Caroline Foran - You Got This: Face Your Fear, Find Your Confdence

Introduction: What this book will do for you

DISCLAIMER: This is not a book to read if your aim is to become entirely fearless. I am not, unfortunately, a custodian of a long-kept secret that will forever rid you of all your fears and leave you with the confidence of a lion, strutting his or her stuff with a Kanye-like swagger across the African plains.

Fearlessness is not the goal.

Expecting yourself to never feel fear is as futile as expecting yourself to go through life without experiencing stress. If thats your aim, I wish you luck, but I cannot help you. Instead, I will help you to work with fear, and learn to build confidence. We can employ specific strategies that help our fear work for us rather than against us. We cut the bullsh*t.

ANOTHER DISCLAIMER: Opening a book titled You Got This: Face Your Fear. Find Your Confidence., youre likely to assume that the person who wrote it is bursting with self-confidence. The kind of person who jumps out of airplanes with the same ease that you order your morning latte. Right? Wrong. But wait. Dont close the cover just yet.

In the interest of transparency, let it be known that the focus of this book is not on the immediate right-here-right-now fear youd feel if you were standing in front of an axe murdererthats not a fear you want to get rid ofbut, rather, perceived fears, one of which is the fear of failure, that hold us back from pursuing our goals and feeling confident.

On the subject of transparency, I feel fearmore specifically, the perceived fear of failuregreatly. My self-confidence has been known to pool around my ankles on many an occasion, which might, on a separate note, explain why Ive been cursed with cankles all these years.

But lets just ruminate for a moment: Lets assume youve picked up this book because you want to become a more confident and courageous person. Youre fed up with the fear that holds you back. Well, how can you expect to learn the skills of managing your fearpersonal, social or professionalfrom someone whos never felt the faintest flutter of it? Thats like learning how to be a pilot from someone whos read the manual but never actually flown the plane. So, rest assured, Im right there with you in the cockpit. Being familiar with fear is step one on the road to building your confidence.

In the interest of clarity, its worth knowing that this is my second book. Maybe my first book, Own It.: Make Your Anxiety Work for You, enjoys permanent residency on your bedside shelf. Or maybe youve never heard of itor me, for that matterbut you liked the colors of this books cover enough to pick it up. (I dont blame you; who said we shouldnt judge a book by its cover?) Regardless of how youve arrived here, allow me a little room to ramble, to ensure that were all on the same page (yes, pun intended).

My first foray as an author spoke directly to those grappling with anxiety across the full spectrumfrom the mild, where you may be prone to bouts of worry, to the extreme, where you temporarily cease to function. The latter was my experience, once upon a time, and it was precisely how I dealt with it that formed the basis of my first book. To mirror a concept (which has been a great source of inspiration for me) put forward by motivational speaker Zig Ziglar in his book Over The Top,Own It. chronicles my path from survival to stabilityor, more specifically, from merely existing between panic attacks to feeling well on a daily basis.

This book is the next organic step, informed, again, by my own experiences. Having arrived at a point of stability, the safe ground of my comfort zone, I know that true success, which can come in many forms, lies beyond, on not-so-safe ground and far outside my comfort zone. While I may have a firm grasp on the acute anxiety that controlled me for so long, my confidence as a person out and about in the world, wanting to achieve things, needed work.

Evolving as I do, this book casts its net a little wider and reaches beyond anxiety sufferers. It speaks to those among us whove come face-to-face with one of the less-than-favorable tenets of the human experience: fear. And, unless youve removed your brains amygdala, thats just about everybody.

This book is about thriving in spite of your fear because if, like me, youre the proud proprietor of a pulse, you must accept that fear and anxiety are going to come along for the ride. What youll learn, however, is that fear and confidence are two sides of the same coinand its up to you what side wins out.

From surviving to thriving is the most challenging path and one that, for many, is fraught with uncertainty, self-doubt, and fear. In keeping with Ziglars thinking, this is the path that takes us from stability to success.

The final stage in Ziglars path takes us from success to significance.... This is a jump that Im still figuring out.

Youll have to let me get back to you on that one.

I should say at the outset that reading Own It. is not a prerequisite for reading this bookthis is not Lord of the Rings: The Two Towersand neither is having anxiety. If you did read my first book and youve mastered the art of managing your anxiety on a day-to-day basis, sitting comfortably at a point of stability, you will find that with You Got This, were expanding our comfort zones and refining our skills, so that our lives are not defined by the absence of anxiety or any other uncomfortable experience, but by our ability to excel and enjoy success. Its the same way that good health is not simply defined by the absence of disease or infirmity, but by the presence of vitality and being in a state of complete mental, physical, and social well-being; I need to eat well and exercise, nurturing my body and mind so that I can function at an optimum level. I apply the same logic to personal growth.

Whatever your experiences thus far, the only assumption here is that we all meet at a point of relative stability, with a collective yearning to move forward toward success, whatever this is for youmaybe its giving a speech at a friends wedding or getting the promotion youve been dreaming of. Together, we are lacking in the self-confidence necessary to pursue our own definition of success, while our fears stand in the way, giving us the middle finger. Dickheads.

Before diving into what this book can do for you, Id like to give you a brief catch-up on how I arrived at this point.

Back in 2014, despite having had everything going for me, I fell to the floor with anxiety (both figuratively and literally). I had a significant breakdown brought on by rather insignificant events spanning several difficult months that would have an enormous impact on my lifestyle, and forever leave a marka tendency toward near-constant catastrophic thinking (bad) and a bestselling book (not so bad). My challenge then was to get my head above water; to function as a normal human being and do the more simple things, like leave the house without the crippling fear of a panic attack. I wanted to change my relationship with anxiety so that it no longer defined the parameters of my life. My goal was simple: I had to get back to basics, to reduce the feelingsboth physical and emotionalof anxiety that plagued me constantly, to sleep through the whole night, to socialize without the need to flee, and, ultimately, to understand rather than fear my bodys stress response.

Having reached the point of stability where I could resume normal daily life with relative easeone massive roadblock overcomeI was then approached with an opportunity of a lifetime: a book deal. The leap from stability to success beckoned. But when the initial disbelief and excitementand proseccohad worn off, I had to contend with a new set of anxieties, including, but not limited to, the following: