Fear stop us from being the best versions of ourselves in our life. And honestly it's natural and normal for most people to have fear in them, we're not taught on how to deal with it. Instead we try to run into the opposite direction by distracting ourselves so we don't have to deal with it or completely hiding it under the rug. But when we do that it reaches a point where it explodes and ruins our life.
When we feel anxiety and fear in our body, it makes us very uncomfortable. It makes us do things very irrational things at times that we wouldn’t do normally otherwise. That’s why we always have this really hateful relationship with fear.
If we look at our biology, fear is something that’s ingrained within us. It used to be the most appropriate response for our ancestors who faced wild animals in a day to day basis or natural calamities. It gave them some sort of signals to act. So, understand that not all fear is bad. It definitely has it’s good side which we can’t really see unless we are in situation that may cause potential trauma or physical harm so we can run away from predators. But those situations happens to us less and less at least in the open world out there.
If we understand the signals that we can get from the fear it will be easy for us to deal with it.
In such a situation where we feel like our life is in threat the response that we normally get is to either fight, flight or freeze. And that’s the exact reaction that we still feel to this day to our normal day to day stresses. Except, things have significantly changed as we aren’t threatened by nature anymore as we live in much safer places compared to our ancestors.
But the physiological symptoms are still the same, but we there’s no one to fight in this civil society and no where to run. So, instead of dealing with the fear and trying to act upon it, what we do is we just succumb onto the fear and instead distract ourselves. We even try to suppress the fear and that’s when it starts becoming a huge problem.
Before we get into more depth upon this, let’s talk about the difference in between fear and anxiety. They’re both very similar at least the way we perceive it in our body. The biggest difference is that, fear is more specific. For example, when you have a fear of snake you know that you’re afraid of snakes, so you don’t want to go closer to snakes anywhere. Whereas anxiety is more general and feels more diffused. So when you have anxiety you sometimes won’t even be able to identify the exact reason what is causing the anxiety within you. However the way we perceive fear is very similar to that of anxiety and our reaction to anxiety it’s very much similar to that of fear. So these solutions I offer are going to be valid to both fear and anxiety as we don’t need to dwell on the problem and only focus on the solution.
Now, let’s decode fear. These 3 ideas are gonna help you overcome fear and deal with it easily.
1. Not all fears are bad
Fear stop us from being the best versions of ourselves in our life. And honestly it’s natural and normal for most people to have fear in them, we’re not taught on how to deal with it. Instead we try to run into the opposite direction by distracting ourselves so we don’t have to deal with it or completely hiding it under the rug. But when we do that it reaches a point where it explodes and ruins our life.
When we feel anxiety and fear in our body, it makes us very uncomfortable. It makes us do things very irrational things at times that we wouldn’t do normally otherwise. That’s why we always have this really hateful relationship with fear.
If we look at our biology, fear is something that’s ingrained within us. It used to be the most appropriate response for our ancestors who faced wild animals in a day to day basis or natural calamities. It gave them some sort of signals to act. So, understand that not all fear is bad. It definitely has it’s good side which we can’t really see unless we are in situation that may cause potential trauma or physical harm so we can run away from predators. But those situations happens to us less and less at least in the open world out there.
If we understand the signals that we can get from the fear it will be easy for us to deal with it.
In such a situation where we feel like our life is in threat the response that we normally get is to either fight, flight or freeze. And that’s the exact reaction that we still feel to this day to our normal day to day stresses. Except, things have significantly changed as we aren’t threatened by nature anymore as we live in much safer places compared to our ancestors.
But the physiological symptoms are still the same, but we there’s no one to fight in this civil society and no where to run. So, instead of dealing with the fear and trying to act upon it, what we do is we just succumb onto the fear and instead distract ourselves. We even try to suppress the fear and that’s when it starts becoming a huge problem.
Before we get into more depth upon this, let’s talk about the difference in between fear and anxiety. They’re both very similar at least the way we perceive it in our body. The biggest difference is that, fear is more specific. For example, when you have a fear of snake you know that you’re afraid of snakes, so you don’t want to go closer to snakes anywhere. Whereas anxiety is more general and feels more diffused. So when you have anxiety you sometimes won’t even be able to identify the exact reason what is causing the anxiety within you. However the way we perceive fear is very similar to that of anxiety and our reaction to anxiety it’s very much similar to that of fear. So these solutions I offer are going to be valid to both fear and anxiety as we don’t need to dwell on the problem and only focus on the solution.
Now, let’s decode fear. These 3 characteristics of fear so that we can understand it better and then overcome it.
1. Fear isn’t 100% bad
Like I mentioned earlier if our ancestors lacked that kind of fear responses while facing adversities we definitely wouldn’t be here today. It was fear that caused them to fight or flee those deadly situations whether it be wild animals or extreme natural situation like storm, hurricane, etc.
And even in our society today some fear responses are like very good and if we didn’t fear anything, we couldn’t differentiate the Psychopaths or sociopaths from other normal people.
2. Fear = Signals, learn to decode what that means
Whenever we have fear we’re getting these signals whether to act on certain things, or not to act on certain things. For example when you’re in a social situation and you want to go to talk to someone you don’t know because of fear you start making excuses in your head, which is also known as approach anxiety. But if it wasn’t someone significant you wouldn’t have to fear anything in the first place. So, just acknowledge that this is an important event, but not a life or death situation. Now, the signal behind this is if you go ahead and act despite this fear you’re going to grow internally no matter what the outcome is going to turn out to be. Sure, there is fear of embarrassment and rejection, but on other side of it is growth and success. Fear is signifying that this is an important situation
3. Fear and Excitement have similar physiological response
There is no physiological difference in between fear and excitement. It’s only in our minds how we perceive it that’s gonna make it either positive or negative. So, instead of labeling the feeling/emotion as fear you could easily label it as excitement. If you re-frame it enough times, you could be performing much better in any different situations that normally cause fear.
To give you an example, let’s say that there’s a band playing their first sold-out show in one of the biggest arenas in the country. The lead singer and the guitar player of the band they’re getting like very similar responses right before they go to the stage. The singer gets pretty pumped up and he thinks that’s excitement in his body as he’s warming up for the show.
But in the guitar players’ mind he starts to get anxious about this whole situation. He’s getting a stage fright right before the show. So they both go to perform and create this historic moment together. And by the end of the it singer delivers one of the best shows ever! Whereas the guitar player he doesn’t remember anything. Why? You may ask. Simply because he started drinking so much to get rid of that perceived stage fright that he just couldn’t stop after a while. Now I’m not saying stage fright doesn’t exist but you certainly can rewire your mind to think these pre-show jitters isn’t exactly fear just excitement.
SLAYING THE DRAGON
Now that we’ve learnt that not all fears are bad, in fact fear can be usuallty taken as a signal to take some sort of action and also we can start labelling fear as excitement to help us out. And the last thing that I now wanna talk about is “Slaying the Dragon”.
Now, if you’re not familiar with the hero’s journey, most great stories, books, or movies usually has the hero or the protagonist go through some sort of journey. And after going through his long and hard journey there comes a time when he has to face the biggest enemy of his life. And that’s the part where he has to slay the dragon. If he has no fear before he gets in front of the dragon that story wouldn’t be as exciting. But the hero faces his enemy in spite of fear. He chooses to act and then slay the dragon which helps him move along further in the plot line. The bigger the dragon, the bigger the victory.
So, if we want to move along further in our lives, we have to act in spite of fear and do whatever that fear is stopping us to do. If we just listen to our fear it’s just gonna hold us back and it’s never gonna let us succeed. Remember “Fear = Signal” it’s the signal to help you to grow. So the biggest remedy for fear is take actions!
We suppress our goals and dreams before we can even get to it because of fear of failure, rejection, etc. But don’t let that fear stop. Accept the signal, reframe it as an excitement and act upon the thing, you know what’s the right thing you need to do!
And that’s how we slay the dragon and reclaim the power of being the hero of our precious life.
Don’t ever let fear stop you!
P.S. Watch this video to revise everything we just talked about.