Fear Exists to Protect Us!

The reason the fear exists is to protect us. But from what?

The fear would not exist if there were no bad consequences, but those consequences, which aren't necessarily risks to us today, may have been real dangers thousands of years ago.

Those dangers were primarily social.

- We might be ostracized from our own tribe, one of the primary means of our existence and survival, if we failed in our attempts to mate.

- We may display poor social skills, the knowledge of which quickly spreads to the whole tribe, reducing our viability as a mate to not just the female we pursued but all the other females in the tribe.

Those dangers were also sometimes physical.

- We may choose a female who already mated with someone of higher standing and put ourselves in actual physical peril.

- We may cause other, lower status yet more violent, males nearby to become jealous, and endanger the pursued female and ourselves. Any combination of these things could have created a potentially dangerous situation, and so humans evolved to have a fear condition associated with approaching a specific female for the first time.

This type of fear is no longer practical, but it does have a biological and logical evolutionary root, so it makes sense.

It makes sense, but it's still there and gets in our way.

How do we get rid of it?

First, we DON'T get rid of it because we simply CAN'T. It is part of our biology and, although we can condition ourselves to get past it, we can't completely remove it.

Knowing this, and accepting this, we can ease the fear by simply accepting it.

When we feel the fear in illogical situations like approaching and talking to a woman, we know something worthwhile is in our vicinity, and we appreciate and accept it and move on anyway.

The most common question I am asked about approaching women, from men who are most afraid to do so, is "How do I gain the courage?" In other words, how to get past the fear?

You do the thing you're afraid of most, and then you get the courage. That's why it's courage, that's how it works. If you weren't afraid to do something, it wouldn't be an issue for you to do it, right? Then it would take no courage and the fear wouldn't exist in the first place.

Courage is being afraid to do something that you know isn't bad and won't physically harm you, but doing it anyway because you know it's right or will make you a better person or the lives of other people around you better.

The fear is there to guide you, not discourage you. Without fear, nothing meaningful is accomplished. Embrace it and move forward anyway. Then you will have courage, as your reward.

Courage doesn't come before doing something you're afraid of. You can't train yourself to be courageous in order to do something that might require such courage, you simply do it regardless and it is only then that you achieve courage.

Courage is not something you have, it is a reward for getting through and past a temporary fear. That fear can come along again and you will need to, again, embrace the fear as inevitable, get past it, and achieve courage as your reward.

When you grasp this concept, you are able to do things that make you afraid.

However, don't confuse this with confidence or competence.

First comes fear. Then you blast through and do something anyway, which is the definition of courage. When you are able to do that as a regular behavior change (even with the fear still there, it never really goes away completely), then you will be building familiarity with situations.

Familiarity breeds competence.

Finally, when you become familiar enough with something that you are effectively competent in it, you will have natural confidence which vibes to others.

After that, the things which cause you fear will gradually minimize - they won't confront you so often, because you have both the ability to get past any fears, and will have the confident vibe of someone who does not allow fear to get in his way.

Along the way, you will stumble and make mistakes.

The great part is that the courage you build is not dependent on the outcome, only that you took action in the first place.

You are rewarded with courage either way, and so long as you remain persistent, you will achieve familiarity and competence, eventually leading to natural confidence.