By Coach Chuck Barnard
Originally written and published January 2, 2022
Updated in light of events that followed
This article was originally written and published January 2, 2022 and has been updated in light of events that followed.
My resolution for the year 2022 was simple yet profound: I will become a warrior against fear. Fear is a formidable enemy. Like all emotions, it serves a purpose. It can protect, alert, and prepare us to fight, flee, or freeze in the face of real danger. When fear is grounded in truth, it becomes a valuable ally. When untethered from reality, it turns into a silent tyrant that sabotages our lives from the inside out.
In my original article I shared this story from my childhood. My younger sister and I were walking home from our great-uncle’s farm when a large, aggressive dog charged us. I felt fear. I turned to face the dog and protect my little sister by kicking, screaming, crying, fighting. That was real fear from a real threat, and it served its purpose. Neither my sister nor I allowed that fear to grow into a lifelong phobia. We didn’t let it control us, but in fact, we love dogs.
That was the essence of the article: learning to distinguish between useful fear and irrational fear. Real fear alerts us to danger. Irrational fear convinces us to surrender to shadows. It causes us to freeze before opportunities, flee from vulnerability, or fight imaginary enemies. Whether rooted in fear of failure, judgment, rejection, or loss, irrational fear cripples progress and poisons potential.
I believed those words when I wrote them in January 2022. I believed them in theory, in memory, and in observation. I still do. What I did not know was how much I would be tested by them.
In April of 2022, my wife went in for what we assumed would be a routine doctor’s appointment. In June, we received a diagnosis: cancer. We knew we would be in for a battle; cancer is a formidable foe. Yes, I experienced some initial fear when I heard that diagnosis as did my wife. We were not going to let fear control the day. I put it behind me. Still, on July 22 she passed away.
Suddenly, in just a few short weeks everything I had written about fear became painfully real and deeply personal. I had spent decades coaching others through their toughest moments. I had taught about courage, mindset, and faith. I had encouraged athletes, teens, and parents about how courage is superpower behind all successful people. I had challenged them to dig deep, to overcome fear with love and perseverance.
Now it was my turn.
There were moments when fear tried to win the internal battle. Fear of being alone was a significant one. Grief often disguises itself as fear. It fills the mind with what-ifs, regrets, and imagined futures that can never be. It tempts you to stop hoping. Yet in those dark hours, the original resolution echoed back to me: Become a warrior against fear.
This time, the battle wasn’t theoretical. It wasn’t about abstract mindsets or performance coaching. It was about walking through the valley of the shadow of death and deciding that fear would not be my guide. Love would.
Fear is still real. It still knocks. It still whispers, but it no longer gets to lead. Love, I’ve found, is not just the antidote to fear, it is the fuel for life after loss.
Scripture tells us: “Perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18). I saw this come to life in the final days of my wife’s journey. In her grace, in our young adult children’s strength and in the outpouring of care from friends and strangers alike. I saw how courage feeds off community. How truth steadies trembling hands. How kindness holds space for pain without being crushed by it.
After her passing, I kept teaching. I kept coaching. I kept writing. I kept showing up, not because I was fearless, but because I refused to let fear have the final say. Many wiser and more courageous people than me have written thoughts like these: courage is not the absence of fear; it is the decision to keep loving in the face of it.
As I update this piece, I do so with a clearer sense of urgency and responsibility. I’m no longer calling others to shape a mindset I only understood in theory. I’m inviting you to share something I’ve lived, really, we all live in some form or other. Whether you are facing a diagnosis, a disappointment, a broken relationship, or simply the creeping fear that you are not enough, you must become a warrior against fear.
Fear may come. It may sit at your table, but it doesn’t get to speak unless you ask it one question: what is your intent?
You feed the courage wolf by practicing daily rituals, by surrounding yourself with truth-tellers and hope-peddlers, and by reminding yourself that the story isn’t over. Even after unimaginable loss, the story continues, especially then.
I still believe in training the mind. I still believe in the power of mindset. Yet now I teach with experiences I didn’t have before. What those experiences, painful though they are, have provided to my message is a depth and clarity I never could have manufactured.
Courage, neuroscience confirms, is both practiced and wired (Stein & Paulus, 2009). Love, connection, truth, and purpose build resilience that no fear can permanently dismantle. Every year, every month, every week, every day, every hour moving forward I remain committed to this mission.
I will become a warrior against fear. Will you?
References
Jeffers, S. (2006). Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Ballantine Books.
LeDoux, J. E. (2012). Rethinking the Emotional Brain. Neuron, 73(4), 653–676. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2012.02.004
Stein, M. B., & Paulus, M. P. (2009). Imbalance of approach and avoidance: The yin and yang of anxiety disorders. Biological Psychiatry, 66(12), 1072–1074. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2009.09.023