Here's the thing about fear: You can't make it go away, but you can talk it down to size. When you decide against taking a risk, it's because it's truly dangerous, or impossible. It makes no sense, for instance, to train for a marathon with a broken foot. And it could be offensive to others to sing karaoke when you have no voice.

But when you're holding on to irrational fears, (i.e., believing that speaking in public will automatically make you a laughingstock), you have the strength inside to examine the fear and give it a good pooh-pooh. "Truly everybody is afraid," says Susan Jeffers, PhD, author of the classic Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (Fawcett, 1988) and Embracing Uncertainty (St. Martin's Press, 2003). "Fear is not the problem. It's what you do with it. Do you let it paralyze you, or do you just acknowledge the fear and go ahead?" In fact, says Jeffers, "An awesome amount of strength lies within us all."

People who seem courageous, she says, are actually people who tell themselves that they can handle the consequences, no matter what happens. The only basic fear, Jeffers surmises, is this: "What if X happens and I can't handle it?" That's why people who've survived major life disasters, such as the death of a child, a divorce, a war, or a serious illness or painful surgery, apparently become braver. They have handled worse: "When bad things do happen and you come out alive and well, you don't fear so much about the future."