The Magic Daily Practice of Facing Your Fears

By Leo Babauta

Every day, there are things we’re resisting, avoiding, feeling some fear about. We don’t often recognize that, but what we most often do is turn away from these things.

This turning away leads to a couple of impactful things:

1. A shrinking of our lives, as we turn away from things we’re not good at, where we don’t know how things will turn out, when we aren’t sure of success.
2. A loss in trust in ourselves, and a feeling that we’re not living up to our best selves.

This isn’t wrong — it’s just how things tend to go. It’s all very human.

There’s something magical about swimming against this tendency. Of deciding to practice something different.

Let’s talk about this practice: facing your fears, just about every day.

This practice is to set a daily session of at least 10 minutes where you take on something that scares you, at least a little.

Some examples:

• Pick 1-2 emails that you’ve been avoiding responding to, and answer them.
• Write 100 words or more in that book you’ve been wanting to write.
• Go for a short run (or walk) each day, if you’ve been avoiding exercise.
• Record rough drafts of videos and send them to a friend, if you’ve been wanting to make a video course.
• Tackle just one or two small steps each day around your taxes or finances.
• Tackle the piles of clutter you’ve been wanting to declutter.

You get the idea. Pick one project, one area, and take small steps each day in that direction.

By working with the things that scare you, you are expanding yourself. You’re building trust in yourself. You’re exposing yourself to the fear regularly, and over time that fear will decrease.

It will get easier and easier with practice. And then you take on the next thing that scares you, and face that.

And over time, what happens is that you develop a confidence to step into the unknown, without needing to know the answers or know if you’ll succeed. That’s incredibly powerful.

Are you ready to create that kind of magic in your life?

Btw, this is why I created The Practice in my ​Fearless Living Academy​ — to have our members practicing with this together, with structure, accountability and community. ​Come join us​!