Just a few days ago, I was asked to perform a skit in Chinese. The problem, at least according to me, was that I have never been particularly fluent in it and it made me very apprehensive.
My initial mindset was one of "I can't do this". However, as I placed myself into the swing of things, I found that it was not really as tough as I feared. Granted that my Chinese language skills weren't nearly as strong as my grasp of English, it all turned out pretty well in the end.
The encouraging thing was that I was congratulated on a good performance.
My thoughts on the matter resonate with a quote by Jerome Bruner that John Maxwell wrote in his book - you're more likely to act yourself into feeling than feel yourself into action.
Indeed, our fears are often worse than the situation we fear.