I said to myself: “You mean all those people out there that I’ve been envying because they’re not afraid to move ahead with their lives have really been afraid? Why didn’t somebody tell me!?” I guess I never asked. I was sure I was the only person out there feeling so inadequate. It was such a relief to realize I was not alone in this. I had the rest of the world to keep me company.
I remember a newspaper article I read years ago about Ed Koch, the seemingly fearless mayor of New York City. The article told how he had to learn a tap-dance routine with the cast of a Broadway show for a publicity event. His teacher reported that the mayor was scared to death. This was hard to believe! A man who had often faced crowds of angry people, who had made many difficult decisions affecting millions of lives, who had put himself before the public in his race to be mayor . . . and he was afraid to learn a simple tap dance!
If one is aware of the Fear Truths, the mayor’s fear will not come as a surprise. Tap dancing was an activity that tested him in a new way, and of course he would be frightened. Once he practiced and mastered the routine,
the fear would go away, and his confidence in himself would be heightened
—he could put another feather in his cap, so to speak. That’s simply the way it works —for all of us. By virtue of our all being human, we share the same feelings. Fear is no exception.
Many stories similar to Mayor Koch’s appear in newspapers, magazines, and books and on television. Until you are in touch with the Fear Truths, you will hear about and read and see these stories and not notice the underlying principles operating. You may never relate the experiences of others, especially those of celebrities, to your life. You may think they are lucky because they aren’t afraid to put themselves out there.
Not so! They had to push through a tremendous amount of fear to get where they are today . . . and they are still pushing.
Those who have successfully dealt with fear all their lives seem to have known, consciously or unconsciously, the message in this book: You must feel the fear . . . and do it anyway. A very successful friend of mine, a self-made man who allowed nothing to stop him along the way, pondered the title of my course one day, nodded, and said, “Yes, I guess that is the way I’ve always lived my life, without consciously realizing that’s what I’ve been doing. I can’t remember not being afraid, but it never occurred to me that fear would prevent me from taking the risks necessary to get what I wanted. I just went ahead and did what I had to do to make my ideas work
— despite the fear.”
If you have not been successful in dealing with fear, you probably never learned the Fear Truths, and interpreted fear as a signal to retreat rather than as a green light to move ahead. You have tended to play those WHEN/THEN games I mentioned earlier. All you have to do to find a way out of your self-imposed prison is to retrain your thinking.
A first step in retraining your thinking is to say the Fear Truths at least ten times a day for the next month. As you will shortly discover, retraining faulty thinking takes constant repetition. Knowing the Fear Truths is not enough. You have to keep feeding them to yourself until they become a part of your being—until you start to reverse your behavior and move toward your desired goals, rather than retreating. There will be more later about why repetition is important. For now, just trust me and repeat the Fear Truths over and over again.
Before you begin, however, I’d like to add one very important Fear Truth to the list. You might already have been asking yourself, “Why should I put myself through all the discomfort that comes with taking risks? Why don’t I just go on living my life the way I’ve been living it?” You might find my answer to that question surprising. It is: TRUTH 5
PUSHING THROUGH FEAR IS LESS FRIGHTENING THAN
LIVING MITH THE UNDERLYING FEAR THAT COMES