Whats up Phehive, I know its been a while since the last letter. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff like road tripping and hiking and chilling in cool places. Whenever I go from trapping myself inside my apartment to living in the outside world I try to be as present as possible so I take a pseudo break from posting any content. BUT I did start a vlog series so if you want to see what Ive been up to you can check those out on Youtube here and here

I also met some pretty cool people while I was in Austin at a Youtube event and I’ll have good news in the future about a possible series we’ll be putting together!

I try to include an experience based encouragement piece in every newsletter that I send out because, to me, encouragement is one of the most valuable things that one person can provide to another and for me the best way to do that is to share personal experiences that might prove relatable to someone. When I was thinking about what I wanted the piece to be on I was led to think about something that I deal with myself which is conquering fear; The fear of trying something new, the fear of choosing one’s self, the fear of the unknown. What does it really mean to conquer fear?

In my personal experience the problem isn’t with the actual fear, we all know what it feels like to be afraid, I think the problem is with the conquering part. The word conquer seems like a big tough word and when its put next to the word fear it looks like there should be a way to not feel fear or to eradicate the possibility of fear. When its put that way, at least in my case, it makes me feel bad to feel fear as if to say “Im better than this why am I feeling this” so then not only am I feeling fear I’m also feeling guilty for feeling it.

To conquer simply means to “rise above” or to “gain control”, and when its put like that it looks a little less intimidating. We’re human, and its human to feel. There is no way to totally eradicate human emotions or feelings. But there is a way to gain control; a way to make yourself bigger than fear. To conquer fear is not to say oneself “I wont feel fear” it is to say “Although I feel fear I’m going to do this anyway”

Every time you do that you are re-training your brain to not make reflexive fear based decisions. You are training you brain to say “ok here’s this feeling again, what do we do next?” Its not easy by any means, but if you can gain control over your reaction to your own emotions, i.e. fear, you are literally conquering your fear of fear itself.

Personally I used to have a real fear of making goals for myself because I was afraid to fail at whatever the goal was. I found this video a couple years back that really helped put me on the right track. (its pretty long so maybe watch it in sections)