--- title: Anxiety Cure: How to Conquer Your Biggest Fears description: It’s not nearly as difficult as you think canonical: https://time.com/4274785/how-to-overcome-fears/ author: Neil Pasricha article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-29T15:34:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T09:02:08.125Z og:title: How to Conquer Your Biggest Fears og:description: It’s not nearly as difficult as you think og:url: https://time.com/4274785/how-to-overcome-fears/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb42c62025089abf1/69887b4b2dce01a9dc9e7943/mountain-career-success-achievement-goals-betterment.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: mountain-career-success-achievement-goals-betterment-motto-stock og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How to Conquer Your Biggest Fears twitter:description: It’s not nearly as difficult as you think twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb42c62025089abf1/69887b4b2dce01a9dc9e7943/mountain-career-success-achievement-goals-betterment.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How to Conquer Your Biggest Fears ## Video: Some of The World's Most Powerful Women Share Their Best Advice [Watch (HLS stream): Some of The World's Most Powerful Women Share Their Best Advice](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/LF8Rmcmf.m3u8) (1:11)  _Published 2016-02-02_ by [Neil Pasricha](https://time.com/author/neil-pasricha/) ## Neil Pasricha Mar 29, 2016 3:34 PM UTC  Peechaya Burroughs for TIME by [Neil Pasricha](https://time.com/author/neil-pasricha/) ## Neil Pasricha Mar 29, 2016 3:34 PM UTC We’re all scared of something. Do you get heart palpitations at the idea of speaking in front of big groups at work? Are you worried you’ll never actually learn to swim? Do you stare at the ceiling, thinking you’ll never write that book you’ve been dreaming about for years? Me, too. I’ve deeply felt all three of those exact fears, along with many others. But those fears are just a few I’ve started overcoming using a little happiness hack I can share with you. Are you ready? O.K., to start with, here is the thought process most of us follow when it comes to facing our fears: **CAN DO IT —** **\>** **WANT TO DO IT** —**\>** **DO IT** Before you _do_ anything, you have to feel like you _can do_ _it_ first—and then you have to actually _want to do_ _it_ second. Take my fear of swimming. Developed from a childhood full of ear infections and never-ending sets of tubes, I grew into the 30-year-old guy perpetually hanging by the grill at the pool party. I was afraid of the water. Why? Because “I _can’t_ swim. I’ll sink like a stone! I can’t tread water, jump into the deep end, nothing.” And “You know, I don’t really _want_ _to_ swim anyway. No big deal. I prefer reading at the beach. Getting wet, showering, showing off spaghetti-noodle arms? No thanks. I’ll do without.” Yes, I never got to _do_ _it_ because I never thought I _could_ _do it_ and so I didn’t _want to do it_. It’s the same way many of us think about running a marathon, giving a big presentation or writing a novel. So what happens if we think about that process in a different order? The same set of words, but said a different way? Specifically, what happens if _do it_ becomes the starting point instead of the end? Well, then it looks like this: **DO IT —** **\>** **CAN DO IT —** **\>** **WANT TO DO IT** _Watch some of the world’s most powerful women share their best advice:_ What happened with my fear of swimming? Well, I started dating a beautiful woman who I fell in love with, fast. On our second date, she told me her family had a cottage on an island—and every morning in the summer, her little cousins and 80-year-old grandparents swam around the island together. And did I ever want to come? That night, without thinking about whether I _could do_ _it_ or whether I _wanted to do_ _it_, I just _did it_. I signed up for swimming lessons at the city pool. Shortly thereafter, I walked into the moldy locker room and listened to my heart thumping as I stepped onto the pool deck wearing a life jacket and goggles. After that first 30 minutes of flutter-kicking in the shallow end and wearing a life jacket, guess what happened? I thought, “I can do _this_!” And so the next week, I _wanted to_ _do it_. “Give me moldy locker rooms! Pass me the flutter board—in the deep end this time.” And after I had done it one week, I knew I could do it again. **_Read more:_** [_4 Ways to Gain an ‘Extra’ Hour Every Day_](http://motto.time.com/4266199/gain-extra-hour/) How do you turn your biggest fear into your biggest success? You place _action_ in front of _capability_ and _motivation_. You put _do it_ before _can do it_ and _want to do it_. Turns out, it’s easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting. Those forced baby steps create the early belief in your abilities, which create the motivation—and a virtuous cycle quickly develops. So go forward. Step into your fears. Because you’ll quickly see that, completely counter-intuitively, motivation does not actually cause action. Action causes motivation. _Neil Pasricha is the director of the Institute for Global Happiness and author of_ [The Book of Awesome](http://www.amazon.com/The-Book-Awesome-Neil-Pasricha/dp/0425238903?tag=timecom-20) _series. His newest book is_ [The Happiness Equation](http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiness-Equation-Anything-Everything/dp/0399169474?tag=timecom-20)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4274785/how-to-overcome-fears/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4274785/how-to-overcome-fears/"},"headline":"How to Conquer Your Biggest Fears","datePublished":"2016-03-29T15:34:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T09:02:08.125Z","description":"It’s not nearly as difficult as you think","url":"https://time.com/4274785/how-to-overcome-fears/","keywords":["motto"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb42c62025089abf1/69887b4b2dce01a9dc9e7943/mountain-career-success-achievement-goals-betterment.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Neil Pasricha","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/neil-pasricha/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb42c62025089abf1/69887b4b2dce01a9dc9e7943/mountain-career-success-achievement-goals-betterment.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"mountain-career-success-achievement-goals-betterment-motto-stock","caption":"mountain career success achievement goals betterment motto stock","creditText":"Peechaya Burroughs for TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/motto/","name":"motto"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4274785/how-to-overcome-fears/","name":"How to Conquer Your Biggest Fears"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Some of The World's Most Powerful Women Share Their Best Advice","description":"","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/LF8Rmcmf/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2016-02-02T13:57:47.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/LF8Rmcmf.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4274785/how-to-overcome-fears/","duration":"PT1M11S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4274785/how-to-overcome-fears/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```