Fear is unavoidable: if you’re doing something worthwhile, you’ll feel fear. And if you avoid doing something worthwhile, you’ll feel fear too.

The problem isn’t fear, or the uncertainty that triggers the fear — it’s our habitual responses to fear. We have ways of responding that we don’t even realize.

Some common responses to uncertainty & fear:

  • Putting things off, avoidance, procrastination
  • Distraction, seeking comforts & misfortune
  • Doing easier tasks rather than the scary thing
  • Complaining, getting frustrated, lashing out at others
  • Making yourself wrong, feeling guilty, feeling regret
  • Perfectionism, trying to control everything

Any of these sound familiar? The thing is, if you get good at dealing with uncertainty and fear, you don’t need to do these habitual patterns.

So you can train yourself to get good at fear and uncertainty. By opening yourself up to facing it in small doses, and slowly bigger and bigger doses. Exposure therapy, basically — it’s like exposing yourself to the thing you’re afraid of in tiny amounts until you’re comfortable with it.

Train at getting good at fear. Every day, expose yourself to the thing you’re afraid of, the thing you feel uncertainty about. Just a little — like at a 5 or 6 out of 10, for 20-30 minutes a day. Maybe longer, if you’re up for it.

Eventually, you can do a 5 or 6 out of 10 every day for hours. It’ll change your life.