Fear and Brave

helps you tackle and overcome the biggest fears you will face in your lifetime

Fear is bad and you should never fear. That’s the message I walked away with after hearing some guy in church talk about fear when I was ten years old. I can remember the faux-wood-paneled walls, my colorful sweater, and the man’s maroon sport coat, but most of all I remember him trying to look like a hero as he condemned the whole congregation for the fear in our lives. As he rattled on about the evils of fear and how cowardly we were for letting ourselves feel it, I felt more defeated with every passing minute.

This was because, growing up, I was painfully shy, and my default reaction to everything in life was to be afraid of it. I couldn’t figure out how some people seemed brave and others, like myself, couldn’t seem to find courage, no matter how hard they tried. Sure, I despised that I had adopted fear as my identity, but how was it possible for someone as cautious and reserved as I was not to be timid, as the speaker insisted? Well, I did the only thing I knew I could do—the only way I thought I could be brave: I stayed silent. For most of my childhood and adolescence, I didn’t utter a word to anyone about my fears and instead held them inside, trying to put up a courageous front to everyone around me.

Think with me, for a minute, about how passion works. Before you act or even find courage and ways to act, at the heart of your being is passion. Sure, some people ignore passion, but that doesn’t cancel out the fact that it’s there. The individuals who do ignore it completely miss the fact they need passion and why they need to fight fear in the first place. Few people recognize passion for what it is—the fuel behind bravery. For the information in this book to stick with you, passion must be your drive. Consider this thought for a moment: A woman wants to write a book, and she realizes that the core reason she wants to write it is to help give others a greater understanding of the topic she is writing about, and to help others get through difficult experiences by relating to what the book is about. There has to be more in it for her than just worrying about writing a book. There are readers with real lives, real burdens, real troubles, and she can offer useful advice for them through her words. Through her passion her book can help bring hope to life. She may not even realize it yet, but it’s there. Once she searches herself and discovers what she already has in her possession, she can use it to connect to others’ lives.

If you think about how many people are on this planet, the odds are that you will run into someone who shares both the fears and passions you have experienced throughout your own story. We are not alone in our life experiences. Each of us can use this common ground to relate, to become closer, and to offer hope through passion for life and people. The people who make the biggest impacts with their lives do just that. When you grab hold of passion for yourself, you show others they can find passion too.

So how can we all become more aware of the role passion needs to play in our lives? We must ask the questions, “Why is this important?” and “Who will my actions impact?” Those answers are inside you already, but you must pay attention. When these answers are realized, fear becomes much less of a power in your life.

Everyone experiences fear, but very few are equipped to properly deal with it. This book will teach you a five-step process that helps you tackle and overcome the ten biggest fears you will face in your lifetime. Stop worrying about your other pursuits and begin to focus on the journey that bravery requires. Until you discover that you need bravery before you need anything else, you will live your life lost. When you find bravery, you find life.