You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.'
EQ NOTE
Roosevelt’s sentence does not promise that facing fear makes the situation easy. Its power is in experience. Once we meet something we were afraid to meet, we know more than fear could tell us from a distance. The outcome may still be difficult, but we are no longer working only with prediction. We have evidence of our own capacity to stay present. Sometimes courage grows after the encounter, when we realize we remained ourselves inside it.
What fear might become more workable if you looked at it directly?
