Fear is the inexplicit knowledge of a potential consequence.

Inexplicit knowledge refers to knowledge that's hard to put in words.

Roger Federer is probably not the best tennis coach in the world because his knowledge of how to swing a racket is mostly inexplicit.

When you get a certain "vibe" from a person, that's inexplicit knowledge about body language, eye contact and tone of voice.

You have fear because you know that if you get on a stage or start a new business, the potential for failure is high. Your positive affirmations cannot disprove this possibility.

"Massive Action"

Understanding how knowledge works (the official term is 'epistemology') can instruct us on eliminating fear.

Knowledge grows by falsifying old theories.

Your theory about the scale of the threat to you must be "falsified" by action.

Action is experimentation. It will give you (crucially) direct evidence of a mistake in your estimation of likely consequences. You must act often, to increase your "sample size" of results.

The difficult part, and the problem with the prescribed action of self-help books, is that you're testing the wrong theory. You haven't yet found the crux of your fear, the intuition that energizes it.

You're out in the street blindly testing someone else's beliefs.

So, there must be serious self-examination. I discuss that in this essay.