Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face . . . You must do the thing that you think you cannot do.”

We will give you a few definitions from the standpoint of the subject at hand – adversity.  It is normal to be fearful as you face adversity. Fear is an emotional response to adversity. It is one of the basic inherent emotions of the human psyche along with joy, sadness, and anger. It  is not unusual to be distrustful, moody and to be questioning God and what He is doing as you face any adversity that God has allowed in your life.

As God allows adversity in your life,  the innate response to fear is either avoidance or escape. This kind of response is beneficial if you are attempting to avoid an automobile crash, or fleeing from a man with a gun. These, of course, are examples of rational fears that keep us safe from harm and real danger.

However, reacting to irrational fears (like those that accompany adversity such as constant fear of what may happen and worrying about things that cannot be controlled) in these ways only serves to increase self-doubt, encourage convenient mediocrity, and  they prevent you from living a successful, meaningful, and happy life.  Irrational fear is really fear of failure in disguise.

Instead of trying to advoid or escape the adversity that God allows in your life, He wants to give you the courage to face, stand and defeat the adversity that has come in your life. You may not feel like having courage to deal with  adversity or you may not want to have the courage to deal with adversity to deal with the adversity that God has allowed in your life, but we can tell you from personal experience, adversity does not just go away. It must be dealt with. God wants to give you the courage to not only deal with  adversity but He wants to empower you to defeat the adversity that He’s allowed in your life by helping you have the courage to confront adversity and defeat it so that you will reach the other side of your adversity where rivers of God’s blessing lie waiting just for you.  Courage is action in the face of irrational fear. It is the bridge between irrational fear and accomplishment. When you courageously face these kinds of fears and work through them, new levels of strength and self-esteem will begin to emerge in you which will advance you further along the pathway to the fulfillment of God’s purposes and plans for your life.

Extremely successful people have learned to live courageously in every area of life. They consistently review the choices they make by taking a hard, long look at the assumptions (or excuses) that are motivating them.

They push themselves to live beyond their individual comfort zones by daring to accomplish things that others consider impossible and implementing solutions to problems without a safety net.

They do not run away from adversity and the irrational fear that surrounds it, nor do they avoid it. To the contrary, they understand irrational fear for what it is, and embrace adversity confident that through it they will derive great blessing and success.

It is an astonishing fact that our own presuppositions  often determine our outcomes of either success or failure. If, for example, you approach adversity doubting your ability to handle it, you have already surrendered to it.  On the other hand, if you understand that success is always on the other side of irrational fear, your perception of the adversity changes, as does your perception of yourself and you begin to gain the courage to confront the adversity and with God’s help defeat it!

Think about it: there are accomplishments that will never be made unless you make them. There are books that will never be written unless you write them, there are songs that will never be sung unless you sing them, there are discoveries that will never be made unless you make them,there are  problems that will never be solved unless you solve them, there are inventions that will never benefit humanity unless you invent them, and there are people whose lives will never be improved unless you have the courage to overcome the irrational fears that surround your greatest opportunities in life and begin to help improve their lives.

Dare to overcome. Dare to change your perspectives. Dare to step out of your comfort zone and live boldly. Fortune favors the bold. Take a tip from the extremely successful: Never let adversity keep you from achieving your dreams.