For thousands of years people tried to change the world so they wouldn’t have to feel fear. 

Big, scary animals in the woods? Kill ‘em.  People with weird ideas? Burn ‘em at the stake.  Wild rivers flooding close to home?  Dam ‘em up.  Firecrackers?  Make ‘em illegal.

So, having made things "really safe," we go out and climb mountains, jump out of airplanes, race cars, and do hundreds of other unnecessary things that bring back fear.  Why?

If you never have fear, you can’t learn courage. If you aren’t ever afraid, you probably aren’t learning much about yourself, either.

Fear is the body’s way of warning us that there is a possible threat. A threat is anything we aren’t sure that we can handle successfully and where blowing it could be a bad thing. Threats can be things like getting hurt or getting robbed, or they can be things like getting embarrassed. We get afraid that people will think less of us if we mess up.

When we are threatened, we may need to react quickly. We have to be alert before trouble starts. So your body and mind get ready to take on the threat. Your heart beats faster, your muscles tense, your breathing speeds up, and your mind gets sharper. Most of the time you won’t need all this alertness, but you have to be ready. That’s why we have fear. It makes us alert. It makes us focused. It makes us ready.

What fear doesn’t do is tell you what to do next. For this, you still have to think, and that can be hard.

You can’t stop having fear, but you can control how you react to it. Your fears are a natural part of you. If you can just accept them, then you can do something about them. They don’t have to control you. When you take time to understand where your fear is coming from, it’s often not so big. With practice, you become someone who can face fear. You become truly courageous. You become calm, confident, and capable.