 I ended my second book, Milk the Pigeon, with a paragraph that I think will change your life. It takes guts to stick with your gut when your parents are telling you that you're being a dumbass for going down a certain path. It takes guts when the world says you will never succeed, but you trust yourself enough and have enough faith that you know you will succeed. It takes guts to Google all the negative aspects of your profession or your dream, read the thousands of stories of failed souls, and then still show up 110% every single day. It takes guts to listen to a mentor of yours discourage you, belittle your dream, or tell you it isn't possible and then to ignore them anyway. It takes fucking guts because at some point the whole world is going to be telling you that you can't and you are going to have to know that you can. So in this video, let's talk about fear and courage, which I think is the number one trait you need to cultivate to build that incredible life. What's up guys? Alex Hein here, author of the book Master the Day. Now one of the key things that has helped me obviously go from the guy that once felt like that to where I am now, where I'm very excited about the future, has been going through processes of goal setting and journaling. Now I've included a free journaling worksheet. It's a one page worksheet. It's also an email course on how to have your best year ever. So if that interests you, the very first link in the description box there below is going to be the one that will help you get that. Alright guys, now listen. Life is filled with neuroses and fears. You might be afraid of being unsuccessful, of being successful, of being skinny, of being fat, of being alone, of being in the wrong relationship or wrong marriage. Part of the human experience means having these neurotic fears that are always coming and going. But to me, the difference between the people that end up building the life that they love and those that don't is the presence of courage in the person's life. Are you willing to do the thing that really scares you and really worries you to get to the point where you want to be? Now in this video I want to share what I think is a two or three step process for getting over almost any fear that you have. It could be physical like the fear of heights, it could be psychological or emotional, the fear of being abandoned in relationships and anything in between. Now the very first step is number one to develop the habit of confronting your darkness. Develop the habit of confronting your darkness. Don't develop the habit of running away and smoking a bowl, of playing video games when you're frustrated or scared, of going out and getting drinks with your friends five times a week. Develop the habit of confronting the darkness in your life, whatever that may be. The faster you confront the darkness, the faster you will upgrade. And more importantly, listen, even if nothing externally changes in your life, you are going to feel internally unafraid. You're going to talk to a person you used to be afraid of and be like, all right, cool. It was smooth. You're going to go your job and the things you hated, the things you loved, they're not going to bother you so much. You're going to be smooth internally. You're going to go to ask out a person, you're going to be smooth internally. Everything life gets smoother, less jagged. Now, how do you confront the darkness? All right, this is your habit number two today, by making little bets. So I'll be real with you, for example, one of my things that was a big fear for me in my early 20s was really just talking to pretty girls. I mean, I'd been single. I went through puberty super late in life. We've talked about this ad nauseum. I'd been through puberty really late. I was always rejected by women. I was like a real life McLovin. And from there, I developed this kind of pattern of being emotionally afraid. So when I say emotionally afraid, meaning I was already a loner, so I wasn't really great at making friends to begin with. But tack that on top of the fact that I wanted to like ask out a girl to actually have a girlfriend. I wasn't expecting her to literally fall in my lap from the heavens. And so how was I going to do that when I was both an introvert, afraid of even talking to strangers, and then even afraid of talking to a pretty girl, which layers the stranger danger like times two for the anxiety. The way I did it was actually when I was living in China. I decided that I needed to kind of desensitize myself to this irrational fear. So with my friends, we went out to a bar or a club three or four times a week for a year. And each time, I bet to myself was that I had to talk to or try to dance with the prettiest girl in the whole club. So the girl I thought that was the hottest, the scariest, I had to talk to her, try to get her number or try to dance with her. So you imagine how frigging sweaty I was for like six months when every time I'd go up, I'm like, what do I say? What do I do? How do I act? Why didn't that work? Now over time, what happened was I got really comfortable with it. I knew the most often the outcomes that would happen. I knew why I messed up. And I knew the things about myself that had to improve in terms of qualities and traits. Now for you in your own life, there may be something around family, it may be dating, it may be goal achievement. I want you to leave here with this video to go figure out one habit you can start doing three times a week to desensitize you to your greatest fear. And you may have to get creative. If your fear is forever being alone, then maybe you try to spend some time alone and realize, wow, it's really not so bad. The world is not ending. But your habit for today is to leave here, figure out what's the number one habit you can use to build courage in your life, to work that muscle. Because that more than anything will serve you and help you become the kind of person that you really want to be. So I hope that helps again. If you want to go through the goal setting and journaling exercises I used as part of this reinvention journey, that first link below, add your name to the email list which will give you the journaling worksheet and the goal setting worksheet as well as an email drip course on the lessons and stories that I used to reinvent myself.