Fearlessness helps. Confidence does not help. Confidence is like a pill that you are trying to take when you are already sick. Avoid sickness. The pill cannot be your food, the substance of your life.
I am giving you a mantra: Whenever you feel scared, trembling, or even hopeful in the presence of the other—and that other could be a person, a thing, a situation, whatever, the other is the world—whenever you feel all this, just remind yourself, “I am being dependent; otherwise, I could not have felt this fear.”
All fear arises from dependency. If you are not dependent, you cannot be afraid.