Owls don’t fear the dark because they were built to see in it. Skills turn scary places into normal places.

Most fear is a report on your equipment rather than on the situation. A room full of strangers or a hard conversation is frightening in proportion to how little practice you have, and becomes ordinary once you know the shape of it. Courage is often just competence that has arrived.

Take the thing that frightens you and ask which specific skill would make it dull. Then go and get that one skill rather than trying to feel braver. Repetition changes the temperature of a place faster than any amount of talking yourself into it.