stress, your body releases a chemical called cortisol. Too much cortisol can lead to trouble sleeping, difficulty concentrating, weight gain, and even affect your immune response.
For many of us, risks like diving into a new career, making ourselves vulnerable in a relationship, or investing our hard-earned money can lead to pervasive anxiety, making it hard to sleep, concentrate, and replaying scenarios over and over in our minds. But what is the underlying cause of these thoughts? Tony has found that several types of fear can take root in our minds.
3. Fear of Uncertainty
At our core, all of our thoughts, decisions, and actions are driven by six human needs. For many of us, certainty is our most intense need: we want to know what’s going to happen next. While we do need some certainty in our lives, we also need uncertainty and variety. The fear of uncertainty keeps us from stepping out of our comfort zones. It tells us, “You better stay here, it’s safe.” This is the real reason many feel stuck and unable to achieve their goals.
4. Fear of Failure
The fear of failure is another common fear, stemming from our need for certainty as well as our need for significance. We’re naturally wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure—avoiding failure is undoubtedly an easy way to avoid pain. We want to feel significant, but failure makes us feel small and unimportant. However, we also crave growth, and as every successful person on this planet knows, failure brings growth. You must shift your perspective on failure, viewing it as positive rather than negative.
How to Overcome Fear: Conquer in 10 Steps
Conquering fear means mastering fear responses and using them to your advantage. Learning how to overcome fear begins with finding your center. Here are reliable techniques for overcoming fear and anxiety, enabling you to live a fulfilling life.
1. Identify Your Fears
Learning how to overcome fear is like any problem-solving challenge; you need to identify the challenge to overcome it. What are you afraid of? Sit quietly for a few minutes, observe your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations. Write down what comes up and be as specific as possible. Consider practicing mindfulness meditation daily to understand more clearly what drives you. When you find your center, you will feel empowered to face your fears.
2. Recognize the Benefits of Fear
Our emotions exist to tell us something. When you feel fear, your soul is trying to tell you something—so listen. If you feel overwhelmed by stress or distracted by subtle but persistent anxiety, this could be a subconscious fear needing your attention. Overcoming fear is not about avoiding it, but adapting to your anxiety. Treat fear as a message, not a threat to your survival. When you leverage anxiety to your advantage, it won’t ruin your life. In the process of overcoming fear, it becomes an ally—a crucial source of guidance for unleashing your full potential.
3. Sit Down and Face Your Fears
There’s a time for action, and there’s a time for reflection. Acting too quickly to overcome fear can lead to counterproductive behaviors, like reaching for a drink, indulging in comfort food, or completely repressing the feeling. The next time you feel fear, do nothing. Sit with the fear for a few minutes. Think about it. What’s the root cause? Is it fear of uncertainty? Fear of failure? What are the stories you tell yourself about why you can’t overcome this fear? A moment of reflection can have a profound, thoughtful, and effective impact on overcoming fear.
4. Set “Must-Have” Goals
Often, the process of overcoming fear is hindered by the uninspiring or elusive goals we set for ourselves. To turn this around, ask yourself: What kind of life do you crave and deserve? Is this just a “someday, maybe” plan, or are you actively working towards it? Is it achievable, and are you committed to it? The first step in overcoming fear is determining whether you’re creating a compelling goal. Would you feel fulfilled if you achieved it? Conversely, would you feel lost if you didn’t?
Dig deep into your goals. What’s the ideal outcome? Financial growth—more money in the bank? Maybe you want financial independence to travel anytime, anywhere? Think about what your life would be like if you didn’t reach this outcome, and compare it to what it would be like if you did. Once you feel that your goal is significant, the fear of not trying will outweigh the fear of failure—and that’s when you’ll be motivated to take action.
5. Identify Your Excuses
Fear has a way of making us procrastinate. “I’m really tired. I have other things to do. Anyway, this is a silly idea.” Do these excuses sound familiar? You might have said them out loud to yourself already. Take a moment and think about it. Are these statements really true, or are you making up excuses to avoid potential failure? Making excuses and opting out is much easier and less painful than investing a lot of time and energy towards achieving your goals, but it ultimately leaves you feeling unsatisfied. If you want to know how to overcome fear, you need to adopt a different, proactive approach.
Recognize when you are making excuses and find ways to overcome them. Too tired? Adjust your sleep schedule for a good night’s rest. Not enough time? Evaluate your priorities and identify where you can make time. The next time you catch yourself making excuses, decide not to give in to that little voice telling you “no,” because it won’t help you grow in the long run.
6. Surround Yourself with Success
Tony says, “Proximity is power.” This is also known as the Law of Attraction, or in essence, you become the company you keep. To put it in Tony’s words: “Whatever you hold in your mind on a consistent basis is exactly what you will experience in your life.” If you’ve turned your “shoulds” into “musts” and identified all excuses, but are still uncertain about how to overcome fear and put your goals into action, then it’s time to check where you are focusing your attention.
Focus on surrounding yourself with people who are overcoming their fears and achieving their dreams. These are people who not only deserve your respect but will also push you towards your goals. To overcome fear, you need to raise your own standards—and allow others to hold you accountable.
7. Adopt a Growth Mindset
When you are scared, you tend to stay in one place. What if you make a mistake? What if you fail? You start to believe that you can’t make progress and you’re powerless—fear holds you back. One of the most effective ways to overcome fear and anxiety is to adopt a growth mindset. It’s not about achieving your goals and being perfect at every step. No one is perfect all the time, so don’t strive for perfection. It’s about being comfortable with not knowing and pushing forward—that’s the foundation of a growth mindset.
As Tony says, “No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.” As you work on overcoming your fears, you’ll realize there are many tests and challenges along the way. Once you accept that the road to success includes growth and change, you are one step closer to achieving your goals.
8. Find Valuable Insights in Pain
No one enjoys pain. Most of us do everything we can to avoid it. However, pain can be a profound teacher. If you acknowledge that your life and the efforts you make towards achieving your goals can sometimes be painful, then painful experiences become opportunities for growth. When you stop seeing pain as a threat to your survival and give up on it, it loses its power and becomes another tool to overcome fear.
Everyone goes through tough times in life. Whether your setbacks are personal or professional doesn’t matter—what matters is the lessons you learn from these experiences and how you apply them to your future. Instead of letting the fear of uncertainty from past experiences dominate your decisions, actively choose to learn from those painful moments and take control of your life.
9. Visualize Your Goals
You’ve done the mental work: identifying the real reasons holding you back and determining the must-haves in your life. But overcoming fear requires you to form these habits daily so that they lead to real action.
Tony says, “Identify your problems, but give your power and energy to solutions.” Goal visualization is one of these solutions. It’s used by some of the most successful athletes, actors, and entrepreneurs, like Michael Phelps, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Will Smith, and women’s soccer star Carli Lloyd.
Goal visualization sets your focus—where focus goes, energy flows. It can take the form of journaling, meditation, or imagery training. What’s important is that you see yourself succeeding and fully immerse yourself in your goals. This convinces your brain that anything is possible—a crucial step in overcoming fear.
10. Accept That You Will Fail
What are people most afraid of when pursuing their goals? That they will fail. But like pain, failure can teach us. In fact, failure is often a better teacher than success. If you accept from the start that failure is an inevitable part of success, you won’t be so afraid of it. Failure can provide you with valuable learning experiences and positively impact your future strategies.
Everyone fails. Successful entrepreneurs, world leaders, chefs, artists, scientists, and doctors. Our society avoids talking about failure, choosing instead to celebrate success; this creates a false impression that to be truly successful, you must never fail. But part of overcoming fear is recognizing that everyone on this planet—including the people you know and admire—has encountered failure on their path to greatness. The sooner you realize that your fear of failure is stopping you from making decisions to realize your dreams, the sooner you can accept the possibility of failure and move forward.
