A conversation I had yesterday about confidence turned into a discussion of how fear and confidence feed or starve each other. Anxiety can creep in if we are looking for something that will allow us to move up a step. Reaching for new heights requires a great deal of effort. We don’t know if we can do it. Confidence start to wane and fear starts to grow. When we are careful to evaluate what we are trying to do we can takes steps to break down the path and move forward. Confidence will start to erode the fear. At the same time we need to learn how far we can stretch. This can be tricky because none of us wants to fall, but if we don’t stretch far enough to fail once in a while, how will we know how far we can really go.

There will always be the fear of the unknown, the fear of failure, the fear that we would lose the confidence of others and the fear of losing our self-confidence. Have you found yourself facing any situations that fit into this category? How did you react? What were the results?