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Hi.  I am Jerry Davis, and I grew up scared to death.  I recall as a child spending many hours hiding in my closet or laying under my bed, crying and terrified.  I remember laying in my bed at night trembling in fear.  As I grew older, I managed to hide or mask my fears, mostly through binge drinking or other things that made me feel better for a little while.

But always that fear accompanied me.

I took up martial arts (American boxing) in high school with a handful of my nerdy friends, hoping that I could muster up some courage.  The martial arts helped a lot.  I learned that what I feared from fighting (that if I hit someone really hard they might die) would not happen.  The boxing helped a lot.  It changed my life by making me braver.  Bravery, I learned, is simply doing what is called for in spite of being afraid.  I learned that because even though I actually became a very good young boxer, I was still fearful.  I still felt that same stab of fear in so many areas of my life.

Some people teach that fear is a good thing, and it definitely can be.  Fear will help keep you alive in many situations.  “Run!” is an instinct that gets us out of burning buildings. Fear keeps us indoors at night, mostly.  Fear keeps us in town and out of the wilderness, mostly.  Fear is a great tool when it is managed properly.

When fear is mismanaged, when fear is allowed to dominate and become the prevailing mindset, you will suffer.  When fear leads, pain follows.  Therefore we must manage our fear impulse.

If you were terrorized as a child, managing your fear impulse will be a ;omg-term process for you that will require you to do things which take you out of your comfort zone.

Don’t worry, you’ll like it.  Sure, you are afraid of the process of becoming unafraid, but its cool.  You really will like it, and you will learn to laugh at your fear impulse, to recognize that it exists merely to help you, but that your fear impulse is not designed to manage you.

You are designed to manage it.

So, as a first step for you, as part of the process of teaching you how to properly manage the fear impulse, you must take this next step…