Unemployment may be the scariest experience of your life.

Conquer this, and you can conquer anything.

If you were reading this blog a couple of years ago, you have some inkling of how terrified I was at that time. First I was terrified that my wife would move out (she did... sort of, anyway, she stuck me with a bunch of bills and ran up her own). Then I was stricken by terror at the prospect of having all these bills and little/no money coming in. Many a night I tossed and turned, sweating the prospect of homelessness.

A funny thing happened, though. Rather than let all this fear cripple me, I got tough and started taking charge of the aspects of my life that I could control. I set my priorities straight and started dealing with the reality that I could no longer afford to sit around all day applying for jobs and blogging. Getting that cheese took priority. Once my life had that singular focus, action was inevitable, and fear vanished.

You know what? It worked out. Funny how my life fell apart back when I was a scaredy cat. It came back together when I stopped being that guy.

As regular readers know, my situation has improved quite a bit in the past 15 months or so. My NYC web marketing business is doing fairly well. I'm working with small to medium-sized businesses, helping them establish an optimal web presence. (It's more involved than being a "website designer," which I am emphatically not.) It's not making me rich yet, but it will.

I just checked my credit scores a couple of weeks ago, and it turns out that my credit score is 783, three points higher than it was last time I checked a little over a year ago. So this is paying my bills, albeit not leaving much (anything) over.

My bills were too high anyway. Because I couldn't get another apartment without a job, I was forced to stay where I was, in the apartment my wife and I shared when we were together full-time and both working. I needed the place anyway because I do entertain clients occasionally and could not have done that in some little rathole.

The high bills are about to come down, thank goodness. The little lady and I have found a decent apartment in a nice neighborhood with enough room for me to have my own office. She's sown her wild oats, I guess, and decided that I'm a pretty cool guy, cool enough to try the whole "'til death do us part" thing over again. It feels good.

You know when that really happened, when I won the girl? I got over my crippling fear of losing her and decided to just love her, come what may. At this point I'm totally OK with the possibility that we might not work out, though I think we will and wouldn't be doing this if I didn't. It's my choice, and it's not based on fear. It's based on aspiration to be with her and build a great life together.

Here's the takeaway: Conquer fear, and everything falls into place.

So how do you conquer fear? Focus on what's right in front of you. Do what you need to do and what you want to do -- in that order. It really is that simple. You don't have to dig into your childhood traumas or any of that hoo-hah. Just recognize when fear is creeping in, and command it to go away. When you find yourself looking back over your shoulder at the monsters chasing you, turn your head toward the path in front of you, and the monsters evaporate.

If you let your goals (make them somewhat realistic) and aspirations guide you, they will take you where you want to go. If you're driven by fear, it will take you right off a cliff. I'm living proof of this. Read some of my first posts on this blog and you'll see that I have crawled out of a hole so deep and so dark and so cold that the fires of Hell could not have illuminated it or made it warmer, a place so lonely that the screams of the damned would have provided welcome company. I'm not saying this to boast but to inspire. If I can do this, anyone can.

May courage, strength, and integrity rule you!

May prosperity, love, and joy be yours!