What is fear? Technically it is a fight or flight response to a real or perceived threat. Fear is an emotion that responds to threatening situations, or it can be just like sadness or happiness or joy. In some kinds of situations, reacting to fear can be more dangerous than facing it therefore, face up to your fear to overcome these problems. The fear of failure can also scare people; fearing failure is like fearing death. We"re all dying, just as we all fail at times.
Suppose you are walking down a dark street. If while you are doing that you are thinking the boogie-man is just around the next corner, then you are going be thinking you're in danger, and your emotion of fear will be reacting. That is why in a situation like that you are going to be finding yourself running very soon. But you would be running from what? A real threat? No, you would be running from a phantom. Something that isn't there. .
It's precisely this kind of fear, the kind that is based not on a real threat, but on what our minds manufacture as a threat. What kind of threat would that be? Well it could be that feeling of dread we sometimes get. Like my uncle, one day he came to his job late and he knew that boss is a really strict guy. He already fired many employees because they come late. He thought, "Boy, my boss will be mad at me, I guess I'm in trouble". But nothing like that happened because when he went inside his boss said nothing to him. Sometimes you have to react to your fear to overcome your problem.
The best away to overcome your fears is to avoid them, but sometimes you can't avoid it. The better example comes from my friend's dad's experience while he was in the Army. One day the First Sergeant called him out of a formation and told him he had to see him in his office at 4pm. This was at 8 am in the morning. Now the problem was that you didn't want to see the First Sergeant on a good day even for a really good reason.