Have you ever wanted to do something but felt too scared? Like

starting your own business, asking for more money at work, or

talking to someone you think is attractive? If thoughts like “If

only I had the guts to…” or “What if I just tried…” or “I wish I

was brave enough to…”, you’re not alone.

Let me tell you a bit about myself. At thirty, I feel free. But

it wasn’t always this way. I used to hold myself back, mostly

because of my own fears. Even today, sometimes I make the

same mistakes.

Before I started anything, I would first think of all the things

that could possibly go wrong. I’d focus on anything remotely

challenging, completely ignoring the potential for all the good

things that could come out of it. And I would find myself in

the same pitfalls I was fixated on. This way of thinking can be

helpful sometimes, but it can also stop you from doing great

things.

Learning to drive was scary for me. I was afraid I’d make a big

mistake, like causing an accident. I was even scared of driving

in the snow. It might sound strange, but many people feel the

same way and choose not to drive because of these fears.

For me, and perhaps for some of you, these worries are normal.

Understanding the risks of driving but choosing to do it because

it’s essential is what I aimed for. Yet, for a long time, fear

held me back. I’ve since realized that we face fear in almost

everything – getting up early, going to the gym, and even just

being at home.

Like many, I had big dreams growing up. Moving to the US,

the “land of opportunity”, was a dream come true. I had to

leave my home in Cameroon and my family. It was hard. I was

the youngest and had always been protected by my parents. I’d

never traveled alone or lived on my own before. I remember

how my dad would quickly come to pick me up even if I was just

staying a month with my uncle. My dad cared a lot about how

we were treated by others, believing that only parents can truly

look out for their kids.

Suddenly, I found myself traveling alone, far away from

everything familiar, to chase my dreams in a new country. It

was exciting but also very scary. I knew I couldn’t just give up

and go back if things got tough.

Many people who move to a new country understand the

struggles and challenges that come with it. So, when I hear

people criticize immigrants, I just smile, knowing they can’t

understand the sacrifice of leaving loved ones behind for a better

future. Don’t get me wrong, I was not scraping the barrel just to

eat growing up, but we had our share of difficulties. I am grateful

for those hardships, as in a way, they built me up and made me

stronger from a young age. I honestly didn’t comprehend the

magnitude of what I was doing until I was in the United States

and starting to face life on my own.

While I was on that flight, I remembered my mom hugging

me so tightly at the airport, with tears in her eyes, and telling

me, “You are a man now. Take care of yourself.” I was just

about to turn eighteen, a month after that day. Those words

took me through many hills and valleys. Expressing verbal love

wasn’t common in my culture, but I always felt my family’s love

through their actions. In fact, to this day, I have never told my

parents or my siblings that I love them, but I hope they know

I do, by how I treat them. I am sure my parents were just as

terrified, or even more so than I was about the fact that I was

leaving for a foreign location. A location that up to that day, I

had only heard and seen on TV, in music videos, and in books.

Even though I was excited about leaving and experiencing a new

life, my parents and siblings feared for my well-being, as they

sent me alone across the world.

We all took a leap of faith and knew our family needed to push

past that fear to gain something better. With everything that has

happened over the years, I know that being here today, writing a

book about fear, makes me extremely lucky, so I must be doing

something right. I often wonder how different my life would be

if I hadn’t moved.

In this book, I will dive deep into the things that control you,

with or without your consent: fear. Fear has been here since

the beginning of time. An early biblical story highlights fear.

The story of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis chapter 3 says,

“After they had eaten the fruit of life, The man and his wife heard

the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the

day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the

garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’ He

answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I

was naked; so, I hid.’” That was the birth of fear, and, millions

of years later, here we are still talking about fear.

Upon arriving in the U.S., I was amazed by the unlimited

internet access. Back home internet was limited, and the

connection was really slow. We would go to the internet café

and buy internet time. Internet cafés looked like the computer

section of a library. We would buy time, ranging from twenty-five

minutes to an hour or more; whatever time we bought was

the time we had to spend on a computer. As soon as your time

was up, the computer locked you out. You had that time to

do whatever you wanted. I would check Facebook, check my

email, and browse the internet. I kid you not when I tell you the

internet would sometimes be so slow that all your time would

run out without you having done anything substantial. Then,

of course, you would find yourself buying more time to extend

your stay. But in the United States, the internet felt limitless. I

could browse all night and day, It felt like I had won the jackpot.

After this lucky turn, I spent a lot of time on the web, learning

whatever I came across. Art, fashion, history, cultures, and

technology.

I was also exposed to the world of online movies and music. I

watched so many movies, that I can’t even keep count. I watched

movies and shows like the Bourne series, Friends, Tyler Perry’s

House of Payne, and Killer Ninja. Growing up, we had a TV at

home, but sometimes it would be under lock and key when

my dad traveled, so we could focus on studying. We would

sneak to our neighbor’s house just to watch TV. WWE Smackdown

wrestling on Wednesday evenings was my favorite thing to

watch, but the rule at my neighbor’s house was you couldn’t

watch TV if you were not clean; you had to take a bath, wear clean

clothes, take off your shoes at the door, and sit down, sometimes

on the carpet. Chairs were for adults first. You had to respect

their rules or get kicked out if you didn’t. Sometimes you had

to help clean or do some kind of chores to have the privilege of

watching TV. Leaving that behind, and then immediately being

in a place where everything was abundant, without restraint

or control, I went wild and would stay up until the morning

watching everything, even though I had to go to work.

In my time of exploration, as I call it, I watched a movie called

Final Destination that changed my life. That movie had such

an impact, that I still see TikTok references to it to date. This

movie was one of the scariest things I have ever seen, and it still

plays a big role in how I perceive things. If you have watched the

movies, you will know exactly what I mean. It was as if death

had a physical form, and it had only one job, hunting people

down one after another.

Final Destination 3 has a roller coaster scene featuring all the

horrible things you never want to see happen on a ride. The

movie itself was great, but it instilled a fear of roller coasters in

me. I swore to myself I would never ride one. Before that vow,

I had never been on a roller coaster before. The movie didn’t

just make me afraid of them, it also made me scared of other

things like flying in planes and being in a car behind trucks on a

highway: especially trucks carrying large logs! After I learned

how to drive, I would not drive next to a truck on the highway,

much less behind one. I would switch lanes and slow down as

soon as a truck drove past me, putting some distance between

us.

A few years later, I was standing in line at Six Flags, waiting to

get on a roller coaster for the first time. You can say it was peer

pressure, but I also wanted to impress the girl who had bought

the tickets for me. As I ran through all the bad scenarios that

could happen in my head, I grew more and more anxious. To

put it off, I started suggesting to my date we try the other events

or games that Six Flags had to offer. That did not work, but one

thing stood out to me: I noticed that there wasn’t a single adult

who came off the ride crying, freaking out, yelling, or looking

sad. A few kids had terror on their faces. But the adults all looked

so happy; I wasn’t sure if they were pretending, but if so, they

must have been great actors.

Maybe it won’t be that bad, I thought to myself. As I was giving

myself a pep talk, I saw it was my turn to sit down and buckle up.

I quadruple-checked the belt to make sure it was firmly secured.

I checked that nothing was in my pockets, and I looked around

for any excuse to get off the ride. I said my prayers, and off it

went. I closed my eyes, with my heart beating fast, as the ride

thrust me around from left to right, and up and down, with the

wind intense on my face. There were screams as we went up and

down, and in less than two minutes, the roller coaster pulled up

to the finish line, and I opened my eyes.

The first thing that came to my mind was, Is that it? It hadn’t

been as scary as I thought it would be. Maybe it happened so

fast, I didn’t even realize that the ride was supposed to be scary.

I hadn’t fallen out of the ride, the ride hadn’t stopped working,

and people hadn’t died.

I felt this overwhelming sense of excitement. I’d made it, and

I wanted to go again; this time I wanted to try opening my eyes

and seeing what other people had been seeing. Even though

my heart was still pounding and my palms were sweating from

gripping the guardrail so tightly, I had this feeling I could not

explain. It was as if I was freed, relieved of a burden I had been

carrying for so long. It was as if I had entered into this whole

new world I had never known existed. I was ready to go again

and again. Today, roller coasters are not on my list of things

I fear. I can even say that I look forward to riding every time I

visit an amusement park.

I think a lot of people are afraid of roller coasters for one

reason or another, but I have heard so many people tell me that

after their first ride, they stopped being afraid of them. Not

everyone will love roller coasters or have the same experience

as me, and that is okay. But somehow, I had faced my fear and

conquered it without even realizing what had happened.

Sometimes it just takes one step, and you break through your

barriers. As I have been working on this book, I have been

looking back at things that used to scare me but, for some reason

or another, I ended up doing the thing anyway. I am honestly

stunned by the number of scary things I have overcome thus far.

As for the roller coaster, some may say adrenaline was involved,

which could be a large part of the truth. However, there is still a

feeling of satisfaction when you conquer anything in your life

you didn’t think possible, and that is what happens when you

conquer your fears. These days, if I am scared of something,

there is a contrary force that draws me toward it, and I start

looking for ways to cross the fear off my list. Yes, I have a list of

things I fear, and I am actively working to take them down one

at a time. We will talk more about that in the coming chapters.

Fear is a huge part of our society; it governs how we operate

and how we make laws. For example, policing was mainly

created to keep some kind of order and to keep bad guys in check

using people’s fear of authority. We couldn’t just let people

do whatever they wanted, or we would have a wild jungle of a

country. With the rise of mistrust of the police, whenever I see

those blue lights go off behind my car, there is the fear of not

going home that day, having someone snap because they are

having a bad day. Fear governs a lot of things we do, sometimes

without us even realizing it.

You would probably agree with me that there isn’t a single

human being on earth who doesn’t have an ounce of fear. We all

have a fear of something. Even the king of the jungle, the lion,

fears other huge animals.

I was recently watching an interview with actor Dwayne “The

Rock” Johnson. The interviewer asked him to list some of the

things he was afraid of. He said, “Nothing,” and then proceeded

to laugh. After the interviewer persisted, he said, “Of course, I

have things I fear. I am human, but I will never disclose them

because I don’t want people to think I am scared of anything.” It

is funny how this strong man, who some consider a true “alpha

male,” is also scared of some things.

It is okay to have a fear of something. I am not just talking

about the fear of insects, animals, fire, or driving. Fears can be

so small you don’t even realize you have them. We hesitate

sometimes because of fear, doubt ourselves because of fear,

and even bully others because of fear. It is a normal human

experience.

The Oxford Dictionary defines fear as an “unpleasant emotion

caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm.” Well, let me

break this down for you. Unpleasant emotions are those feelings

that make you uncomfortable; they make you sad, angry, lonely,

or tearful.

For example, if I climb a tree, there is the possibility that I will

fall and hurt myself. Say I broke a bone, and it is so bad I have to

spend time in the hospital. That would be very uncomfortable,

and I would have to walk around with a cast. I might have to

spend a lot of money on hospital bills, and I’d have to miss work,

which will affect my savings. I may not have enough money

to cover my rent after all the bills and expenses. Sometimes I

might stay up all night because the pain is unbearable. If I take

all these possibilities into account, my mind would combine all

these unpleasant scenarios and experiences and associate them

with tree climbing. I will forever be on guard when I am thinking

of climbing a tree or seeing someone climbing a tree.

Let me give you another example of how our minds connect

everyday experiences to a specific emotion and sometimes push

us to uncontrolled reactions. Have you noticed how your body

acts when you see a plate of food you love? Say it is your favorite

dish; you start to salivate. I can assume that your favorite meal

would give you a nostalgic feeling of the amazing taste in your

mouth, reminding you of the first time you tried it. The aroma,

the warm feeling, and the experiences you had eating that food

in the past come rushing back, and you get a dopamine rush.

Meanwhile, when you see a food you hate, you might start to gag;

Maybe this food gave you a runny stomach, pain, nausea, and

all sorts of sick feelings. Now, every time you see this different

food, your body instantly reacts. Your mind associates those

feelings with the food, and you gag, even throwing away the

food without a second thought. Having said all that, it is clear

that fear stems from the way you feel about something. How

you came to feel that way about the thing you are fearful of is

another story on its own, which we will talk about later down

the road.

How we treat fear will define how our lives will be lived. In

the next few chapters, I will be sharing the ways I learned to

overcome my fears. It is still an ongoing process, as I discover

more and more about myself as I grow older. Unfortunately,

because of fear, a lot of people will inevitably leave this earth

without enjoying the life they were meant to live. Unlike what

many doctrines may have you believe, I truly believe we have

our destiny in our hands, and we have the power to enhance

or destroy it. I refuse to believe we all have a fixed and limited

purpose on earth. I implore you not to be one of those people

who will die without living their life to the fullest. I hope hearing

about my experiences learning to enjoy the life I was meant to

live helps you accomplish yours.