In the movie “The Impossible”, the actress Naomi Watts plays a woman vacationing in Thailand with her husband and three children when the tsunami of 2004 hits and separates them.

It’s a real life story that has been described by USA Today as impossible to watch on screen “and leave emotionally unscathed”.

Yet Watts has a fear of water from childhood when at 14 she and her family were caught in riptides.

Watts had to overcome her fear of water to be immersed in water tanks for close-ups and underwater scenes for the film which opens December 21.

Almost everyone has fears and as long as these fears do not paralyze us, we go on with life.

The best advice I ever heard about conquering fear is to do the thing you fear to do and the fear will go away from you.

Constantly step up and confront the fear as Naomi Watts did in the shooting of “The Impossible” so that it never gets the best of you.

This is often more difficult than it sounds, but there is no other way.  Otherwise, fear takes over and ruins lives. 

“I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.”

— Frank Herbert

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