Self and Life Mastery - NeoStrategy - Page 4

Root of the fear (in fact for anything) is the corresponding belief you are holding. Based on the belief you start behaving certain way. So, if you must eliminate the belief then what you do? If you have enough self-awareness on your thoughts and behaviors, then probably you can change it by yourself. But that is not that easy mainly because most people are not self-aware about the dis empowering/negative belief they are holding on. Even if they are aware about these it is difficult to eliminate them as these beliefs might have rooted during the childhood times. This is where CBT helps significantly. Unfortunately, in many societies people hesitate to see psychologist because they think that others might see them as weak or some problematic. And they continue to live their life carrying the same old beliefs and curse on the planets and destiny. Good news is now a days more awareness is coming on taking help from psychologists. CBT is very powerful and effective to remove any blocks provided you get a good psychologist.

“Fear could paralyze. Action was the antidote.” – Ken Follett

Most often fear becomes stronger when you hesitate to act. I think the real fear is to act and if you act the fear loses its power automatically. Also, once you start moving forward with decision and action you would realize that the fear is the illusionary and the action is real. I feel we try to hide under the name of fear or something else just to avoid action. Why? Action can create discomfort/pain. That is why as I mentioned in one of the earlier solution that getting comfortable with pain is very important. Also, once you start getting into the habit of action then you automatically focus on action and not on the fear. And when you focus on action your creative solutions will open simultaneously. Take any fear you have and just to try take massive action without listening to your self-talk. See what happens to that fear !!

Whenever you experience fear observe your thoughts, how your body is responding, how your breath is changing and the kind of emotions (of course negative emotions) rolling. Get deep into each of these areas and observe them deeply. Once you observe deeply you would realize that your mind and body are acting certain way based on the intensity of the fear. You would understand that you are getting stuck with this very uncomfortable experience and not able to move forward to take decision, action and think clearly. Practice this experiencing fear in detail for your fears and you will get comfortable with the uncomfortable experience. Soon you will be able to conquer your fears one by one. It becomes kind of norm to feel uncomfortable but the biggest difference is you move forward unlike earlier.

I have experimented this . I went for paragliding near Himalayan mountains (near Dharmasala). I have never done much of adventurous sports earlier. I felt nervous initially. I tried to implement the theory a bit into practice. I have noticed how my body reacted initially in detail and after some time I got some comfort and jumped ahead finally. It was very scary when the pilot tried to do some sudden jerks in the middle to create “excitement”. But at the end it was very much fun and got some comfort.

We all know the relation between body and mind. You can take either body route or mind route to conquer fears. Swami Vivekananda was a very big advocate of having a strong body. Here we are talking about body route. Having a strong body and strength has a huge impact on how you think and take decisions. For a moment, assume that you are sad and dull then how would your posture will be? Your head will be down and your shoulders will be loose and down. What kind of thoughts do you think you will get when you are in this posture? Of course negative thoughts. When you are in this dull posture the amount of oxygen you take will be less and there by less energy for positivity. Have you seen how people with strong body walk? Their head will be up and they walk strong and head up. There by very less room for negative thoughts and fear. Next time, after your workout try to feel low and dull. Not possible !.

Whenever you face any fear your breathing becomes very shallow. Once your breathing becomes shallow then rest of the organs becomes very tight and results in experience of fear. This is a very common technique you see everywhere. Google on how to conquer fear and you will find this as one of the common technique. Once you get lots of oxygen then your body and mind becomes very calm. Once you become calm you automatically start thinking clearly, calmly and logically. You would also get internal energy to face any challenge and take decision. Also, lot of emotional toxins will get eliminated through breathing. But still I would consider this breathing solution as more like basic and easy step. If you practice breathing regularly then some structural changes will happen and that will give more of impactful benefit. But most often people try to follow these kinds of technique when they face fear. Just doing breathing at the time of facing any fear won’t work much.

When you think about any fear you mostly run a movie inside your mind. Through visualization you can change your movie/images. Visualization is a very powerful tool. The more you run negative pictures in your mind the stronger your brain becomes in running them. So, you have to reverse your pictures through very strong repetition of positive images. Take any fear you are running in your mind then create a positive picture until it becomes the default picture.

This is my favorite one. This does not necessarily a big fear kind of activity, it can be anything that your mind is resisting and you are not comfortable doing it. Most of often these kinds of tasks what would produce most value in your day. This exercise will make you very strong and make you very comfortable with uncomfortable things. Do this exercise for 30 days to inculcate this as habit. You will see how stronger you become on daily basis.

“Be yourself” is a common thing you would hear now a day. What does this really mean ? Being yourself is about knowing yourself (likes , dislikes, emotions, values, strengths, etc)  and living as who you are. How this will help conquering fear? Similar to the core values deviation when you are not living as you are then the fear arises. The more you live out of sync then more fear will come. There by you lose your inner strength. Never try to be someone else and it will make you very weak. Over the period your environment and people around you would have tried their best to make you as someone else. Come out of it even it is very late in your life  !!.

Fear comes when you are not living your core values (core beliefs). Most courageous people are very authentic and they live their core values. Who comes to your mind when you have to think about a courageous leader? There are many of course. For me, Mahatma Gandhi comes to my mind. All his strength he got by living his core values to the most. When you live your core values nothing can scare you and not even death. Read about any of the world top leaders and you will understand this very well. Nature has inserted a very beautiful mechanism with in us to tell us if we are living our values or not. When you comprise on your values your internal system will tell you and that why you will be unhappy when you are not living your values. When you are in sync with values you will be the happiest and courageous person.

Fears are driven fundamentally by a belief. In fact, each and every thing you experience in life is based on the beliefs you have built in consciously or unconsciously. You take any fear and go to the root of it then you can end up finding the root belief. When the outcome you are expecting deviates from the root belief then the fear arises.  Let’s say you have the fear of failure. What is fear of failure for you? What is the belief you have on fear of failure? You may have belief like “when you fail others will laugh at you” or “you should never fail” or “failure means you not worthy enough”, etc. Question your beliefs deeply. Then you will realize that those dis empowering beliefs are not serving you and eliminate those beliefs to remove fear.