Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world."

I want to help you to learn how to overcome the fears that defeat you and hold you back.  If you rid yourself of your fears, success and abundance are sure to be your destiny.

The Three Things That Cause Bad Fears
We are told that there are three things that establish the value of a home: location, location and location. Therefore, you look at its proximity to schools, where you work and important amenities.

Although it sounds a bit crass, there are three things that establish the fears that defeat you: ignorance, ignorance and ignorance. Our lack of knowledge sets us up for failure.

This is actually good news, because, quoting Brian Tracy, "We can learn anything we need to know in order to achieve any goal we set for ourselves." That means, we can overcome ANY fear if we set it as a goal!

Overcoming The First Ignorance
The first ignorance to overcome is "not knowing about the thing you fear." We naturally fear the unknown. That is not bad in itself. In fact, it's a God-given quality. But "unknowns" are meant to help us direct our learning, not hold us back.

You can probably recall many things you were fearful of until you learned more about them. Learning removes fears.

Consider the example of Christopher Columbus. People were deathly afraid of sailing across the Atlantic. Something that's hard to image now. But Columbus learned astronomy and math. He became a ship captain and learned all about navigating. His knowledge gave him a tremendous level of courage that caused him to be fearless. He KNEW that his ships would not sail off the end of the earth.

Our proactive mantra should be, "You can learn anything you need to know to remove any fear."

Honey, I Shrunk Your Fears
Stealing from the MGM Movie, you can easily shrink your fears by shrinking the job of learning.

Jim Rohn says the first task of any job is "break it down." Divide and conquer has always been sound advice. Whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, splitting it up into tasks that can be easily managed will shrink a huge job down so it's not so daunting.

Break down the job of learning into tasks. Decide what you're going to learn first by thinking of what would help you the most right now. Also consider what would help you in learning the other things you need to learn.

For example, the number one fear of most people is public speaking. The vast majority of people fear it because they never learned how to do it properly. Most of us were thrust into the situation as young children, of being forced to read or recite something in front of a class, most of who were eager for any excuse to laugh or find fault.

You can break down the fear of public speaking by reading about it. I highly recommend Dale Carnegie's books to start with. Oh how I wish I had been taught these principles back in grade school. I had the fear of public speaking. Carnegie's books completely changed my attitude and helped me to rid myself of that fear.

Rid Yourself of the Fear of Learning
It is sad but true, many people fear the task of learning. And of course you don't have to, not if you start with learning how to learn.

Believe it or not, I was afraid of going into a library. Not as a kid, but as an adult! I already had a college degree, and I didn't know how to use the library. I viewed it as "term paper hell."

Fortunately I'm married to a brave woman who took on the task of educating me and showing me how libraries can be fun and rewarding. Now I'm a "book-aholic" and I spend most of my day either reading or writing or surfing the internet for more great books.

So keep reminding yourself, "You can learn anything you need to know to remove any fear." Make this your mantra and success and abundance will follow.

Randy Gilbert is the author of SUCCESS BOUND, from which portions of this article are extracted. Randy is highly regarded as an authority on Proactive Thinking, which is why he goes by the name "Dr. Proactive." You can contact him at Randy@DrProactive.com