We all have fears. Some fears can be paralyzing, others are less intense, but they interfere with our plans nonetheless. In order to break free of our fears, we must understand them, and then we can disarm them by either recognizing that they’re in our heads or by progressively exposing ourselves to the things we fear until they no longer affect us.
The first thing is to understand that all fear stems from our minds. We conceive them. Then we feed them and they grow. Because they exist inside our heads, we must go there to kill them. Fear is an emotion we create by perceiving something to be a threat or danger. It is not the thing we fear that’s causing it, it is our reaction to the thing.
Since fear exists in the mind, the mind is its lair. Fear feeds solely on a diet of thoughts. Therefore, to kill fear where it lies, one need only to starve it out. In doing so, the Master can reinhabit the lair in its place.
Let us examine fear more closely. There is fear that stems from an event as it’s happening, and there is fear that stems from an event that has not yet happened. This means that the fear, in this case, is fiction! One is fearing something that may not come to pass at all. And yet we engage the fear, we fixate on it, and we feed it so that it grows and grows. We often only consider the way things can go wrong. We fail to consider all the ways things might go right!
Many people fear public speaking. Maybe they think they won’t do a good job and people will think they suck. Maybe people will assume everyone is judging them. Maybe they think they will make a mistake and feel embarrassed. What would happen, then, if one were to engage the negative fears? They would likely go into a situation with all these expectations, they would be nervous and probably experience anxiety. Then because they are nervous, they mess it up and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. So we must train ourselves to rethink the situation, to put ourselves into a more positive state of mind. In this case, we can put ourselves in a better position to succeed by changing our mindset about it, first of all, and then prepare for the event so we go into it with more confidence. We focus on the things that can go right, and then through action we ready ourselves for the event so that we are not nervous about messing it up.
Reasoning vs Unreasoning Fear
One important distinction that I want to make here is the difference between reasoning fear and unreasoning fear. Reasoning fear is when we fear something that is completely understandable, and usually this means that something has a likelihood of happening. For example, there is a risk of contracting a disease by coming into contact with someone else’s bodily fluids. With reason, we can know that some people might pose less of a risk than others, so it makes sense to not be worried about, say, helping our bleeding child. Because it might be the case that we know the child is healthy. Contrast this with a stranger off the street. We do not know their medical history, and so it is reasonable to take precautions. This is reasoning fear. It makes sense. Let me give another example. If you have a toddler and stairs, it stands to reason that you don’t want the child to fall down those stairs. The fear that this may happen is typically sufficient to prompt us to put up a baby gate. Because the fear is reasonable, it is reasonable to respond by mitigating that fear. It would be foolish to do nothing and say, “It’s all in my head, because it hasn’t yet happened. It is fiction.” While technically true, it still has a likelihood of happening. It would be irresponsible to leave such a thing to chance.
What we want to focus on, then, is unreasoning fear. When we say that fear is fiction, we are talking about this kind of fear.
With this type of fear, we exaggerate the likelihood of something happening. The media knows we tend to do this, so they play on our fears. Politicians do this. Marketers do this. Urban legends tend to go viral because we are emotional creatures. We see a scary story and rather than investigate the veracity of a thing, we run with it. A lot of unreasoning fear can be mitigated and disarmed by stepping back from our immediate desire to engage the claim while we look into it. We can look at statistical data to see if our fears are founded or if things are being blown way out of proportion. So we must practice Prudence (thinking and being rational).
If fear is conceived in the womb of the mind, who then, is the Conceiver? Any thought that can be conceived can also be destroyed.
Once we begin to recognize that we are the source of our fears, we can begin to overcome them. It helps to know that our fears can, in fact, be overcome with a shift in our mindset and a bit of practice and acclimation.
Self-Awareness
As with anything, start by cultivating self-awareness of your fears and your responses to them. Keep a journal and write down your experience whenever you feel afraid. What were you afraid of? Why do think you were afraid? What did you think would happen? How did your body respond? Pay attention to how your body reacts. Common effects of fear include:
Elevated heart rate – maybe it even feels irregular
Elevated or labored breathing
Muscles feel like jelly
Muscles get tense
Excessive sweating
You feel sick to your stomach
Difficulty concentrating
Dizziness
You feel paralyzed
Difficulty eating
Dry mouth
Loss of small motor skills
Sometimes you have to push through these physiological responses. I know this because I have felt them all. Back in the mid-2000s I got it in my head that I wanted to be a UFC fighter. I competed in a few cage matches (to varying success), but no matter what, I felt these before each fight. Being locked in a cage with another human who was trying to beat the shit out of me, all while hundreds of people were watching (and probably rooting him on), was very intimidating. But I had to push through it. You feel your heart pounding in your chest and your legs start to feel like jelly. You learn to control your breathing, slow it down. Try to relax. Your muscles will stop tensing. If you feel paralyzed or your muscles start to weaken, get moving. You have to put on a confident face, no matter how much turmoil is going on inside. Be like the duck swimming across the pond. On the surface, it is gliding smoothly across the water, but underneath its feet are paddling like crazy. Most important of all, you have to keep moving forward. I made the decision to get in that cage and test my skills. I couldn’t turn back. So I sucked it up and did the best I could. I found that in every case, the fear and anxiety was by far the worst before the match got started.
Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use. — Ruth Gordon
You have three options.
To conquer fear, we have three options:
Realize we are exaggerating the danger or threat.
Gradually acclimate ourselves to the thing we fear.
Push through the fear and face it head on.
I recommend practicing all three until they become second nature. Catch yourself when you might be fearing something that isn’t really that scary, or likely.
Slowly expose yourself to the thing you feel, learn everything you can about it. Familiarize yourself with it and take away its mystery. Think about handling exotic animals in the wild. It would be easy to be skittish around creatures you’ve never seen or heard of before. But by learning everything you can about them, you would understand them, and there would be less to fear. And of course, the more time you spend with them, the less scary they would be.
You can also just dive in and meet your fears head on, which is the most discomforting path of all. It’s also the quickest path to getting over your fear. Ultimately, how you do it is up to you. But don’t let your fears dictate your life or hold you back from something you really want.
LITANY
All my fears reside in my mind. They feed on my thoughts, therefore, I choose to feed courageous thoughts instead. Because my fears originate within me, I possess the ability to overcome them. The things I fear exist outside of the present, and are therefore figments of my imagination. Fear is fiction. I turn my thoughts elsewhere.
-Janden
Leave me a comment if you’ve struggled with this.
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