Stephen Kelly says fear shrinks through repeated practice, citing Rory McIlroy's maxim that luck comes from relentless work. Evan Carmichael uses a different tactic: imagining himself at the end of life regretting the challenge he avoided. Both treat fear as trainable, not fixed.
Questions this video answers
Take the first step, practice repeatedly, and visualize future regret to motivate action; each successful exposure trains a fear‑muscle, making subsequent challenges easier.
I want to know, how do you overcome fear? This is from Uday. I hope I pronounced that okay. Uday, how do you overcome fear?
Hey, Uday. You know, actually, I've used it before, that amazing guy, Dr. King, Martin Luther King. And he says, if you want to climb the giant golden staircase, you have to take the first step. And there's, you know, a amazingly symbolic, but you have to take the first step. And I, I tell you what, right, so if you have to fire an employee, don't do it on a Monday because I guarantee you'll spend the whole weekend worrying about it, and then you won't have that conversation, that tough conversation, uh, and then you'll push it out and you'll let the performance issue fester. And you've just got to take these things head-on, and you've got to be true to yourself, and you've got to be honest to yourself. But it's always about you just taking that first step. So how do you overcome fear? The only way you do it is practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. And what does it— it means— and they've all said, Rory McIlroy, you know, I get lucky. The more I practice, the more I get lucky. And this practice, the more you practice, the more you fail, the more you experience, the more you explore, the more you adventure, the more you have conviction and belief. And that is the best way to overcome fear.
I think with fear too, I think people feel like they're not supposed to be afraid. Like, fear is normal when you're trying something new and you don't have experience and you're going to be afraid. It's feeling that fear and doing it anyway. And the thing at least that helps me get through it is I try to imagine myself when I'm, you know, 80 years old looking back at my life. Or by the time I get there, I know when I'm on my deathbed, it might be like 200 years old by the time I get up there. With all our technology and everything. But, you know, I'm on my deathbed looking back on my life and I want to have as few regrets as possible. And that's the thing that helps me get through my fear. Like, will I regret not doing this? Will I regret bowing down or bowing out or not talking to that person or not taking my chance? Will I regret it? And yes, it's super scary. But for me, that feeling of looking back on my life and feeling like I'm going to regret not taking this shot now, that gives me the courage to beat that fear. And then once you do it once, it's just like training the muscle. It becomes a lot easier. The next time you do, it's easier. The next time you do, it's easier. You know, for me, speaking on stage, I was super nervous the first time I did it. I secretly hoped that they would call me and cancel and say, listen, Evan, you know, conference is off, don't worry about it. Like, oh great, you know. But they didn't cancel and I went, and, and I was super nervous. But now the next conference becomes easier, the next conference becomes easier. And, you know, maybe when I'm speaking in front of a stadium of 50,000 people, maybe I'll get nervous on that one, right? But then the next time I do that, it'll be easier. And so to Stephen's point about practice, practice, practice, like you just take the first step and then the next step becomes easier and the next step becomes easier. And that huge thing that is insurmountable is now broken down.
Hey, I'm going to add one thing, a bit of shameless name dropping. We had Gwyneth Paltrow here and afterwards I had a conversation with her and we're talking about— she was talking about how she's She's got obviously a very successful business and she's obviously an actress, an incredible actor. But in terms of one of the aspects she sort of struggled with initially, but she's now absolutely kind of militant about, is planning. And there's a— we'll give you something and we've talked about it before, the power of visualization. In terms of planning, you check it out on the web as well. There's a phrase called end state planning and it's used in sport, in business and everything. So Usain Bolt, he doesn't sit down in the locker room and it's a dark locker room. He's got his iPhone on listening to music. What he's doing is imagining himself crossing that 100-meter line faster than anybody else. And he actually goes back every 10 meters and imagines exactly what he does. So if you fear anything, the best way to overcome it is practice. And the best way without the actual practice is visualization. But you always start with the end. So end state planning, you start with the end. You've won the 100 meters. You got 100,000 people in Rio at the Olympics cheering you, screaming your name, and you ask, what did I have to do every meter of that journey? Meter 99, meter 98, meter— how did I come out of the starting blocks? And then you visualize, you play the movie in your head, you know what the answer is, and you just hit the blocks and you just go for gold. So it's really powerful. There's also this— you can teach yourself this, it's really cool. There's this thing called future perfect past tense. So you actually— and it could be like a business meeting, it could be a pitch, it could be a presentation. So you do a presentation, you say, right, what I want to do is come out of that room with a presentation done for a sales order where I've got those prospective customers clapping, cheering, and applauding and showing me love and say they want to buy my product, we've got to have your product. Then think about what is it we would have had to done to achieve that. So what we will have had to have done to be successful, what do I need? I've got the order in my hand, I've left the meeting, the CFO signed the paperwork there and then because he loved my product so much. So what would we have had to done to assure him of that? What is his issues going to be? And then smash it, hit his issues and just imagine yourself playing that movie and even, you know, test drive it with a buddy. So I want you to pretend you're 6 prospect customers and just run through, do a dry run, and you always get feedback to improve. But key about the power of visualization, it transcends sport, it transcends business. Imagine you've ended up with huge success, with a huge smile on your face and your customers as raving fans, and walk out with that order. Just think about what it would have taken 'Cause if you think about the other way around, you sit here, I'm going to big pitch, I'm going to try and sell a $50,000 piece of equipment or whatever. And all you think is, oh my God, that's so scary. But if you think, wow, we've done it, we got the deal, smashed it, knocked the ball out of the park, mentally your whole fear dissipates away. And then it's always about the plan. For success, and then you can be successful and go and practice and do it.
