Fear. Accept it. Push through it. Grow with it.

Fear.  Accept it.  Push through it.  Grow with it.  Act in the face of fear.

Mike Tyson boxing coach Cus D'amato

"For me, fear is the greatest obstacle to learning. And unless one understands fear, he could never mine it as quickly as he should. Fear is like fire. If you learn to control it, you can make it work for you. You let it get out of control, and it can destroy you and everything around you. It's like a snowball on a hill. A snowball on the hill, you can pick it up and do whatever you want with it. But let that snowball roll down the hill, it gets so large, if you try to stop it at that point, it'll crush you. So, fear is like that. We've learned to understand, see it.

Most people think of fear as something to be ashamed of, something to be really embarrassed about. But I teach these boys that fear is a normal, healthy thing. I often ask them, "Who is your best friend?" Well, they try to name individuals. I tell them, "No, your best friend is fear." Do you know the difference between being afraid and being yellow? Or the difference between a hero and a coward? And I tell them, there's no difference between a hero and a coward at all in how they feel, but what they do makes them different. That's what makes the difference between a hero and a coward.

Now, the people who watch you, judge you on what you do, not how you feel. If you go out there and you do what you do in a heroic manner, they think of you as a hero. And if you do things that a person does that's often referred to as cowardly or whatever, they think of you in that way. But the hero and the coward is exactly the same. You have to have the discipline to do what a hero does and to keep yourself from doing what a coward does or the so-called normal. Everybody's a coward more or less, for him.