When you feel fear, is that all that you feel?

It took me years to understand that the opposite of fear was not the absence of it — courage. It’s actually something closer to self-confidence.

So, next time you feel fear, take some self-confidence out of your pocket and off you go. We wish it could be that simple!

Let me clarify something before we proceed. The fear I am talking about is not the fear of spiders, heights, snakes, etc. Those are actual phobias, and that is another entire universe.

Fear, in this case, is the one we feel in everyday life. Fear to take that risk, to love again, to disappoint our parents, to lose a loved one, to move in or out, to start over, to show our creative work, etc.

I am talking about the fear that we wear to work, school, meetings, and life. Yes, it’s everywhere! We can’t hide from it, and that’s why I already wrote about befriending it and using it as fuel.

Fear is part of life, but it’s also its opposite. If we can live in fear, we can also live in confidence. We carry both! The tricky part is that we think fear and confidence are single emotions, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Think again. When you feel fear, is that all that you feel? No. Fear comes with a bunch of emotions and sensations that freeze us. It’s like a whole army of feelings that take over and put us inside a vortex of potential scenarios that we create and recreate, until we scare ourselves out of whatever we want to try, accomplish, or do.

Confidence flow is very similar. Confidence builds up by putting together a combination of sentiments and mental states like bravery, calmness, purpose, focus, and drive.

Let’s analyze the last time you were so confident that you didn’t even notice fear. You were on focus and knew what you wanted, you were strong and daring, you were tranquil and taking every step of the way with a drive that provided a potent certainty about what you were about to do. Again, there was not just one single emotion leading the way. It was a pool of them!

Here is where it becomes important to understand that the opposite of fear is NOT the absence of it.

The very frequently used phrase “Do it despite fear” shelters a significant clue to it. You see, fear itself will never entirely disappear. You might feel very confident, but a thought considering failure does creep up on our mind for at least a fraction of a second.

Many of the feelings that compose fear will still be present when you harness enough emotions to bring up confidence and take the leap toward getting what you really want.

“Do it despite fear” is an instruction that many of us find overrated because we have experienced a level of fear that immobilizes us. However, because fear is a compilation of emotions and also a fuel, the goal is not to eliminate it. Instead, we need to focus on overflowing it one drop at a time.

Picture it like this. You’re like a glass that can hold only 500 ml of emotions. If you fill it up with fear, that doesn’t mean you can’t pour more feelings in. As with any liquid, when you continue filling the recipient, it starts overflowing. The content that was already in begins to be displaced by the one coming down because it’s entering with motion energy, and the other one was stagnant inside the glass.

The willingness and action of pouring confidence emotions will overflow fear. When your heart is holding confidence in the majority, the phrase comes to life, and you do it despite fear.

Remember, you are the sticking substance of different emotions that build up fear or confidence. As you can choose to fill yourself with ignorance, insecurity, uncertainty, and distrust, you can also gather bravery, calmness, focus, curiosity, and excitement. You don’t need to be an ocean of CONFIDENCE; you only need to get rid of 51% of fear.