How to Overcome Fear: 6 Techniques to Eliminate It for Good

Fears are quite normal, but knowing how to overcome fear is crucial for a healthy, successful life.

The effects of fear on our lives are very real and can have dramatic consequences, especially in these negative turbulent times we find ourselves in.

You have to guard against fears becoming obsessive. By obsessive, I mean when you’re thinking about them all the time.

In this guide, you’ll learn what fear is, why it happens, and powerful strategies to eliminate it. These strategies are deceptively simple but very, very powerful.

Let’s dive in.

1. Recognize Your Fear

You can’t change fear until you know what you’re worried about.

So whatever it is that you’re fearing, make a note of it. This act of acknowledgment brings the fear from the subconscious to the conscious mind. If you have a journaling practice, write the fear down and contemplate it.

Be conscious of it and say, “I am not going to allow my mind to think that anymore.” By doing this, you prevent it from controlling you unconsciously. This awareness allows you to confront it and use the other techniques shared in this post to eliminate it.

You don’t need to fight fear. Rather, observe it carefully to see what it is suggesting to you and become familiar with it. From that place, it is much easier to overcome it using the strategies mentioned hereafter.

Fear thrives in the shadows of our mind. Bringing fear into the light reduces it’s power over us.

Prefer to watch a video? Here’s John Kehoe sharing his thoughts and strategies for overcoming fear.

2. Challenge Negative Thoughts

If you know what it is that you don’t want to happen to you, then don’t think those fearful thoughts.

If you can remember this simple rule, you will be halfway towards eliminating fear and worry from your life forever.

When you have a fire, whether it’s a house burning down or a forest fire, what a fire needs is two things: fuel and oxygen.

Well, when we have fears, they too need fuel and oxygen. What is the fuel in our fears? It may be the fear of losing your job, not getting ahead, or falling sick.

Whatever the fear is, that’s the fuel. But the oxygen is you thinking about it, focusing on it. You are giving it fuel and energy.

By challenging these negative thoughts, you stop giving your fears the oxygen they need to thrive. Each time a fearful thought arises, confront it.

Here are five ways to get rid of negative thoughts.

3. Use Positive Affirmations

Every time that you feel this fear, you’re going to do two minutes of affirmations – affirming the exact opposite of what the fear is suggesting.

So if the fear is: “I’m going to lose my job, I’m going to be broke,” you catch yourself and say, “I’m going to be really successful, I’m going to be prosperous, I’m going to have lots of money and be financially successful.”

Repeat this to yourself over and over again for two minutes—either in your head or out loud. Set a timer on your watch or phone and don’t stop until it’s over.

Now, here’s what’s going to happen. The fear is going to say, “Yeah right, as if that’s going to make a difference,” and the fear will come right back.

What do you do? You hit it with two minutes of affirmations over and over again, affirming the exact opposite of what the fear is suggesting.

4. Visualize the Opposite of the Fear

One of the ways you can overcome fear is by spending several minutes focusing on the exact opposite of what you have been fearing. Whatever the fear has you focusing on, change the focus to the exact opposite.

For example, if you are fearing losing your job, focus on being competent, doing a good job, and being respected and rewarded accordingly.

If you are fearing losing your money, focus on being successful financially, making smart decisions, and living an abundant life.

Fear is fed by your thoughts, and taking your thoughts away from fear eliminates it.

Creating new images and new imprints in your subconscious through visualization is another way to eliminate fear.

Visualize yourself succeeding in the areas where you feel fear. Imagine the best possible outcomes vividly. The more details the better. Picture yourself being confident, calm, and in control. See yourself achieving your goals and overcoming obstacles.

Do this for two minutes every time thoughts of failure come to mind.

5. Focus on the Present Moment

Fear does not usually appear overnight. It often has its roots in regular worrying, which then becomes fear. So to prevent fear from happening, we must eliminate worrying.

Recognize that the essential component of worry is always “future orientation.”

When you worry, you invariably focus on something that might happen but hasn’t happened yet. You might argue that you worry about the things that are happening right now, not in the future. A closer look, however, will reveal the truth that worry is like a ghost tormenting you with a terrifying view of the future.

It is always about the future.

Focus on something right now, like a sensation, a sight, or a sound. Pay attention to the texture of your clothes, the song of the birds, or people passing by in your periphery. Soon, fear will recede and be replaced by a sense of calm.

6. Practice Consistently

Fears are deeply rooted in our subconscious. If we aren’t training regularly, if we aren’t in the habit of working with Mind Power and feeding our mind positive thoughts and having positive beliefs, then fears naturally enter.

Visualizations and affirmations aren’t a one-and-done solution to overcoming fear. Practice is the key, not to chase fear away, but to eliminate it from your mind entirely. Visualization will remove a fearful thought from your mind in the moment. But it will come back and test you.

And when it does, what do you do? You hit it again with two minutes of affirmations or visualization.

What you are doing is counteracting what the fear is suggesting to you. This is very, very powerful. It creates new thought habits and takes the power away from the fear.

Where Does Fear Come From?

Fear is the result of our mind becoming fixated on images of an undesirable situation we “fear” will happen to us in the future. It’s the mind projecting images of what it does not want to happen.

Now, why would you ever do that? Well, you do it because the mind is lazy, and we do it because we aren’t even conscious of the fact that we are feeling and thinking fear, and it just overtakes us.

In our busy and complicated lives, our mind must deal with numerous details as we plan and orchestrate our lives. They can shift effortlessly from present reality to past incidents or future possibilities within seconds.

When considering our future, whether that future is one hour or ten years away, the mind can creatively project us into any situation it chooses. And often, it does.

If we are generally a positive person, these projections will be mostly positive. And if we are generally a negative person, they will be negative.

This is where the student of Mind Power has a distinct advantage over someone who does not understand how their thoughts work. The student understands what fear is: merely a group of thoughts that can be overcome with consistent use of the techniques we introduced earlier.

The Negative Effects of Fear

The effects of fear on our lives are very real and have dramatic consequences.

It is not just an unpleasant experience to be ignored or accepted stoically. Fear is a very powerful force. If the fear is not recognized and dealt with early on, it can and will find its root within our consciousness.

When this happens, fear then becomes a daily occurrence. And if these thoughts are allowed to repeat themselves over and over again, they will eventually take an imprint on a subconscious level.

Then, the subconscious mind begins to attract the exact experiences we project.

Fear of poor health or illness means you’re thinking thoughts of poor health and illness. We all know and understand what the likely outcome of focusing on poor health and illness is.

Fear of failure, fear of poverty, fear of never getting ahead, fear of never meeting someone to share your life with, fear of ______ (you fill in the blank) is almost always setting in motion the exact events we do not want.

It is sowing in the fertile inner garden of the mind seeds for plants we don’t want to reap. It is ludicrous, counterproductive, and totally unnecessary.

Now, not all our day-to-day concerns are fears. Precautions and diligence are important for our survival.

But fear is something different. It is obsessive and dominates us in a way that is not rational. It far oversteps the boundaries of normal concerns. And if we are not careful, it will find a secure abode in our mind, where it can grow and paralyze our thought process.