I've been through some fairly scary moments in my life. I suppose everyone would say that of themselves, and there is no doubt a segment of the population that would look at the circumstances I refer to in my life to and scoff at their relative insignificance, but whatever your opinion of me or what I've been through, the fact remains that I was scared. And what's more, it was the type of situation that could only be resolved by mastering my fear. I'm sure many of you have faced or are facing a similar situation. I thought I'd share the methodology I was given to defeat fear every time. You can use this in any situation ranging from when you're cowering in your bedroom from some looming doom, to just feeling uncomfortable in an unfamiliar environment. I have used this consistently, and have yet to find a situation that it doesn't work for. So without further doo-doo, I present:

The three steps to conquering fear

Step 1 - Name your fear
Say out loud - preferably to another person you trust - exactly what you are afraid of. The key here is two things: Completeness and Precision. BE SPECIFIC.

Bad Example: "I'm afraid of losing my job." No you're not. In all likelihood, if you feel fearful of losing your job, that means something is drastically wrong with how things are going at work. Losing your job would probably be a relief. What you're afraid of is the loss of income or perhaps the embarrasment or even perhaps the inconvenience of another job search.

Good Example: "I'm afraid Bob will get mad about the TPS reports and will fire me right on the spot tomorrow morning. Then I'll have to walk out in front of everyone with my tail between my legs, and Jim, Sue, and Gary will be embarrased of me, and they'll sever our relationship, and I'll lose those friends."

Bad Example: "I'm afraid one of my kids will get sick" Not really. Again, just the fact of your kids getting sick - in and of itself - is almost meaningless to you. Every kid gets sick, it's just a part of life.

Good Example: "I'm afraid one of my kids will get sick with pnemonia or something similarly life threatening, and I won't be able to afford the medicine they need to get better. They'll get worse and worse, and I my entire attention will be on worrying about them, the other children will be neglected, turn into brats that grow up to be bad people because their mother never paid attention to them. And I'll feel like a bad mother and wrestle with guilt for the rest of my life until I die."

The key here is to keep going. Keep asking yourself, "And then what?" And keep up that pattern, asking "And then what?" and answering, until one of the following statements comes out of your mouth: - "I won't get [something you really want]" - "I'll lose [something that's really important to you]" - "I'll feel pain (either emotional or physical)"

Always start with "I'm afraid that..." never "I'm afraid of..." Phrase your answer in terms of future circumstances. Use "will" not "could" or "might". It's understood that this is a theoretical possibility not a prophecy, but using these weak words leaves ambiguity in the scenario, which only hinders your attempts to name it exactly.

Don't let yourself off the hook on this one. If you're helping someone through this, don't let them stop until they've really got it. NO COPOUTS! Answer honestly. If you can't get this step right, the other two aren't going to help you. The biggest ally to fear is ambiguity. As long as the "bad thing" you're afraid of is a foggy "sense" of how things might turn out "bad", you will not defeat it. The first and most critical step is to nail it down. EXACTLY what are you afraid of?

As you can see from my examples above, the immense power in this step is that - alot of times - naming what it is that you're truly afraid of makes it sound silly. Just hearing it out loud is often enough to dispel the fear.

Which brings up another point. Each of these steps is abortive. That is to say, if after step one, you find you no longer feel the fear for the given situation, you are free to skip steps two and three. In fact, in that regard, step 1 is perhaps the most powerful, because nine times out of ten, correctly and precisely naming your fear is enough to defeat it.

Step 2: Assess Probability
If step 1 failed to disple the fear, that's ok. It's just the first step. The next thing to do is to - as much as you can - realistically estimate how likely your fear is to manifest itself. In some sense, this step often happens automatically. That's why step one is often enough to defeat the fear, because sometimes you specify the fear, and implicitly you realize how unlikely it is, and your fear of it goes away completely.

In any case, express the likelihood in whatever terms mean something to you. If you're like me - a numbers guy - express it in terms of percentage or "x times out of y" chance. If you're more of a words person, you might use terms like "It probably will happen," "It might happen," or "It's not very likely." Whatever makes sense to you, but honestly evaluate the probability of your fear coming true. Don't let the fear or pessimism make this assessment. Don't answer "It will probably happen, because bad things always happen to me." If you find yourself falling into this trap, assess instead the likelihood that it would happen to someone else in the same situation. Many times, this will abate the fear, as you realize that the chances are pretty small. If they're not, though - if, even after honestly looking at it, you still feel like it's pretty likely to happen - move on to step 3.

Step 3: Assess Your Survivability
Ask yourself, "Can I live through it if it comes true?" Don't get caught up here. Answer the question - "Can I live through it?" Of course it won't be fun. Of course it will be unpleasant. If it was a pleasant experience we were talking about, you wouldn't be afraid of it. Of course it's going to be "yucky," but can you survive? The answer can be only one of two answers: yes or no. If it's yes, this is the last step between being afraid of the situation and just not wanting it to happen. And that's the key. Understand the difference between fear and dislike, distaste, or even a severe desire to avoid a certain situation. The goal of these steps is not to make you like what you're fearful of. That's a pretty unlikely outcome. Fear of something, though, is distinctly and decidedly different from dislike. Fear triggers the fight or flight stimulus. It causes you to feel either like cowering in despair that the world is over, or feeling that action must absolutely be taken immediately, or something horrible will occur. Either response is illogical, and almost universally makes the situation worse. As an example. I severly dislike cleaning the bathroom, but I'm not afraid of it. Nothing I can do will make me like cleaning the bathroom, but I can overcome a fear of it if that's something I'm facing at the moment.

Hopefully, the answer to this question is yes. so far, every situation I've faced, the survivability question has had a "yes" answer. But even if the answer is "no", you can still defeat fear by resolving yourself to your own death. We all have to die some day, and once you know it's coming, there's a calming peace about it that can make the fear subside.

Caveats/Warnings - Guys especially, don't get caught up on "I'm not afraid of anything." nonsense. You may not be cowering and wimpering in the corner. After all, a real man is a master of courage, but courage is not the absense of fear, but the mastery of it. If you aren't afraid of anything, then you're just too stupid to know what can hurt you. This method helps you obtain or increase your courage. With it you will be able to stand in the face of the most fearful and horrifying dangers and look 'em straight in the eye without backing down. It's the most manly thing you can do.

- If you're feeling particularly paralyzed by fear, it's more than likely you're dealing with several fears at once. This can wreak havoc with your attempts to defeat them. The key here is to do them one at a time. Just pick one (probably the one that's got you the most worked up), and - ignoring all the others for the moment - work all the way through the steps until you're not afraid of THAT anymore. Then start over with the next biggest fear. You can take out the most crippling fear this way in as little as a few hours.

I wrote a while ago on the three tiers of excellence, i.e. the stages one typically goes through to become excellent. But what does it take, exactly, to reach that third tier? What qualities define something such that we say "That was REALLY good" as opposed to, "Yeah, it was ok, I guess"?

I've been pondering this lately, and here's the formula I've come up with that I think can apply to any commercial industry, personal skill or national pride. I submit it for your feedback.

Step 1. Make sure every single aspect of your project is done well according to industry standards.

Step 2. Perform one or two aspects in an extraordinary, innovative way.

That's it! Easy enough, right. Actually no. The trick is, you absolutely have to have both. Too many people think they can get away with just one or the other, and are flabbergasted when the public doesn't respond well.

As examples, I shall delve into one of my favorite pastimes - the movie picture industry. As I do, I ask you not to succumb to the tempation to judge these movies based on how well you enjoyed them, but by how well they were received by the public en masse. Your personal tastes may differ, but if it appeals to a majority of our decidedly motley nation, then I would posit that the authors have indeed produced excellence, even if it's only excellent at predicting what the baser sects of our society want to see.

Exmaple #1 - The Matrix. This is my example of something done right. Let's see how they measure up to my formula: Step 1: Yep, Acting:good, wardrobe:good, writing:good, fun action scenes and funny one-liners:check. Now let's look at Step 2. Anything earth shattering? You betcha. The story itself was a complete mind-bender (at least at the time, it's been redone by now, but at the time, it was a completely new thing). Also completely new was the addition of bullet-time videography. People had never seen that 360 pan around a actor before. It was intense. You can quibble, I'm sure, over some minor points of my review, or quite possibly complain that I've missed something major, but hey - I'm not a film critic. The main point I'm trying to make here is that they did everything well, and a couple things they did extraordinarily well. Now let's look at some examples that thought they could get away with only one of these steps.

Example #2 - Waterworld. Personally, I enjoyed this movie, but as far as the general public was concerned, it was a total bust. Why? Because the creators thought they could get away with only following step 1. Everything was done well. Acting, photography, writing, story, plot twists, pacing, wardrobe. But there was nothing extraordinary about the film. It was just another - albeit well-done - post-apoctolyptic drama/thriller/thing.

Example #3 - Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace What a perfect example of following Step 2 without following step 1. Here was a movie that had incredible special effects, lush beautiful landscapes and environments, fantastic, broad-reaching story. But it failed miserably in some of the basics: Namely acting and dialog. Mind you, there were some great actors in the movie, but they were either not allowed to pace their lines well, or just not directed well - I don't know the business well enough to know. I only know that every conversation sounded artificial and...well...scripted. And don't even get me started on Jar-Jar Binks.

Obviously, the existence of three examples that support my theory do not prove anything, but I think that if you look around at the things that you call excellent, you'll find that they almost always follow this pattern.

This thought has been holding coup in my mind of late. You can probably surmise the reason - I've had a big idea. It's probably my biggest yet, and I'm kindof an idea guy, so that's saying something. Like, it could be a genre-creating idea. I'm really, really excited about it, but then I fall into depression as soon as this thought appears in my conscious: "Ok, so now what?"

Inevitably, this is where I stop when I get most of my ideas. My ideas are usually big ideas, which is not to necessarily say they are good ideas, just that they take a lot of effort to accomplish - far more than one person could accomplish in any reasonable time-period.

As an example, this idea revolves around creating a computer-based game with an online component. And it's a big thing - the type of endeavor that will require a competent marketing team, deep-level engine development, high-level story-telling and model development, as well as an administration and moderation team - and possibly a decent legal team as well. In all - a lot of people with very different talents coming together under one vision. But I'm a web developer, not a game developer. I can express to you with perfect precision how many contacts I have in the game development industry. It's zero.

So I ask you, how does one take an idea and make it happen?

I've always felt that my life would be immeasurably easier if I could apply and qualify for a Technical Competence ID card. In this day and age, isn't this a concept that is long past due? How many times have you experienced this? You walk into Best Buy to pick up a laptop they've got on sale, and you necessarily have to engage one of their wonderfully competent salespeople (I'm sorry, I mispelled that word before "competent" please just remove the "nd" and the "r"). You tell them you'd like to buy the HP 389xII, and, of course you're presented with this question, "M-hmm, and what are you going to use the computer for?"

At this point, the first thought that pops into my head is, "If I were to try to explain to you what I'm going to use the computer for, we'd spend the whole day here while I tried to educate you up to the level where we could have an intelligent conversation." But I don't say that. Somehow, however, I need to convey to this person that I know what I'm doing, I know what I want, and please just take the key out of your pocket, open up the cage, and pull one of those shiny boxes out of it so I can pay for it, take it home and forget who you are. I don't say that either, however. Usually what I try to do is convince this person of my technical competence by using words that are bigger than he understands, which usually does the trick. Let's face it however, this is slightly demeaning and degrading for the salesperson, and as much as I resent his well-intentioned intrusion into my buying process, he's probably not really a bad guy or even stupid. He's more than likely just some guy trying to get through college and make enough money to buy his own geek toys. There's no real reason I want to make this guy feel bad about himself. I just want to buy the computer without hassle.

Here's where my fantasy life takes over. (Admittedly, my fantasy life is lame, but it works well for the moment). In my fantasy, instead of saying anything, I just pull out my Technical Competence ID card, and the sales person says, "I see Mr. French. Sorry to have bothered you. Just give me a second while I get your computer." Doesn't that sound like a better situation for everyone involved?

I would gladly take an annual certification and pay, say a $100 fee for the privilege of weilding a universally recognized card that proved I had a brain in my head and a general knowledge of technology.

Of course, the applications are near-infinite. Imagine this tech-support call:

   Tech:  Thank you for calling [ISPname], how may I help you?
   You:   My router's flaking out, I think I'm getting interference on the line.
   Tech:  Ok, let's take first things first.  Is your computer on?
   You:   Yes.  My TCID is 4475639839.
   Tech:  Ok, just ftp your router logs and I'll take a look on our end and call you back.
   You:   Thank you very much.

Please, somebody (not Microsoft), create this certification process and save the IT world millions of hours a year, which we promise to then spend on continuing to solve the worlds biggest problem such as "getting your Outlook to work."