Do What You Fear Most and You Will Control That Fear by Tom Hopkins
The best way to avoid failure is to never try. How many people in the profession of selling are hiding from the possibility of failure?

Let me give you a personal example of this. The first time I ever stood in front of an audience was in a second grade school play. I’d been asked to play Prince Charming. All my friends and relatives were there. I was very excited to be the star of the play. I was dressed in my purple pants, a purple cape, and I was ready to perform.

When my cue line came. I walked out on stage, and I froze. I could not move.

Finally, someone came out and led me off. From that moment on, I had a phobia about getting up in front of a group. I simply would not do it.

Many years later, I was invited to speak by a major firm. They had heard about my sales volume and wrote, “Will you come here and teach your selling methods to our sales staff?”

I shot a letter right back. “Thanks, but no thanks. I don’t talk to anyone.” Then a great friend, Jay Douglas Edwards, said to me, “Tom, do what you fear most and you will control that fear.”

Think about that. Think of something you should do professionally, something that you aren’t doing, because of fear. Fear is the only thing preventing you from doing what needs to be done. The important thing is to face that fear for the first time.

After I thought about controlling fear by doing what I fear most, I had to agree that I was allowing fear to control my life. So I called the company that had invited me to speak. I said I’d do it.

From the moment I had agreed to do the speech, there wasn’t an hour that I didn’t wish I hadn’t. The closer the time came, the more panicky I became.

Every time I wrote down what I was going to say, I’d tear it up and start over. Someone told me to put it all on 3 x 5 cards, so I did.

The night before my speech, I didn’t sleep at all. The next morning, I walked into an auditorium and waited in the wings to be introduced to three thousand people. And do you know what the only thing on my mind was? I was reliving the terror of my second grade experience.

I walked on to the stage, I looked down at my notes, and began my speech. I never once looked up at the audience. I just kept talking. I was scheduled to speak for forty-five minutes. Within eight minutes, I had covered every point.

My first time speaking in public was awful. The second time was terrible. The third time was a disaster. The fourth time, they clapped a little. The fifth time, almost everybody stayed. Now, after years of speaking day after day to enthusiastic salespeople, I awake with anticipation. Excitement. And I owe it all to those words, “Do what you fear most and you will control that fear.”

Make this phrase yours and nothing can stop your success.

Mastery

“With more success, comes greater problems along with greater ability to solve them.” —Mark Victor Hansen

“Challenge everything you do. Expand your thinking. Refocus your efforts. Rededicate yourself to your future.” —Patricia Fripp

“A professional is a person who can do his best at a time when he doesn’t particularly feel like it.”
—Alistair Cooke

“We have not wings we cannot soar; but, we have feet to scale and climb, by slow degrees, by more and more, the cloudy summits of our time.” —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Mastery is not something that strikes in an instant, like a thunderbolt, but a gathering power that moves steadily through time, like the weather.” —John Champlin Gardner, Jr.

“If I work on a certain move constantly, then finally, it doesn’t seem risky to me. The idea is that the move stays dangerous and it looks dangerous to my foes, but it is not to me. Hard work has made it easy.”
—Nadia Comaneci

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances.” —Thomas Jefferson

“A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.” —Louis Nizer

“The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to things when you have outlived the first interest, and not yet got the second, which comes with a sort of mastery.” —Janet Erskine Stuart

“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand.” —Baruch Spinoza