“Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but
around in awareness.” – James Thurber
“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be
understood.” – Marie Curie
Are you more of a courageous person or someone who is often
filled with fear? Do you get intimidated easily? Do you make decisions based in
fear? Do you look toward your future in fear of what will ensue?
What is Fear?
Fear is “a
distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the
threat is real or imagined“. In other words, fear is state whereby you feel
frightened or afraid, regardless of whether you should be afraid or not. Note
the key word here is regardless. Which means even it’s possible to feel fear
even when you rightfully shouldn’t be scared.
Let us first talk about how fear came about. Fear is
actually a tool to help us escape danger. It is part of an evolutionary,
survival mechanism. When we experience fear, our adrenal glands (located
directly above our kidneys) release adrenaline into the blood stream which
causes a series of biological reactions in our body.
It increases blood and oxygen flow to our muscles so we can
run faster.
It restricts blood flow to other areas such as our stomach.
It dilates our pupils
so we can better see things around us.
This is also known as the ‘fight or flight’ mode. In this
state, our senses and reflexes become heightened and it’s easy for us to escape
real and physical danger.
However, these reactions are only helpful when we are facing
real physiological danger. They do not aid us when we are facing self-perceived
dangers which actually do not result in any physical harm. If anything, we only
become held back by such responses when we don’t need them. For example,
imagine when people get into stage fright or when they have to make a career
move in apprehension. Having increased blood flow to muscles, restricted blood
flow to stomach and dilated pupils do not help us in those scenarios. If
anything, we might make worse moves/decisions due to these biological
reactions. Imagine someone rambling off on the stage due to his/her stage
fright. Or someone making a wrong career decision as he/she could not process
the information clearly. In these scenarios, we want to be grounded so we can
deal with things logically and calmly, not become over-stimulated.
The problem is, about 99% of the fear people experience
today are non-physical fear – fear that only exists in our head. We think we’re
in danger but we really aren’t. Such fears include:
Fear of public speaking
Fear of people
Fear of strangers (e.g. introverts who find it hard to make
new friends)
Fear of authority
Fear of losing out
Fear of not failure
Fear of loss
Fear of changes
Fear of judgment
Fear of humiliation
Fear of growing old
Fear of being alone
Fear of being hurt
and more
Does any of the fears above apply to you? Chances are,
you’ll be able to relate to at least one or more of them at some point in time.
I know I definitely do – all of the above applied to me before, even if for
just a short period of time or on a small, subconscious level.
Overcoming this mental fear is what we’re focusing on in
this series. We’ll look into the root cause of fear in part-2 and how to
overcome fear in part-3. But first, let us understand why there is a need to
overcome fear itself.
Why Overcome Fear?
Maybe you might be
wondering – “Why overcome fear? I’m doing fine living the way I am right now.
Fear drives me to make decisions sometimes. Fear has kept me safe from danger.”
There are a whole
host of reasons why you should overcome fear. I’ve condensed them into 4 key
ones:
1. Fear Limits Your
Full Potential
As someone reading a site called Personal Excellence, I
trust that you believe in personal growth, becoming a becoming a better person
and living your best life. Unfortunately, being driven by fear blocks all of
that. It prevents you from growing and progressing in life.
The problem is majority of our society today vibrate at the
level of fear. In the Map of Consciousness – by David Hawkins, fear is the
fifth lowest level in the whole map of 17 levels. Not only that, fear is at an
energy level of 100, which is quite a distance below 200, the first awakening
point from being a sleepwalker. To be mired in fear means you are being held
back from rising to the higher levels of Courage, Acceptance, Love, Joy, Peace,
Enlightenment. As long as you entrench yourself off in the land of fear, you
can’t reach the higher levels of consciousness.
When you let your thoughts, feelings and decisions be driven
by fear, you are reduced to a slave of fear. I have come across people whose
lives are very centered on the theme of fear and it is a very disempowering
state to be in. Their fear drives their thoughts, feelings, decisions and
behaviors so much that their life has become a byproduct of fear, rather than
their own desires. For example, someone who is scared of changes will become
scared whenever there are changes in his/her life. He/she will scramble to
maintain the status quo and protect the illusion of safety. He/she lives in
reaction to fear, rather than proactively lead his/her life. As long as we’re
just reacting to fear, we can’t be reaching our fullest potential.
2. You Can Never Fully Run Away From Fear
It might not be
obvious, but realize that you can never fully run away from fear. Mental fear
is pervasive. As long as you let it permeate, as long as you run away instead
of dealing with it, it will always be there, haunting you in everything you do.
Running away only gives you an illusion of security – you may feel safe for a
short moment, but only for that short moment.
For example, if you see fear in point A, you can run to
point B – but the fear will catch up to you at point B in the form of other
things. You can keep running and running, but eventually you are going to find
yourself backed into a corner, with nowhere to escape. No matter how you run,
you are just living in captivity of fear. In fact, the more you run, the more
fear tries to catch up with you. When that happens, you either have to learn to
deal with it, or cower in its presence eternally and become a fraction of the
person you can be.
Since you have to deal with fear at some point, you might as
well learn to overcome fear now, rather than avoid it again and again only to
deal with it eventually. It doesn’t make sense otherwise – not only are you
draining yourself emotionally, you waste time and energy avoiding the fear.
Time is precious – you can never get back lost time. Between the 2 options:
Option A, where you run initially but need to deal with fear ultimately when you
have nowhere to run, and Option B, where you deal with feardi immediaEnergytely at feardithe
onstart, Option B clearly comes across as a more effective approach.
3. Fear Is A Waste of Your Energy
As I mentioned in
Reason #2, fear is illogical and a waste of emotional and mental energy.
Every moment you spend swirling around in fear, you are
cultivating a seed that gives rise to subsequent similar thoughts. The more you
do it, the more you are set back by it. Instead of calmly processing the
situation and rationally identifying solutions and ways forward, you are
feeding energy into something non-constructive.
Some may say this fear is what triggers them to move the
situation forward. While there have been cases where fear seems to push people
forward, a more accurate summation is that these people move forward in spite
of the fear that is present. As mentioned in the beginning of the article, fear
leads to a rush of adrenaline that gives you increased physical performance,
not increased mental performance. You can perform just as well, if not better,
without all the adrenaline that’s pumping through your body. Having more
adrenaline in your body for prolonged periods of time strains your body and
gives you jittery nerves instead. Think about how much more you can do if
you’re not spending your energy counteracting that fear and its aftereffects.
Also remember that for every moment you spend being fearful,
you have one less moment for positive thoughts and feelings, which can blossom
into a whole other spring of positive aftereffects. How would you rather spend
your time – being happy and positive, or being negative and scared? I pick the
former any day.
4. Fear Is All In Your Mind
Having mental fear is
like letting yourself be scared by a scarecrow – it looks scary and seems
scary, but it’s actually harmless.
As I’ve mentioned at the onset of the article, mental fear
is based on danger made up in your mind. This fear arises because your brain
somehow formulated a perception these non-physical dangers are real dangers –
when they are not. Let’s take public speaking as an example. Public speaking is
a top ranked fear among majority of people – even more so than death or
disease. Why are people afraid of public speaking? Realistically, speaking
publicly does not result in physical bodily harm of any sort.
Some people will point out that it’s not from the physical
harm that people draw fear from – but from the thought of slipping up, people
judging you, embarrassment that will occur, and so on. These fears are all in
your mind. Thoughts of you forgetting the speech, the presentation going wrong,
audience feeling bored, etc are all made up. None of that has happened yet.
Even if it has happened in the past, it does not mean that this is going to
happen in the future. You are in the present and the future has not occurred
yet. You are still in the position to shape the future into whatever outcome
you desire.