How to overcome your fear?
What is the fear?
Have you asked yourself a question what fear is? You might answer anxiety, scarcity, nervousness, phobia, unknown, and the most basic emotion which is fear of death. Joseph O’Connor an author of the book Free Yourself from Fears with NLP: Overcoming Anxiety and Living Without Worry claims that fear is a basic emotion that protects us. It shows up as an unpleasant sensation that arises when we think we are in danger. Fear exists in our thoughts or as an idea that has no physical existence. The feeling of fear stems from a process that takes place in a body which is activated by our senses: sight, smell, hear, feel, and touch. The senses might get activated outside circumstances or by our inner thoughts and visualisations. It is said that you do not have a fear, it is something that you create when your brain perceives that you are in danger or you might be in danger when you think of a future event.
F.E.A.R. is very often interpreted as an acronym for
‘False evidence appearing real’
‘Face everything and run’
‘Face it, explore it, accept it, and rise above
Categories of fear
Harold S. Kushner the author of Conquering fear: living boldly in an uncertain world claims that fear can be divided into two categories realistic, and unrealistic. The first one, keeps you alert, therefore, safe in particular situations. For example, when you see a snake, it is normal to feel scared. The second one could cause tension, paralysis or closeness. This type of fear creates an irrational situation that distorts your perception. Many times when you hold to irrational fear it comes from a deeper, underlying fear that is the source of the problem.
Whenever your perception is clouded by fear you come up with different stories of how you see your situation. Usually, it manifests by words we say to us:
· I can’t
· I don’t
To solve the problem:
· Address your fear - name it, what it is
· Accept your fear - imagine that your fear stands in front of you, take a deep breath and invite it for a conversation
· Acknowledge your fear – appreciate it for giving you protection and let it go
· Dissociate from your fear – since you know that your fear is outside of you, realise that it is not real, it is your creation, let it disappear, you are safe without it
Master your emotions
Nevertheless, it is not our aim to eliminate the fear from your life forever but to master our emotions. It boils down to you, how you are going to perceive fear that you experience. As mentioned by Steve Chandler author of Fearless. Creating the courage to change the things you can you think that to be successful you need time, money and change of your circumstances. As a matter of fact, it is always about the fear that prevents you from achieving what you want. You might say:
I am afraid that I will not have time to work on setting up my business
I am afraid that when I express my authenticity they will not understand me
I am afraid that I will lose my money when I invest in this relationship
However, to understand how to overcome fear in your life you must acknowledge the role of thought. Since every feeling begins with a thought, therefore, fear starts in your head. In this case, what is missing is the call for courage. Susan Jeffers in her book Feel the fear and do it anyway points out the example of disempowering thought as “if only” scenario. This indicates that there is a payoff in the situation that makes you stuck. Payoff shows all the benefits of staying in the same situation and not moving forward in life.
Example:
A lady complains about her place of work which she doesn’t like anymore and would like to get away from. She says:
If only I had better skills, I would find more opportunity in a job market
The payoff, in this case, was to stay comfortable in the same job, not to be rejected by potential companies, security, although she did not like the job it was easy. When she realised her payoff, she could make a decision: to remain at her job and feel miserable, or change her attitude towards the job and like it, or apply for the ideal job.
Actually, the lack of making decision happens to be one of the biggest fear that prevents you from achieving what you want in life. In fact, not choosing what you want is also making a decision, a passive one that will leave you where you are stagnated. This comes from the worry that you will come to a wrong decision. But what does the wrong decision mean? You might say, the wrong decision means the one that will take something away from you such as money, friends, position, a lover you name it and that would lead to a mistake. So what? Don’t we learn through making mistakes?
Albert Einstein said: “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new”.
Given the fact that you have a need to be perfect and a tendency to control your outcome, it might be difficult to bring a change or take on a new challenge. Your constant worry is unnecessary, it doesn’t’ work for you at all. When you use “what if” scenario you only do a great disservice to yourself.
Example:
What if it doesn’t work out the way I plan?
What if I go this way and that happens?
That sounds like a loose-loose situation, however, there is a different option to choose a win situation. It will emerge when you step back and notice that there are two paths in front of you waiting for you to choose. Each of them is good, none of them are bad. Both of them will bring you some gifts in the form of experience, learning, growth, as well as the discovery of who you are, what you would like from life and what you don’t want. Therefore, the reality is, you can only gain from making a decision instead of losing.
What would you try now if you knew you could not fail?
More than 90% of the things that we are worried about are not happening. Don’t let the things you are afraid of—failure, change, adversity, the unknown—stop you from going after the things you want most. Instead, find the courage to do what scares you. Face your fears, and you’ll uncover new and great opportunities. And it will feel good.
So how to overcome your fear?
· Understand your fear, raise awareness of your roadblocks and answer these questions:
What are you actually afraid of?
What story are you embracing to create roadblocks?
Mark Twain once said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened."
· Take responsibility for your life by writing down all your payoffs, then answer these questions:
What you don’t have to do?
What you don’t have to face?
What comfort do you get?
What image do you get to hold on?
· Expose yourself to fear - the idea is to gradually expose oneself to the feared situation in a way that allows one to control their fear at each step. For example, if you are afraid of dogs that are regarded as friendly, the dog owner could present you the dog for petting. You will slowly start approaching the dog and overcome the fear of being bitten by the dog
· Get back to your power – choose to hold yourself from a position of power, not from the pain, this will lead you to growth rather than stagnation, ask yourself a question:
Who would you be without your fear?
· Form new habits of courage – this will discharge fear patterns when you start doing things you are afraid to do you will realise that you have conquered your fear, and ask yourself a question:
What would courage look like?
What if you tried… and succeeded?
· Be creative learn to play like children do
What do you want to create?
· Diminish your fear – to develop trust in your ability to handle whatever comes your way (you will survive no matter what will happen) Say YES to your Universe. When you agree to things that life hands you, you let go of resistance and invite opportunities that life has to offer. This helps to relax your body, alleviating anxiety and upset so that you can take a general view of a situation, ask yourself a question:
What if there were no hurdles, no fears - what choice would you make?
· Focus on areas you have control - when you concentrate on things that you can’t change, it often makes you stressed or nervous. On the other hand, when you focus on what you can control, it gives you a sense of certainty and confidence. In particular, focusing on the process enables you to succeed. You can concentrate on effort, communication, and attitude
· Tap into your values
What other aspects of your life do you feel will be improved by accomplishing this?
How will your achieving this goal help others around you?
On the contrary, living completely without fear would be silly and even dangerous. As noted by Gavin de Becker in his book “The Gift of Fear” brushing fear under the carpet might make us emotionally blind and vulnerable to being harmed. Fear is a gift in the sense that it reminds us that we are alive and we feel.
What fear will you be addressing reading this article?
I challenge you to do something that scares you every day no matter how small it is
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References:
Chandler, S. (2008) Fearless. Creating the courage to change the things you can. Reed Publishers. The United States of America. Available from: https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Creating-Courage-Change-Things-ebook/dp/B0019DHQZ4
de Becker, G. (2000)The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence. Dell Publishing. The United States of America. Available from: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gift-Fear-Survival-Signals-Violence/dp/0747538352
Jeffers, S. (2007) Feel the fear and do it anyway. How to Turn Your Fear and Indecision into Confidence and Action. Available from: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feel-Fear-Anyway-Indecision-Confidence/dp/0091907071
Kushner, H.S. (2009) Conquering fear: living boldly in an uncertain world. Anchor Books. The United States of America. Available from: https://www.amazon.com/Conquering-Fear-Living-Boldly-Uncertain/dp/0307385892
O’Connor, J. (2005) Free Yourself from Fears with NLP: Overcoming Anxiety and Living Without Worry. Nicholas Brealey Publishing. Available from: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Free-Yourself-Fears-NLP-Overcoming-ebook/dp/B0058COD26
Rise above fear, and success is yours.