Book Review – How to Overcome Fear

By dougnau on Sep 30, 2008 in Fear, Book Reviews, Spiritual Coaching

Background

Marcos Witt is a Christian singer and pastor at Lakewood Church in Houston. Prior to getting this book I didn’t realize that Marcos Witt was a colleague of Joel Olsteen, who’s book ‘Your Best Life Now’, inspired my blog article entitled Life Coaching & Christianity. If you liked Joel Olsteen’s book, this one has a very similar overtone.

Marcos published How to Overcome Fear: and Live Your Life to the Fullest in March 2007 and has delivered this book in both hard cover and audio formats.

Book Review & Commentary

Generally when I write book reviews, my approach is to provide a candid and positive description of my opinion of the author’s content and to provide an overview of what you can expect reading it. I picked up How to Overcome Fear: and Live Your Life to the Fullest to draw out tips related to overcoming fear. That was what I expected to read – and is what I expect you are interested in reading about in selecting this blog article. In contrast, the content of this book seems to meander from fear to God, to guilt, to God, to pain, to God, to witchcraft, to God, to Satan, to God, to jokes, to God, and even to commentary on pornography (then back again to God). Unfortunately, this book was organized as a collection of topics loosely related to the theme of fear and the only strong suggestions provided throughout the book on how to overcome fear was to put your trust in God. OK – I may not be giving credit to a few suggestions like facing your fears, but it was so overwhelmed by a theme of letting God capture your worries that any other suggestion seemed miniscule in contrast.

If you’ve read my blog before you know that I would consider myself to be a very spiritual person, yet it would be a far cry to say that I were a religious person. This book is written from a truly Christian perspective, and if you are not in 100% agreement with these religious principles, then this book may be a bit challenging to read. One particular difficulty I had with this book is a series of examples provided from the Bible which Marcos loosely related to fear. While these stories were derived over 2000 years ago (many from the old testament) Marcos infers the state of fear the characters must have experienced to relate it to his book. Now, I think the Bible is fantastic, its got a tremendous number of valuable life principles shared through the stories presented. Marcos refers to many stories in a literal sense – for example Goliath standing 10 feet tall and on his own scaring off an entire army of enemies – when I hear materials presented in such a way, it makes me question how people can really relate these stories to their own life if they think they actually happened precisely as written.

Beyond the Book – Answering the question - How do I Overcome Fear?

I do want to provide some useful tips in this article if you’ve personally stumbled across it in search for ways to overcome fear (beyond ‘trust in God’). Of course, that can work – let go your worries to whatever you feel your greater source of power is can be a mindset that really works. But if ‘just letting go’ isn’t for you, here’s a quick blurb on something you might want to try.

Firstly, understand that when someone says ‘how do I overcome fear’ they are not really looking to overcome fear per say, rather they are looking to overcome how one acts in the face of fear. Notice the distinction. Let me explain. Fear is natural. Its healthy. Its related to our stress response. It keeps us from jumping off of a cliff in search of the elation we might glean from flying, it keeps us from playing tag with a bear, and in turn it keeps us strong and healthy. I want fear in my life – without it, I’d probably do some pretty stupid things!

What I don’t want is for fear to hold me back from achieving my goals, my passions, my desires, or at times – even my obligations. Now this is a different story. I may fear being hurt in a relationship, and as a result I may never date. I may fear needles (a personal fear I’ve overcome), and in turn avoid all vaccinations and dental exams. I may fear failure and never start the business I’d love to own. These are the makeup of the fears that we must overcome to truly live our lives.

How does one overcome such primal and deep seeded fears? I’ll offer one tip today. To experience the fear. Become conscious of the difference between the anticipation of an event and the actualization of the fear.

I spent 29 of my 34 years of life in utter fear of needles (ie: shots/drawing blood). I feared them, and didn’t care to change my attitude. I’d spend nights awake anticipating shots that I had to take – until I faced the fear and allowed myself to experience the suffering that I was anticipating. When I was diagnosed with leukemia in 2003 I had the opportunity to draw plenty of blood and I was forced to face my fear. Knowing that I could not continue in constant anticipation of these frequent events, I decided to embrace my future. I decided that the next time they drew blood, I would fully experience the pain. I would allow myself to notice what it felt like, to experience my anticipation, the elevated stress, the worry and disdain. I noticed how my neck tightened up, I observed the thoughts going through my head, I felt the rubbing alcohol swab and then….. It was over!

I do not know how many times I’ve drawn blood this past 5 years, but quite literally, I’ve had many times when I didn’t even feel the needle. And I worried so much about this.

This key to conquering fear was in fully absorbing it, being 100% conscious in the moment not only to my surroundings, but more importantly to how I was being. And you can do this to. Face the discomfort, the emotion, the worst that you can experience and a funny thing happens. The anticipation dies down. Your body calms. And next time, the fear diminishes, gradually but clearly.

Now I am not saying its a good idea to experience to the fullest every fear you have – remember, some fears are good! But if you know that you are holding back because of a fear of rejection – ask a person that would never date you to go out with you because you KNOW they will reject you. Experience how terrible it is. Compare that to the anticipation of the fear you expected. We grow when we experience new things and use that as a foundation from which to guide our future.

Back to the Book - Who is this for?

If you are looking for a book that explains how to let go of fear by embracing God (and live a life in balance with God), in the context of a Christian tradition, then this book is for you. If you are looking for tips to overcome anxiety and fear, I’d suggest browsing the self help section a bit further to get some more practical ideas