Facing Fear

2020-08-17T07:00:00.000Z

Fear. It's an emotion we experience to avoid harm - real, physical, or imagined.

Fear is typically considered a negative emotion. But it is essential to keep us safe from potential danger. If you lived in the wild, fear keeps you alive when there are wolves around. Fear pulls you back from taking unnecessary risks to keep you alive.

Today, we live in a world vastly different from the world of our ancestors. Instead of food scarcity, we have food abundance. Instead of lions in the tall grass, we have animal control and gardeners.

However, we have the same fear-driven brain. Though many of the natural threats are gone, our minds are still looking for things to fear to protect us from harm.

A lot of our fears today stem from the future and uncertainty. We create imaginary concerns about what could happen to protect us from a bad situation. This fear inhibits us from reaching our full potential.

To become more significant than our fears, we need to look at our fears dead in the eyes. We cannot just push it into a dark recess of our minds, where it festers. We must have the courage to confront why we feel so fearful. Only through a thorough self-examination of our fears can we truly understand ourselves.

Confronting Your Fears

If you feel persistent fear daily, take a moment, and examine these feelings.

Get a piece of paper, and write down:

  • The Fear
  • The Cause of the Fear
  • How Fear Affects Your Life:
    • Self-esteem
    • Personal Relationship
    • Material
    • Emotional
    • Social
    • Security
  • What Shortcoming Led to this Fear?
    • Selfish
    • Dishonest
    • Self-seeking
    • Inconsiderate

Take some time and provide thoughtful answers to each of these questions.

When you can get to the root of your problem, you can see why you feel fear and how it is detrimental to your life.

Once you have thoroughly analyzed yourself, see how you can overcome these fears by confronting your shortcomings.

Don't be afraid to be transparent and honest in this exercise. No one is judging you here.

We, as human beings, struggle with fears and doubts. No one is entirely free from fear. But we should all strive to be better people, which starts by looking at how we can get better.

Reaching For Our Potential

Our highest selves live on the other side of fear. We don't pursue our passions because of fear. We are afraid of taking risks because we don't know how everything plays out.

But imagine if we were able to address our fears, overcome our shortcomings, and start living our best possible lives. Wouldn't this be beautiful?

Everyone has that something that they've been putting off for years. Maybe its a trip around the world. Perhaps it is starting your business. It might even be as simple as starting your own YouTube channel. Whatever it is, ask yourself why you haven't done it yet.

Start replacing fear with courage. For every instance, you find that fear has held you back, find an equivalent amount of courage to overcome that fear.

Be bolder than your most convincing excuse. Start taking charge of your emotions. Get your mind into the right state. Priming your day can be as simple as exercising first thing in the morning. Or it can be jumping into a cold shower at 5 AM. Start getting excited about your life. It is your life, and there is no other life like yours.

Final Word

Fear is daunting. It is paralyzing. It causes us to doubt that we are worthy of a good life. But on the other side of fear is all the things that we want. If we are daring enough to venture out, we can taste the true potential of life. In the words of John Rockefeller, "Do not be afraid to give up the good to go for the great." Let's shed fear and step into our best selves. You owe it to yourself to experience what a great life could be.