Overcoming fear can be crucial to reaching your potential.

Are your fears getting in the way of your success?

Do you feel your fears are keeping you from your full potential?

Recently I came across an article about fear and how it keeps us from our potential. Actually the article was titled Why We Fail To Create. It was an interesting piece about how fear gets in the way and keeps us from doing the things we want to do, and from creating the things we want to create…blocking us from our true potential and from being the best we can be.

I thought it was a good topic to rewrite and blog about so I started in on my routine of absorbing and processing the information and then putting it into my own words. Then I stopped reading and just started writing. After all I might be considered an expert on fear. I have my fair share and then some..and so what an easy topic for me to talk about. My “social anxiety” sometimes has a place in the most mundane of interactions for me. It’s a real curse. Fears on top of fears.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not paralyzed…I’m functioning and even manage to excel at some things. So I guess the human mind has a coping mechanism that kicks in to save the day when we find ourselves confronting those fears. But do they ever really go away? Probably not..at least not in my case. Can I learn to live with them? Sure why not… and as they say the best way to overcoming fear is to stare it in the face.

My fears have to do with people. Can anyone else relate to this? Social Anxiety. Fear of conversations, fear of eye contact, fear of intimacy, fear of honesty and truthfulness. And a deathly fear of public speaking. Now I’m not saying I lie about things, or hide from people. I just don’t go out of my way to attend social functions or gatherings, and I don’t volunteer true feelings or brutal honesty. It’s easier for me to run from my fears and to take the easy way out, then it is to face them and gut it out. Even though I know running is the cowardly way, and it does nothing for confidence and self-esteem, it’s the path of less resistance. Taking the easy way out.

It does however interfere with my work ambitions. Those constant doubts and questions of what others are going to think, and if I’m good enough. I know people were not put here to judge me, and I know people respect others that try even when they fail, but no matter how hard someone like me tries to convince themselves otherwise…the fears persist.

My love for internet marketing comes honestly. It is comforting knowing I can work and succeed without leaving my home. Going along with my strengths makes sense to me, and conquering internet marketing I feel is my strength and my calling. But I still am not performing to my full potential. My fears still get in the way…I get in the way…and if I could just learn to get out of my way, my success would come easier and faster this I know. I would become dangerously good at what I do. But I will keep trying. I will succeed. Letting it get the best of me is not an option. There are workarounds, and in the meanwhile I will continue to work at confronting and conquering those fears.

Here’s a few tips about overcoming fear that I picked up from reading on the same subject.

1. Keep going and it gets easier. When fear and doubt creep in, we creep forward.
2. Hang with people who have overcome their fears.
3. Celebrate the little wins
4. See the future outcome of overcoming.
5. Understand the cost of giving in or giving up.

Time to celebrate. Writing this is a little win for me.