Anxiety can stop you in your tracks and hold you back. It’s not easy to face your fears and push through them, but it’s essential.
To take a big risk, you need a helping hand. Get a coach, talk with a friend or mentor, and arm yourself with these inspirational thoughts.
Of course, many people rank “fear of public speaking” or glossophobia, as their number one dread. It’s understandable, but detrimental.
The sensation of stage fright is bad enough, but what’s worse is the damage it can do to your career and your self-esteem. If you let it stop you, your sense of self gets smaller and your stage fright gets bigger and more powerful.
However, when you step into your stage fright, you learn quickly that it’s a phantom-a fog–like most of our fears. When you step into that fog, you soon realize that it is a figment of your imagination–and that your effort to cut through it can easily succeed.
What will you accomplish once you burn off that fog and take some risks? What will it feel like to be free of that fear?
Be inspired by these quotes–wisdom from people who may seem like they’ve always had it all, but who have struggled to succeed.
- “Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”
–Judy Blume - “Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
–Dale Carnegie - “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”
–Eleanor Roosevelt - “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.”
–Yoda - “The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
–Nelson Mandela - “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.’
–Marie Curie - “Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.”
–Bill Cosby - “The key to change… is to let go of fear.”
–Roseanne Cash - “He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson - “We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.”
–Marilyn Monroe - “Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh - “Have no fear of perfection–you’ll never reach it.”
–Salvador Dali - “Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
–Helen Keller - “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
–Louisa May Alcott - “One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.”
–Henry Ford - “Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.”
–Babe Ruth - “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
–Theodore Roosevelt
