Martha Beck's 6-Step Guide to Taming Your Fears

Steering Through the Fear

Maybe your scary/interesting goal involves something you have to do. Maybe it involves a cause, or maybe it's pure thrill. The best activities answer to all three masters—for example, a career can pay the bills, serve the world, and frighten you just enough to keep life interesting. But even in such ideal cases, scary is still scary. Fear often stops us from acting even when fascination won't let us walk away.

Being prone to anxiety myself, I fall into the approach-avoidance trap approximately three times a week (a huge improvement from my youthful average of always). I was 14 when I realized that since everything scared me, I could either do scary things or kill myself; fortunately, I was too scared to kill myself. Every day since then, I've done at least one thing I was afraid to do. So I can promise you, the process below has been battle-tested up the wazoo. Holding your fascinating, frightening, heroic goal in mind, simply follow these steps:

1. Curl up

You may not actually need this step, but I certainly do. After writing down a fascinating, frightening goal, I like to find a comfortable spot and scrunch up like a troubled armadillo for five minutes (or days). Depending on my fear level, I can change this up by rocking, pressing my palms against my eyelids, and/or keening. Experiment to see what works best for you!

2. Plan your progress

After your armadillo time has marginally calmed you, take a deep breath and begin outlining a step-by-step plan to achieve your scary objective. Your fear will want to drag you into obsessing about possible problems in the future. But be here now: Your job at this moment isn't facing what you fear, but planning to face it. While you're planning, don't execute or fret. Just plan.

3. Take one step toward your goal

A good planner breaks down every challenge into manageable chunks. Once you've done that, forget about the long term and take the step that's directly in front of you. Don't even think about the next one. You only have to take that one step. Ever.