63threewritten book reports if I didn’t have to do the oral
one.
Yet as my life went on, I wanted to be a public
speaker more than anything. My dream was to teach
people everywhere to learn the ideas that lead to self-
motivation, the ideas that I had learned. But how could
I ever do this if stage fright left me frozen with fear?
Then one day as I was driving in Phoenix flipping
through the radio stations looking for good music, I ac-
cidentally happened upon a religious station where a
histrionic preacher was yelling, “Run toward your fear!
Run right at it!” I hastened to change the station, but it
was too late. Deep down I knew that I had just heard
something I needed to hear. No matter what station I
turned to, all I could hear was that madman’s words:
“Run toward your fear!”
The next day I still couldn’t get it out of my mind, so
I called a friend of mine who was an actress. I asked her
to help me get into an acting class she had once told me
about. I told her I thought I was ready to overcome my
fear of performing in front of people.
Although I lived in a high state of anxiety the first
weeks of that class, there was no other way around my
fear. There was no real way to run from it any longer,
because the more I ran, the more pervasive it got. I knew
I had to turn around and run toward the fear or I would
never pass through it.
Emerson once said, “The greater part of courage is
having done it before,” and that soon became true of my
speaking in public. Fear of doing it can only be cured by
doing it. And soon my confidence was built by doing it
again and again.
The rush we get after running through the waterfall
of fear is the most energizing feeling in the world. If
Run toward your fear