57 Powerful Techniques for Overcoming Fear and Making Confident Decisions
- Noah Avery
- Apr 12, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 22, 2024
"A decision made from fear is always the wrong decision."
- Tony Robbins
Being able to overcome fear is one of your greatest strengths when it comes to decision making. At the time of making this post, I'm in Yosemite and have been here over a week. There are few other professions that encounter more fear than rock climbers. Investing is a close second ;)
Although these rock climbers experience extreme levels of fear, they will tell you that they do their best climbing when they are in "flow state." It's actually a state of pure focus and calm. They've done their preparation and then just focus on on move at a time and do it over and over until they're at the top.
Here are some tools and strategies to overcome fear:
Increasing your knowledge in the area you’re afraid of
What are the odds of this happening? Chances are, the fear that’s occupying so much of your time has around 1 in 10,000+ odds of happening.
Check the language you’re saying to yourself. Eliminate the fear provoking words.
Ask yourself to give you the emotion you want. “I ask of you to put me in a calm state.”
Own the worst case scenario and know you’ll be ok even if it happens. Then direct the efforts that are in your control to prevent the worst case from happening to the best of your abilities.
Focus on what you can control and don’t have your fear dependent on things outside your control.
Get more active and get some exercise. You’ll feel better during and afterwards.
Write out all your fears on a piece of paper and look at them objectively. When you put them down on paper, sometimes you see the fears as ridiculous, especially when you look at them the next day.
Get all the facts before making a decision.
Systematically look at the thing that is worrying you. What is the problem? What is the cause of the problem? What can I do about it?
Request help from someone you know has been through a similar situation.
Know that other people who have achieved what you are going towards probably experienced similar fears and they got through it. You’re not alone in that.
Get busy doing an engaging task. Sometimes irrational fears come up when we have nothing to do except sit and think. “I must lose myself in action, less I lose myself in despair.” Alfred Lord Tennyson
Fear and worry is a habit. Recognize this thought pattern when it comes. When you bring it to the conscious mind, it intercepts the pattern and you’re able to break the habit over time.
Have a religious or spiritual belief that you are guided. Give the control over God/the Universe.
Spend time in nature and observe how nature just keeps going. You don’t have to do anything and it just carries on.
Practice gratitude. “You can’t be grateful and fearful at the same time.” -Tony Robbins
Surround yourself with people who are not fearful or negative all the time.
Feed your mind what you want to feel and be. What you feed your mind comes out in your thoughts.
Get a routine. Sometimes we get fearful because there’s too much uncertainty in our lives. A routine adds certainty.
Clean your house and environment.
Win. Winning is essential for your mental health.
When things don’t go right in one area, there’s always another area where things are going right. Focus on this area, but still go through the motions of the other area.
Make progress towards something. “Progress equals happiness.” Tony Robbins.
Give something back. Sometimes we get caught up in our own way so much that we forget to give. This will help give your life meaning.
Laugh at yourself. I sometimes take things to the extreme and get overly serious. “When a person cannot laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.” - Thomas Szasz
Change your diet and don’t eat as much sugar where you have energy crashes.
Having a sense of self reliance and being able to walk away from situations or people and mean it, because you know you can take care of yourself
Choose to be happy/calm/ etc and not fearful. “People are about as happy as they make their minds to be.”
Avoid the equation mindset. “Once i get X, then I won’t be fearful anymore.” or “When I get X, then I’ll be happy.”
Know that some fear is healthy and that’s ok. When we set a goal, what we do is create fear around not getting the goal. Know that fear serves you and your mission in this case.
Forgive things or people who hurt you in the past. Many people don’t act on things that are good for them because they are afraid of something painful that happened in the past.
Go on an adventure and achieve something big or that you didn’t think was possible. Stack experiences in your memory where you overcame fear. Maybe skydiving, climbing a mountain, attending a event, etc. Doing things you’re afraid of that give you some kind of reward.
Shifting our mindset from what we don’t have, to what we do have.
Look at the rules you have for how your life should be. Sometimes the rules we have for our lives are impossible to achieve or based on things out of our control. When our lives don’t match how we think they should be, we experience pain and fear. You have the ability to change your rules on how your life should be.
Take a minute out of every hour to just stop and think if you feel overwhelmed.
Take on responsibility. It allows you to get out of your head and into a mission or task that supports that responsibility.
Know that everyone is your superior in some way and that you can learn from every person you encounter.
Pray to a higher power and ask for help in the area you need it. You’ll find that the resourcefulness comes to solve what you asked for. When we pray, we put the problem into words. We feel we are not alone in handling the problem; and it puts into force an active principle of doing.
Understand people and discover why they do the things they do. If someone disrespects you, chances are they probably quit on the area you’re pursuing. Use this to let go of the stress from other people.
Let people go that constantly try to bring you down–even if it’s friends or family.
Know that people want to feel a sense of importance. When you look and listen to someone, you’ll notice where they get their sense of importance. Point that thing out and you’ve just made a friend out of an enemy.
Look at where you handled a similar fear in the past. Replicate what you did.
Get more sleep. Many fears are worries are caused from fatigue more than anything else.
Control your breathing. Box breathing is taught to navy seals to give them a sense of composure in stressful situations. It’s done on a four-four-four-four count. Empty your lungs and hold for a four count. Inhale for a four count. Hold air in you lungs for a 4 count. Exhale for a four count. Repeat and try to belly breath instead of chest breath.
Meditate daily or take 10-20 minutes a day to observe your thoughts.
Do things that are fun. Boredom tires you out more than strenuous work that’s fun.
Make a to do list and prioritize it based on the outcomes that are most important.
Act and pretend as if you have already overcome the fear.
Visualize the outcome that you want to achieve and experience it like you are there.
Build up an identity of someone who is strong in the face of fear. Build up your life with the daily and actions of someone who has this identity.
Know that 90% or more of our worries or fears don’t happen.
Resign to the inevitable and handle it to the best of your abilities.
Write out everything in your life that you are grateful for in a notebook. Pull it out and read it every time you are fearful.
Be honest and avoid lying or being deceitful with your actions. Few things make you more worried or fearful than trying to avoid not getting caught in a lie or wrong deed. “Don’t leave crumbs.” Matthew Mconaguey
List out the pros and cons of your decisions before making them.
Do things that can be done immediately, immediately instead of having them stack up and take up metal space.