5 steps to doing something about your fear

I have a simple plan when dealing with fear that I use and lead others in when they are afraid. It asks: what are you DOING about your fear?

A brief summary

• D – Define your fears. Give your fears definition rather than leave them vague and unclear. Ask – what is it I am really afraid of?
• O – Outcomes. Think about the worst things that could happen if your fears come to pass. How likely is this? What are the best things that could happen if you deal with your fear? How likely is that to happen?
• I – Inspiration. Let God inspire you and breath faith into your spirit – it’s a great antidote to fear.
• N – Nerve. Dealing with fear means holding your nerve and exercising some courage. What are the right actions that you should take but that your fear is preventing your from taking? Resolve to do them. What actions could you take that will also help you overcome your fears?
• G – Guard. Keep up your guard. You are in a fight, and fear is your opponent, and it won’t go down without a fight.

I had an interesting conversation with my 8 year old son about fear the other night. He was afraid of going to school on a Monday and he couldn’t sleep because he was worrying about it so much. It reminded me of the time I was 8 years old – I was afraid of going to school too.

Step 1: Define it

Fear works well in the murky and the grey areas. It thrives in misunderstanding and confusion. It loves the dark where it can appear bigger and more powerful than it actually is.

So, to bring it into the light where we can deal with it – we have to define it. By doing this, you’ll be half way there as it is usually not as big a thing as you first thought.

What am I afraid of? Answer this question as clearly as you can. Keep drilling down until you get to the answer (your journal is great for helping you out on this).

My son was afraid of going to school. But that doesn’t really help matters. It is a big, undefined and generalised statement. We have to ask what it is about school that he is afraid of. I asked him a few questions and we started to realise that it wasn’t school he was afraid of – just the literacy part of the day (hence he didn’t like Mondays). And the reason he didn’t like literacy was that he didn’t think he was that good at spelling – so he was afraid of the spelling they did every Monday.

Understanding this changed his thinking about school (he actually liked going to school) – so his fear was now much more manageable.

Me? When I was 8 I was afraid of going to school because I was bullied. Bullying and fear are very similar – their bark is much worse than their bite.

Step 2: Outcomes

When you really begin to understand exactly what it is you are afraid of, you can begin to think about outcomes. And there are two that you should think about.

1. What are the worst things that could happen if what I fear comes to pass? How likely are they to happen?
2. What are the best things that could happen if I deal with this fear? How likely are they to happen?

These are really interesting questions to answer. For Josh – the worst thing that could happen was that he scored a Zero on his test, and the teacher told the class. He would then be ridiculed by his friends (who were much better at spelling). We then talked about how likely this was to happen. Josh began to see that at school he never scored that low on a test. We could get him some extra help as well, so he scores would improve. He agreed that scoring a zero was very unlikely to happen.

The best thing, of course, was that he scored well, and his teacher told the class and his friends wouldn’t ridicule him at all. This was much more likely to happen.

So, when we talked it through, he was scared of something that was unlikely to happen but it was more likely that what he wanted would happen, especially if we got him some extra help.

For me getting bullied, the worst thing that could happen was getting hit. I didn’t like the idea of pain. He also took my dinner money when he could. That wasn’t pleasant either. Getting hit was very unlikely (not that I knew this at the time). Getting money taken off me happened occasionally (although I expected it every day).

The best thing that could happen, if I stood up to him: freedom and feeling safe (as well as eating lunch everyday – which was highly motivating to me!). At the time this was unlikely to happen. Fortunately my mum knew how to level the playing field to make this likely to happen. I was sent off to Judo.

Step 3: Inspiration

It helps to get some inspiration…and if you are a Christian, the best source of that is God. His inspiration will give life to faith.

The great evangelist Billy Sunday once said, “Fear knocked at my door. Faith answered…and there was no one there.”

For me, when I was 8 – I didn’t have faith. It would have helped. Josh is much more emotionally aware and strong than I was at his age. We read the Bible and found some promises from God that we could choose to believe over his school work.

Faith is a choice – a choice of what to believe. Just as you have to define fear so you have to be as specific as you can with what to believe.

For Josh we could have talked about God being there and comforting us in our troubles. A good promise but we want something more specific – how about “whatever we put our hand to, prospers”? So when Josh studied and put in the extra lessons we talked about God blessing that and prospering him with his work. That is something specific we can believe.

Preachers call this the “Rhema” word – something that breathes life into you (inspires you!) when you see it.

It is also in this phase that the Holy Spirit may well reveal to you the root of your fear. Often times this may come as a passing thought – so journal about it when it happens. Don’t go digging – just be aware.

For me, dealing with fear in my own strength is not that exciting but when I face my fear, I can do it with God’s help. That makes much more sense.

Step 4: Nerve

Dealing with fear involves holding your nerve. It’s interesting to me how whenever an angel appears to someone on the Bible, he starts off by saying “fear not”. How many times does God tell us “not to be afraid”? In others words – hold your nerve!

According to Joyce Meyer (who is great by the way) this doesn’t mean not having the feeling of fear but rather not to let that feeling dominate your actions and stop you doing the right things.

So courage, then, apart from being one of my favourite words in the Bible is “the quality that enables people to meet danger without giving way to fear” (Chambers Dictionary)

So the next thing to write about in your journal are the actions that fear is preventing you from making and figure out how you could do them. What actions could you take that will also help you overcome your fears?

For Josh his fear would have stopped him going to school (mine too) if he didn’t have parents that made him go (me too). And the thing that we could do to help himself was have the extra lessons. And I learned Judo.

Once I learned Judo I had the courage to stand up to the bully. It didn’t happen the same day but it did happen in a few weeks. Funny thing when you stand up to bullies…you find out that they are cowards who use fear as a weapon. Take that away and they are just hot air. If you want to know, I ended up fighting my bully. I ended up winning too.

Step 5: Guard

Keep up your guard. In a boxing match, there is a balance of offensive strikes and defensive guard. Knowing when to hit and knowing when the hit is coming.

Fear is your opponent, so it is important that when you go on the offensive – they’ll be strikes coming back at you. Even when you think your opponent is beat, still keep up your guard.

When old thought patterns start to emerge again and try and choke out your new thought patterns – get your guard up. Don’t be surprised when the hits come. Keeping up your guard is remembering that you are in a fight, review where you have come from and remember where you want to get to:

• Keep your Definition clear.
• Think about Outcomes.
• Be continually Inspired.
• Hold your Nerve.
• Keep up your Guard.

Then you’ll be D-O-I-N-G something about your fear.

Keep reviewing in your journal where you are at and how it is going. Then write your own blog post with your story or post it below. Would love to hear how it went for you!