I had only been practicing Kung Fu for around 1 year at the time… but I had somehow qualified to compete in the World Championships in China.

I had SO many thoughts running through my head about whether or not I should go…

Am I good enough?

Will I look like a fool?

Will I fit in with the team?

Now here a question; If you knew you could handle everything life had to offer, what would you do differently? Or attempt to do?

If you didn’t have to worry… what would you do instead?

You would be unstoppable… right?

What’s the worst that can happen?

Apart from of course life/death scenarios, really… what is the worst that can happen?

So I decided to go and compete for Australia.

The thing is most people wait for fear to go away. Or they wait for confidence to show up before they take action. Does this sound familiar? Often, I find, the people who run this pattern of waiting for the fear to go away don’t actually have a strategy for getting rid of it… and so they end up becoming stuck.

Have you experienced this before? I know I certainly have in the past.

It’s funny isn’t it.

The more we tend to focus on that thing that we are afraid of, the more it seems to be an issue!

Often, some people won’t even realise they are letting fear stop them.

There are so many plausible excuses – “It’s not the right time”, “I’m too busy…”, “I don’t have the money right now…” “I have to do _____ instead”, “I havn’t been doing it for long enough”.

Have you ever heard yourself say these things? When we do this, often what happens is, years pass us by, we take NO action because of our convenient excuses… And we become even MORE afraid of doing that thing.

It’s a perpetual cycle.

We put it off because of fear (disguised as an excuse) for so long that our self esteem plummets because we havn’t done it, then we believe we can NEVER do it.

If you have this going on for a number of things in your life you may find your self esteem goes down and down and down. This can lead to a phenomenon called learned helplessness.

This is the path to your dream’s death.

If you’ve got a dream to do something that you’re not sure you can actually do… DO IT NOW! Just begin. Start the journey. I’m not saying complete the damn thing… just take the first step. Enough of the excuses.

Fear will not simply go away because we are willing it to.

We must face the task that has us stuck in fear head on. Because, here’s the kicker… Confidence and Courage are ONLY needed when we actually DO something. You don’t need confidence to sit on the couch and watch TV. You don’t require courage to scroll through Facebook or Instagram. You only need it when you face a challenge and take ACTION.

The more we focus on the fear… the more fear will show up for us.

Once I had decided to compete, it was full steam ahead. Was there still fear of what might happen? Of course. Were there nerves present on the flight over? Yes. Was I absolutely crapping myself just before I stepped up for my turn to compete?

Absolutely.

But, guess what happened after I had completed it?

I didn’t win, I came someone near the bottom of the tally. I didn’t burst into flames. I didn’t feel humiliated.

I felt courageous. I felt full of life and energy.

Confidence appears when you DO THE THING… which in turn builds MORE confidence until the challenge is within our comfort zone. Then we are ready for the next level of growth.