Great question. I've been focused on defeating fear over the past few months, and I'm happy to report I've made great progress.
I believe it boils down to the following aspects:
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Consciousness: You cannot begin to defeat fear if you don't recognize it when it takes control. If you've read
The 7 Habits..., Stephen Covey covers this in the first habit: be proactive. Basically, there is a gap between a stimulus and the response, and the habit essentially requires that you become aware of the gap and consciously direct your response (courage, in this case) instead of relying on your unconscious/preprogrammed response (fear).
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Confidence: If you feel inadequate, powerless, or weak, you cannot have any faith that if you do take action, that the action will be successful. This item ties in with the fear of failure -- a lack of confidence and a fear of failure can be a paralyzing combination. Personally, the fear of failure is one of my greatest fears, but I do have a lot of personal confidence, thus I can often obtain a successful result even in unfamiliar situations. In areas where I do not have a great deal of personal confidence (usually due to a lack of skill in a particular area), my fear of failure kicks in and I'm paralyzed as a result. I still need to work on my fear of failure.
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Independence: A reliance on the approval of others can cause you to be afraid of change. Perhaps you believe your family, friends, and/or loved ones will admonish you (fear of rejection) if you change careers, dump your SO, or decide to change religions. The obvious solution here is to reduce your reliance on others and have faith that your family and true friends will support your growth.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head; I'll throw more later if necessary.
I like the 'systematic desensitization' technique for reducing fear. I think Steve describes this in his podcast. Basically, you start doing things that are minimally fearful and work your way up from there. This exercise can help 'build your muscles'. I have a book on the way called 'Feel the Fear...and Do It Anyways', which got good reviews on Amazon. These days, I continue to remain conscious of fear, recite the title of the book to myself (even though I haven't read it yet), and do it anyways. I've learned to love the feeling of accomplishment combined with adrenaline!
Personally, I have found the lack of fear to be very liberating. For example, just yesterday I was doing some volunteer work with disabled children who were riding horses as therapy. After the event was over, the horses were back in the stable and one horse became scared after tripping on a folding chair. If you don't know, spooked horses can be dangerous simply due to their overwhelming strength. My friend was in the stall with the horse at the time and was in danger. Six months ago, I would have stared wide-eyed and slack-jawed at the event, frozen in fear. Yesterday, I immediately ran over to the stall to assist, feeling no fear whatsoever. The point here is not that I'm some type of hero -- actually my presence did nothing, or possibly made things temporarily worse
The point is that my focus on reducing fear has spread to other areas of my life, in turn boosting my personal confidence. It is definitely an upward spiral I will continue to nurture...well, at least until I get kicked in the head by a horse
Hope that helps
- Tom