Fear really is a punk.

One of the biggest problem in the world today is fear-based leaders and fear-based leadership on the one hand, and 'fear-based insecurities - within you and me - on the other.  

Fear, feeding on fear.  And hurt people, that hurt people.  

When fears find ways to convert into insecurities, in our lives and our society, they then becomes very dangerous.  

Hope falls away, and a healthy skepticism is replaced by a destructive cynicism. From there, our fears grow emotional arms and legs. It then starts showing up everywhere in our lives.

Fear of not being able to get a job. 

Fear of losing a job. 

Fear of immigrants in your country. 

Fear of change. 

Fear of the police. 

Fear of people who are different from us. 

Fear of the future. Heck. Fear of the past also. 

Fear of our politicians. 

Fear of taking risks -- when in reality, the only real fear is in doing nothing.

You will miss 100% of the shots you do not take. 

Fear must be eradicated as the leader of your life. 

Now, this doesn't mean that you don't have reasons to be fearful, or that you don't have legitimate reasons to have pause or to express trepidation in your life. All of this actually is just common sense. If a bear is chasing after you, don't pray at that moment, just RUN.

It means not letting or allowing fear to rule you. To control your life.

It means not letting it stop you from dreaming big dreams, or worse, causing you to not get out of the bed in the morning (actually, this is when fear begins to turn into depression).  

As I said in my bestselling book Love Leadership: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World, "courage is nothing more than your faith reaching through your fear, displaying itself as action in your life."

The absolute worst manifestation of our fears happen when those same fears -- of living well, fears of a life fulfilled, and fears of taking reasonable risk to achieve our goals and excel -- show up in the heart and soul of your children.

In this way, you have have significantly limited your children's world view and life choices, before they have even attempted to live on their own. 

You want your children to dream big dreams, and to do things even you never dreamed up. 

I remember when I was homeless at age 18. I had lost everything because I had taken one too many risks, based on my ego and not good business or even common sense.  I was living my dream, just doing it a little recklessly. And then I had to pay the price for that. And I had decided, that this was fine.  

I had decided that being homeless for a time as a teenager, was a reasonable price to pay -- living in my car for 6 months of my life at age 18 -- for the purest passionate pursuit of my dreams.

But I intentionally did not tell my parents that I had been homeless, until I was 23 years old. 5 years later. I didn't tell them, because they simply would not have understood. Or worse, in an effort to 'save me,' they would have forced me to come home to live with them.  My amazing mother, in particular.

My loving mother would have surely 'encouraged' me at the time to 'stop all that entrepreneurship silliness,' and go get what her generation would have called 'a real job.'   For my mother, that meant working at McDonald Douglas Aircraft, now Boeing Aircraft.  

And while working at Douglas and Boeing literally provided a room over our family's head, and a safe and loving environment for me and my brother and sister to grow up in -- I had decided early on that this was not the life for me. Great for her. Not for me.

And so, I had to decide to live my truth -- and to pay whatever price I needed to for that truth. That included toughing it out on my own for a while. And you know what -- it all worked out just fine. 

Oddly enough, my parents also prepared me well for what was to become a great future, for a kid from South Central Los Angeles, and Compton, California. 

My mother, Ms. Juanita Smith, told me she loved me every day of my life. There is nothing more powerful, than a child being told they are loved by their parent.  

As a result, I don't have a huge self esteem problem today. 

My father, Mr. Johnnie Will Smith, ran a business for 54 years of his life.  He was my business role model, early on. 

From my mom, I got a powerful sense of 'yes, I am.'

From my dad, I got a powerful sense of 'yes, I CAN.'

And then magic happened.  Like adding lightning in a bottle. A banker came into my classroom in Compton, California, and taught me a course in financial literacy when I was like 9 years old.  It was Home Economics class.

I remember that this banker was from Bank of America, and he happened to be caucasian, though frankly I could care less what color he was - then or now. As far as I was concerned, he was the color 'green,' as in the color of U.S. currency.  And I remember, he seemed to genuinely care about those kids he was pouring knowledge into, at 9 years of age.  I remember he wore a blue suit, a white shirt, and a red tie. 

I asked this banker, what he did for a living, and "how did he get rich, legally?" Laugh if you like, but I was serious.

You see, no one in my neighborhood wore suits.

No one in my neighborhood had a business card.

No one in my neighborhood made a salary.  Everyone was an hourly worker, a blue color worker of some sort. 

And so, because I wasn't afraid of either the question nor the answer at 9 years of age -- I then asked what many would say was a stupid question.  Well, the banker had an answer for me.  He said, "I'm a banker and I finance entrepreneurs." 

I then said, at that very moment -- "sir, I don't know what an entrepreneur is, but I'm going to be one."  

And so, my life-long passion for entrepreneurship was born. 

And though my mother until this very day specializes in worrying, she also placed within my little soul (my father too, mind you), a passion to find my own passion. And the courage to go about it.

They placed within this little 9 year old kid, a fearlessness -- about life. 

They convinced me that the worse thing that could happen to me, was to fall or to fail, and that wasn't so bad. That I could always recover from.

I could always get back up again.

I could always re-invent myself.

I could always try over.  

That even when I lost, I won (I gained experience, showed courage do, and achieved greater resiliency against pain). 

That little 9 year old kid, started his own business the very next year, at age 10. A Neighborhood Candy-house, located in the den of my mother's house in Compton. 

I first tried to warn the corner liquor store owner that he was selling the wrong kind of candy, but when he wouldn't listen to me I decided to compete with him instead.

Less than 6 months later I was making $300 a week, and I put the liquor store out of the candy business (when I was 10).  

All of that 'courage,' I learned from the same parents who, 10 years later, would have absolutely tried to stop me from taking even one more risk in my entrepreneurial endeavors.

Their love -- thank God -- began with encouragement and confidence building. Later, it showed itself in the form of simple loving protection. 

As you raise your own children, teach them confidence and encouragement and dreaming first. You can always protect them later. 

Encourage them to not just go get a job, but maybe go and create one -- or several jobs maybe -- on their own. As a business owner, or better still, as an entrepreneur.  Encourage them to dream, at the least, of doing something on their own.

Absolutely drill this into their little heads -- that they can change the world.

And they will believe you!

Watch how you live your life. It may be the only bible that anyone else reads. 

And one last thing -- don't simply reserve these jewels and gifts of life for your children. You will find it hard, if not impossible, to model what you have not become (or at least represent) yourself. 

Don't tell yourself what you cannot do.  Take the words can't and impossible out of your personal dictionary.  

"If you are going to worry then why pray. If you are going to worry then why pray?"

Don't be defined by what other people say about you, or how they might try to convince you what you cannot do. 

Don't let other people's fears and anxieties -- and lets face it, their miserableness -- get into your head!

There's plenty time to be disappointed in life.  Don't rush yourself there. Don't disappoint and depress yourself in advance of actually LIVING this amazing thing called life!  

Even when you fail you fall forward.  When you live your truth, you learn this wisdom -- that rainbows, only follow storms. You cannot have a rainbow without a storm first.  

As for me, my next big thing was taking up motorsports. It's my sport and I am the athlete. But I never thought I could actually do it.

I was not the greatest athlete in traditional sports growing up, so why should I be able to do this, I reasoned? No one had to tell me this.  No one had to question me. I did this all by myself.  

You see, I never actually considered that I could actually be good at something as amazing and out of the box -- as motorsports.  And now I find that, after I actually tried it, I am actually very good at this! 

Like, winning my first race in Europe, good.  Who knew. That punk called fear certainly didn't. 

The Greatest Feeling — Winning My First Race, in Europe No Less.

Fear really is a punk.

Quoting a good friend and advisor, "...give that voice (of fear and destruction) in your head a name, and then tell it to go and kiss off."

Enough said. 

Fear is a punk.  Live, your life.  Start today.  

Let’s go.

John Hope Bryant is the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Ventures, an Inc. Magazine/800-CEO-READ bestselling business author ofLOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass). His newest bestselling book is How The Poor Can Save Capitalism: Rebuilding the Path to the Middle Class (Berrett Koehler Publishing).

Bryant is a Member of the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans, co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index with the Gallup Organization, and co-chair for Project 5117, which is a plan for the rebirth of underserved America.

Bryant is the only bestselling author on economics in the world who is also of African-American descent.

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 Photo Credit: Vic on Flickr