Avoid your dream and you feed your fear. Feed your fear and it grows.
Eventually, you will be ruled by your fear, as your life becomes smaller and smaller. You will have less and less confidence. It becomes a vicious cycle, because as your life shrinks, your anxiety continues to grow.
Use common sense. Fear is a necessary warning when you use it correctly. You don’t jump off a building because you are afraid of severely injuring or killing yourself. This is a rational and sane fear that keeps you alive and healthy. This fear is a good thing.
The fear referred to here is the fear that stops you cold and prevents you from having the confidence to live your dream.
Starve your fear and feed your confidence with these 6 tips.
Make a decision to do it. Yes, you made an active decision to procrastinate or avoid taking action, even if you didn’t notice that you were making a decision. You and only you are responsible. You chose to watch TV or even clean the bathroom, rather than face your anxiety, do some problem solving and get help to be confident.
Decide to regularly do something constructive to build your confidence. Find your favorite quote and post it on the bathroom mirror. Watch your favorite YouTube inspirational video every morning.
Now, do it. If you procrastinate on something that you need to do, you feed the fear. Don’t let the action that will advance your dream constantly slide to the bottom of your “to do” list.
Build a little bit of confidence every time you take action.
Don’t listen to the voice of fear. If you tell yourself you are not strong enough, not smart enough, not good enough, you won’t have the confidence to go for your dream. That voice has a very good strategy to keep you down. It stops you from gaining the skill, the knowledge and exercising your talent to make your dream come true.
Find good people with strong voices. Listen to the ones who can realistically help counteract the voice of fear.
Silence the voice of fear. What you resist, persists. Don’t try to suppress that voice. It only gets stronger.
Acknowledge the voice then tell it, “Thank you for sharing, now be quiet.” An even stronger message is, “Thank you for sharing, now shut up.” Say either one as many times as necessary for about 3 days and the voice will be silenced.
Stop beating yourself up for avoiding. If you call yourself names, nasty names that make you feel bad, you will just avoid more. This is sure to rob you of confidence. The problem is that you secretly believe that you are absolutely right to beat yourself up this way.
You have to be willing to seriously revise your secret beliefs and create better ones that sustain your confidence and support your dream.
Find your voice of encouragement. The other problem is that you also believe that beating yourself up is an effective strategy to get you going. Wrong. It just demoralizes you.
Develop the knowledge and skills that make your dreams come true. Did you watch American Idol? The final contestants constantly had to accept professional feedback that honed their talent.
Watch and learn, then copy.
Confidence Tip: Emotional Freedom Technique, EFT or tapping, is an amazing technique to starve your fear and feed your confidence.