Self and Life Mastery - NeoStrategy - Page 9

We all know meditation is good. Very basic thing right and especially if you are from India then we know this stuff very well (really?) but we don’t take this as seriously as some of the western countries and neuroscience research is taking.

First, thing we need to understand is Meditation is very scientific. This is not a mumbo jumbo thing. We discussed in the earlier blog about “Amygdala” which is the fear center in the brain. And to reduce the fear response in your body you need to reduce the size of the Amygdala. Let’s say if you a have weaker heart or lung then doctor will suggest you to do the cardio exercise so, that your heart and lungs becomes stronger. Similarly, to reduce the size of the Amygdala you have to do meditation. As per I know this is the only main solution to reduce the size. Only a decade ago neuro scientists have found out that the brain also can change. This was contrary to the earlier notion of your brain wiring is fixed for rest of the life. The ability of brain to rewire itself is called “neuro plasticity”.

Here is the article from Scientific American on research findings.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/what-does-mindfulness-meditation-do-to-your-brain/

“MRI scans show that after an eight-week course of mindfulness practice, the brain’s “fight or flight” center, the amygdala, appears to shrink. This primal region of the brain, associated with fear and emotion, is involved in the initiation of the body’s response to stress.

As the amygdala shrinks, the pre-frontal cortex – associated with higher order brain functions such as awareness, concentration and decision-making – becomes thicker”.

Convinced?  OK. Next time don’t look at meditation as if it is for someone in caves. Many successful people from every field practice regular mediation as part of their daily ritual. You will be surprised to find the names of the people who does regular practice. Go and search.

Apart from the change in Amygdala, through meditation you would experience the positive emotions. Positive emotions you would experience would be happiness, calm, empathy and love. These positive emotions automatically nullify any negative and fear related emotions. So with meditation you get both physical side of the benefits as well the emotional side.

You can find lots of courses and apps on meditation. You can choose what works for you. But try experimenting for a week and see the difference in your life.

Before we look at different solutions to facing your fears, let us understand the exact science first – It all starts from the brain!!.

When you feel the fear, your brain’s “Amygdala” gets activated. As soon as Amygdala receives this fear feeling it activates different responses in the body – increased heart rate, shallow breathing, sweating, high blood pressure, etc.  Amygdala looks like almond shape with in the brain. The function of Amygdala is to detect fear and make you prepared. The amount fear you experience typically depends upon the size of the Amygdala. Bigger the size the bigger the fear one will face. There are some people who are born with smaller Amygdala and these are the people who are very brave, high risk takers and into many adventurous things in life. The smaller the size lesser the feeling of fear.

It is very important that we should understand this physical aspect before we dwell into solutions to conquer fear. Also, it is very easy to tell other people that be brave, you can do anything, face the fear, etc. But if you don’t understand the science behind it, it is very difficult to conquer your fears. This is the precise reason why just motivational stuff does not work when it comes to conquering your fears.

So, what is the solution? The solution is – reduce the size of Amygdala so that you experience less fear or eliminate the fear. How to do this?

I had started reading different books on this topic and done lot of my own thinking, experimentation and analysis. Below are 25 different ways you can conquer your fears and start to romance with them. Few of the solutions like meditation, mindfulness, etc are very very effective solutions. But not every one might be ready to take this path. Solution depends upon the level of awareness and person’s readiness to try.

MEDITATION

LIVE IN PRESENT MOMENT

BUILD OPTIMISM

BECOME COMFORTABLE WITH PAIN

LOVE IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR FEAR

LIVE FOR BIGGER CAUSE/PURPOSE

ELIMINATE ROOT BELIEF

LIVE YOUR CORE VALUES

BE YOURSELF

FACE ONE FEAR EVERY DAY

VISUALIZATION

DEEP BREATHING

BUILD PHYSICAL STAMINA

EXPERIENCE FEAR IN DETAIL

ACTION IS ANTIDOTE FOR FEAR

CBT (COGINITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY)

PERSONAL COACHING

RUB SHOULDERS WITH BRAVE HEARTS

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER – STUDY DEEP ABOUT YOUR FEAR

JOURNALING

STRONG FAITH IN GOD/INVISIBLE FORCE

RE-WRITE YOUR STORY

RE-FRAMING

TAKE OWN DECISIONS

SEPARATE YOURSELF FROM YOUR BODY

There is no specific order here based on any criteria. But I wanted to provide here comprehensive list of possible solutions. In the next few blogs I will talk about some of the very powerful and effective solutions out of this list.

Which of these solutions you typically use? Or you may have some other solution you use.

If you believe Darwin’s theory, then you know we have evolved from animals. Fear has been protecting us since our animal life to save us from any threats from other animals etc. Even if you don’t believe Darwin theory, I hope you understand that Fear as an emotion has been built in as a protective mechanism. I also believe that like any other memory in our brain the fear got deep rooted in our brains from the beginning. Here is the biggest evolutionary gap between brain’s own evolution and how we moved ahead in life from animal age to information age. Brain still trying to act as if we have life threats from other animals. This is the reason even for non-life threatening events it operates as life threatening manner – high heart beats, shallow breathing and sweating, etc.

Our brain is a very sincere organ and try to sincerely protect us. But we need to educate and tell our brain that we don’t have any life-threatening situation (unless it is really so). How do we educate our brain? There are many solutions to do this. I will cover these under the solution section.

So, hopefully by now you really understand that most of the FEARS are really just to protects from potential threats. And most of the not really life threatening. This protective mechanism is the one that is really not allowing us live the life we want to live and we continue to operate still in the same old animal life.

Now let us understand little more details on different types of FEARS.

If we go and search for “different types of emotions” then we probably get list of 50+ emotions and some times it can be more. You would see different names like fear, jealousy, anger, frustration, love, joy, happiness, caring, courage, etc. and we may overwhelm with all these names and jargon. Give a deep thought and look at all these emotions. Did you find any pattern in these emotions? I believe there are only two broad categories of emotions. One is positive and other is negative. In my categorization, I would call them as love and fear. Now take any of the emotion and see if you agree with this segregation. For e.g. take anger. When do you get anger? You get anger some one hurts or violates your value or expectation. You feel that someone is taking something from you. That is losing something – nothing but fear of losing something. And take another example. Let’s say caring. What is caring? Caring is giving something. You give when you love. Convinced?

I will make up some simple formula here. Life = Love + Fear. Assume Love is always positive and Fear is a negative integer. So, if you want to have happier life then you know what you need to have more and have less.  Yes, that’s correct. More love and less fear. Then you might think why I am writing about Fear instead I could have written about Love. The reason is very simple. If I would have put the title as “How to have more Love” then your brain would think some other blah blah stuff. It is very like headlines in the newspaper. If main page has a headline called “today, we are going to have major storm” then you will immediately read and start discussing about it. Human minds are more keen towards negative things. This is the default mode that came from animal survival background.

So, coming back why we need to learn, master and romance with FEAR? because this is the emotion that will drive you down in your life. For most people fear is most dominant emotion that drives their lives.  Because fear is what will block us sucking the juice out of life.  This is what will not allow you to take decisions, actions, change, explore life and live your dream life. We have lot of stories and names to cover this emotion but bottom line is it is the fear that is stopping to move forward anything in your life. Worth exploring this emotion deeper and try to dance and romance with it?