How to Conquer Your Biggest Fear

What’s your biggest fear? What would it mean if you could overcome that fear once and for all?

In this article, I’ll help you do just that by teaching you five tactics for conquering whatever you may be afraid of. Height, spiders, small spaces, oddly shaped clouds—anything that gets your knees wet and keeps you up at night.

These five tactics are universal and proven. In fact, last year I used it to help two readers who were afraid of driving overcome their fears over one weekend, then shared the results on my YouTube channel.

Ready for those five tactics?

Let’s hear them.

1. Exposure Therapy

At the heart of attacking fear is something known in psychology as exposure therapy.¹

Exposure therapy is exactly what it says. You take something you fear and gradually expose yourself to it, first in small doses, then in larger doses, until eventually you become desensitized to the experience.

If you’re afraid of heights, it’s best not to start at the top of the Eiffel Tower. You want to start on the second floor balcony and work your way up until you feel comfortable standing at the top of the building.

Exposure therapy works because the human mind is an association machine.² For most of us, our greatest fears stem from some traumatic episode or series of experiences in the past.

In the case of two of my readers who are afraid of driving, one survived a car accident when he was young, while the other had internalized his father’s neurotic insistence that he would die if he drove too fast.

And this association has controlled both women ever since.

Exposure therapy helps us associate the experiences we fear with different, more helpful beliefs.³

Not falling to your death from a second-floor balcony shows that your height does not bring inevitable disaster. As for my two readers, I chose slow driving in a retirement community to undermine their association between driving and horrific accidents.

However—and this is the problem we face in exposure therapy—they still get scared even at 32 kilometers per hour.

Although exposure therapy helps us create new, more helpful associations with our fears, it is inherently stressful and scary because in doing so we are forced to confront the fears we have been avoiding.

To make exposure therapy more palatable, some people practice visualization. Psychologists are known to ask their patients to visualize their greatest fears and strategize responses to those fears in their minds.

Others even create VR simulations of scary activities to mentally prepare for real-life experiences.⁴

One less discussed method is my next tactic: orthogonal exposure.

2. Orthogonal Exposure

Orthogonal exposure is essentially giving yourself a break from the scary activity you’re dealing with, and doing something different but very related.

Surprisingly, this can lead to a lot of success in overcoming people’s fears.

Paul Graham, the famous investor, claims that he overcame his fear of flying in airplanes by learning to glide. A friend of mine once told me that he overcame his fear of heights by learning to ski, standing at the top of a steep slope, and looking down the mountain.

By attacking activities that are related but different to the actual fear, we give ourselves a larger surface area to create new associations and build self-confidence.

As orthogonal exposure for my two fear-ridden drivers, I took them go-cart racing. I hope the incentive of beating each other in a race will motivate them to drive faster and push their limits.

I guess I should have known that wouldn’t work. Despite my insistence, the two women came in last. Which brings me to my next tactic…

3. Altitude Training

Eliud Kipchoge is the best marathon runner who ever lived. In his 20 year career, he has won more than 70% of the races he has competed in and is the only human to ever run a marathon in under two hours.

One thing that stands out about Kipchoge’s training is that he trained in the mountains of Western Kenya at an altitude of 8,000 feet above sea level.

For people like you and me, these heights are downright paralyzing. We’d be out of breath after a few laps, but for Kipchoge, this is standard training. And when he came back down to sea level in Berlin or London or Tokyo, he crushed his competition.

This is known in sports as altitude training,⁵ and it can also overcome fear.

If you do any activity that scares you and magnifies the difficulty or complexity of the activity, returning to normal activities afterwards will feel easy in comparison.

At least that’s the theory.

With fear, it’s complicated. Because facing fear operates in a sort of Goldilocks zone. If the activities you do feel too easy, you won’t make any progress. However, if the activity feels very difficult, you can become overwhelmed and panic and end up causing more fear in yourself.

So the goal is to find something that is most likely, in the Goldilocks zone. Not too easy, but not too difficult either.

I took the two women to the racetrack and rented some of the fastest streetcars in America. The challenge is going more than 120 miles per hour, more than double the speed of freeway driving. And one of them worked.

What’s more, he said he had exciting do it.

4. Make It Fun

Will Smith has a great saying:

The best things in life are on the other side of our fears.

The greater the fear, the greater the joy that awaits you on the other side.

This raises an important question for you and any fears you may be facing: How will you survive exciting?

When you have fun doing something that previously scared you, that’s when you start to break down the associations that terrorized you all your life.

Are you intimidated when dating? So, how do you make it fun? Can you turn it into a little game for yourself? Are you going on a double date with a friend you like?

Insecure about your body image, afraid to go to the gym? How do you make it fun? Can you bet on yourself how much weight you can lift? Choose a sport that makes you feel less inhibited? Or go all out and join a pole dancing class?

5. Identity Formation

It is at this point that we enter the fifth and deepest strategy for conquering fear—identity formation.

I mentioned before that the mind is an association machine. Take the total number of associations and you get a person’s identity.

Statements such as “I am a writer”, “I like long trips”, “I am afraid to drive” are all based on associations.

You have positive associations with some things, so you do them over and over again. You have negative associations with other things, so you avoid them over and over again.

These repetitive and avoided activities then become your identity.

Before their weekend with me, both of my readers’ identities were shaped in part by their inability to drive.

So I give them experiences that will reshape their perspective. I rented a Lamborghini for each of them to drive through Las Vegas.

As they took turns doing it, people kept waving, taking photos, and calling out to us. The most frightening thing that has intimidated them all their lives, now they are appreciated and socially recognized for it.

They will never be able to say again, “I never enjoyed driving,” because they did.

They will never be able to say again, “I don’t have any happy memories in the car,” because that’s just the way it is.

They will never be able to say again, “I never take a road trip,” because I didn’t buy round-trip tickets for our weekend in Las Vegas. The only way to get home to Los Angeles is to drive.

And they did.

The two women drove from Las Vegas to the beaches of Santa Monica. The 294-mile journey traverses deserts, various cities, mountains, highways, and LA’s notorious traffic. They took turns, stopping for breaks, and I never touched the wheel.

Any fear can be conquered. It’s a matter of choice, persistence, and a little strategy.

But I haven’t told you what might be most important…

Bonus: Do It With Friends

That strategy is called friendship.

My two readers belong together. They encourage each other, they hold each other accountable, while I keep them both accountable.

The greatest asset in conquering fear is an ally. Someone who can help you overcome your biggest problems. Who is able to support you when you start to fall. Who can provide assistance when you need an extra boost.

Also underrated is the commitment that comes from overcoming your fears with a friend.

My two readers made a commitment to each other. Neither of them wanted to be the one given bail. So with both of them there, they continued to advance towards each other.

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You can’t be half afraid. You have to do it all.

You need to set the stakes for yourself and create consequences, then find allies and a support network to keep you accountable.

From there, you increase your exposure gradually. Give yourself a little altitude training and reward yourself for every small win.

My weekend with the two readers was triumphant and not because of the journey home, although it was quite tiring. It was a win because we did it together. We create positive memories and show each other what is possible.

This is what is most important, creating those positive associations. Make those lasting memories. Redefining what is possible.