Psychologist Wayne Dyer, author of many self-help books, tells of attending his twenty-year high school reunion. At that reunion he met a former classmate on whom he’d had a secret crush. She was beautiful and confident even in high school, and Dyer could never muster up the courage to ask her out. To his surprise, at the reunion this woman whom he had yearned to date confessed to Dyer that she’d had a secret crush on him all through high school, and she would have been thrilled to go out with him if only he had asked. His adolescent fear of rejection had robbed him of an incredible opportunity to date the girl of his dreams. (1)

It is a frivolous example, perhaps, but that’s what fear does to us sometimes, doesn’t it? It shuts the door on great opportunities. Fear is the very opposite of…