Self and Life Mastery - NeoStrategy - Page 5

Have you seen any one talking about fears who are pursuing bigger dreams and purpose? Of course, everyone feels the fear unless the person is a psychopath or really elevated “yogi”. But the point is when you have a bigger cause (most often beyond your benefit) then fears can’t stop them. Why? Because the benefits of your purpose outweigh too much the fears you experience. That’s why great leader in field are not worried about fears. Their purpose is beyond fears and pains.

Does this statement look like a cliché? What is opposite of Fear? It is not courage. It is love. If you have pure love or passion towards anything then there is no room for fear. Let’s say some one comes and tells you that they are starting a new venture or new career then if you do not have same level of passion for it then your mind will come up with all kinds risks, problems, pains, etc.. Why it so? Because you do not love as much as other person is loving his/her pursuit. Start loving your pursuit and increase it gradually until you are really  in love with it. But if you say it is difficult to build love when there is no love at all then it is not worth pursuing it.

Actually, the title of this solution should be “GET COMFORTABLE with FEAR” but I chose to call it as “GET COMFORTABLE with PAIN” for a reason. When you experience any fear it creates some kind of emotional discomfort/pain. And this pain is what will make you hold back. So, if you can manage this pain then you will be able to move forward and the fear will lose its strength and it would disappear. But if you have less threshold limit for pain then you would back out immediately and run away. This is what is called as “flight or fight” response. You will get into fight mode if you have high level pain threshold otherwise into flight.

Even though I wrote very high information about Meditation as the # 1 solution for conquering fear, I think most successful people in any field manage their fears by dealing with the pain very well. They would have mastered on dealing with pain. They are really comfortable with pain! You would have heard about “Feel the fear and do it anyway”. Many successful people do this either unconsciously or consciously.

How to get comfortable with pain ?. Simply practice. Whatever activity you do in daily routine increase the intensity to a level where you experience the pain. It could be in your physical exercise, work, live in discomfort condition or deal with anything that you don’t like !!. This principle is very much applied in physical fitness training and many other mental fitness related areas. Remember your mind always look for pleasure so watch out for the story it will tell you before you give up !!

At the base level fear is nothing but negative thinking. Our minds would have accumulated lots and lots of negative thoughts throughout the years. For many people the default mode of thinking would have been ‘negative’. What this means is that you naturally think negatively about any situation or event. Your brain’s neural pathways are wired to think negatively. Your brain might have the predisposed mode of negative thinking or through the accumulation of events and your way of interpretations (negatively) your brain would have reached to the default negative mode. So, what is the solution and how can you re-wire your brain to change the default negative mode to positive mode? It is very simple solution and but requires very good amount of effort to change the mode and you need lot of will power and persistence.

For 7 continuous days, you think only positive thoughts irrespective of what and how the situation is.  Remember this must be continuous. Even if you think one negative thought then you have to re-start 7 days’ process again. This is not very easy process given the amount of negative thought we have been thinking throughout our life. It is almost like you have to undo those many number of thoughts with positive thoughts (not necessarily exact number).  Good news is this is very much doable. You most probably will fail many times and you have to re-start many times but it is really worth doing it. There are tons of benefits in thinking positively and we all know the benefits and I don’t need to write about them here again. The main key take away for you should be – you need to be aware that your brain takes over to negative thinking without much of your control unless you consciously change the default negative mode to positive mode.

Also, after you successfully convert into positive mode be watchful about negatives news and negative people. Try avoiding negativity and move with most optimistic people. You have to keep accumulating positive energy. It is very easy to get into negative loop and your brain might get good entertainment in accumulating negative things since it has the deep habit of negativity. You have to be extra cautious to all these things.  In reality , there is very high probability that you get into negative thinking from any stressful events. Once in while you might have repeat the positive thinking exercise to cleanse any short term accumulated negative thinking.

In the previous blog, I wrote about Meditation. In this blog, I want to discuss on our solution # 2 -Mindfulness.  Most often Meditation and Mindfulness are used very interchangeable. Even though it is very much interlinked I think there is a difference in terms of how they practiced and implemented. Meditation is something you practice for some duration of time while Mindfulness is something you have to be Mindful of whatever you do in yours awaken hours.

If you google on “Mindfulness” you will get tons of articles on benefits of Mindfulness. This is talk about in all most all areas of life – health, sports, management, leadership, personal productivity, psychology and spirituality (of course), even for criminals (to change them) etc. Living in present moment and being in mindfulness is the ultimate solution for majority of human problems not just for facing fears. But then why this is not taken as major solution. Because this feels very bland and boring.

I am not going to talk about all the beautiful benefits of Mindfulness here.

So our topic -How Mindfulness will help in conquering Fear? Most often fear is an anticipated thing in the future or past memory. Normally, mind has a great tendency to either dig in the past or think about the future. So, if you want to eliminate the feeling about a fear then you need to stay present. When you stay present you will be able to clearly feel the emotions, thoughts and self-talk. Once you start practicing this over and over again most often you will realize that some standard script is running your mind that is making you fearful.  Also, when you are in the present moment your creative expression kicks in then automatically you will become solution focused rather than fear focused.

The concept of Mindfulness is difficult to make you understand unless you practice it consciously. Start practicing Mindfulness for one full day and see the difference. The most fears you experience will diminish because you are not thinking about past or future. Take one fear you currently have and try to experience it mindfully and you will see the magic.