Why you need to romance with Fear???
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?
Origin of FEAR
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.
Different types of FEARS
For the purpose of our context let us understand that there are differences between Phobia vs Fear vs etc. We can keep Phobias out of this discussion. Some of the phobias might not be really impacting your day to day living. For e.g phobia about Spiders etc. You can check here the Top 100 Phobias. http://www.fearof.net/. Very interesting list.
Coming to different types of FEARS. There might be hundreds and thousands of fears exist. We mostly deal with these Top 10 fears. http://listverse.com/2011/09/30/top-10-strong-human-fears/. Interestingly, you see fear in Failure being the top of the list. This is exactly the reason many people are scared to take decisions and try new things. What really happens when you try new thing? In the worst case you might fail. What happens when you fail – it creates pain. But your mind never wants to experience any pain and it always wants pleasure. Get comfortable with pain and when you live in the present moment you will be able to notice pain as normal experience. You will also realize that as part of the nature’s complimentary nature pain and pleasure are part of the deal. You can’t really avoid one thing and try to get other thing.
Going back to the list of fears. Some of the top 10 fears are as follows. Not in any order.
- Fear of Death
- Fear of Failure
- Fear of Disease
- Fear of Rejection
- Fear of possessions
- Fear of unknown
- Fear of losing freedom
- Fear of Loneliness
- Fear of Pain
- Fear of Criticism
Let’s closely analyze all these FEARS. What are you noticing in all these? For me, all these looks like losing some thing. It can be anything. I can be losing life, respect, security, money, safety, comfort, pleasure, etc. So, fear is nothing but losing some thing. What happens when we lose some thing? It creates pain. Your brain does not want to experience pain. So, the bottom line is we need to get comfortable with pain. But how can we get comfortable with Pain? And why should we get comfortable with pain? Isn’t life about happiness? This is where the secret lies. If you live life the way we life should be live then, you would automatically experience the bliss. But, if you are just only focused on getting happiness then you would avoid all kinds of pains and fears and eventually you only experience very limited level of happiness.
I will talk about 25 different solutions which will help you to romance with your fears.
Solutions to Face your FEARS
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.
Tell me which of these solutions you typically use? Or you may have some other solution you use.
Out of the 25 solutions from yesterday’s blog, I will discuss about top solution in this blog.
Solution # 1 – Meditation
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.
Solution # 2 -Living in Present/Mindfulness
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.
Solution # 3 – Build Optimism
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.
Solution # 4 – GET COMFORTABLE with PAIN
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 !!.
Solution # 5 – LOVE IS THE ANTIDOTE FOR FEAR
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.
Solution # 6 – LIVE FOR BIGGER CAUSE/PURPOSE
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.
Solution # 7 – ELIMINATE ROOT BELIEF
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.
Solution # 8 – LIVE YOUR CORE VALUES
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.
Solution # 9 – BE YOURSELF
“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 !!.
Solution # 10 – FACE ONE FEAR EVERY DAY
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.
Solution # 11 – VISUALIZATION
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.
Solution # 12 – DEEP BREATHING
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.
Solution # 13 – BUILD PHYSICAL STAMINA
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 !.
Solution # 14 – EXPERIENCE FEAR IN DETAIL
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.
Solution # 15 – ACTION is ANTIDOTE for FEAR
“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 !!
Solution # 16 – CBT (COGNITIVE BEHAVIORAL THERAPY)
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.
Solution # 17 – PERSONAL COACHING
Personal/Life Coaching is gaining prominence in India slowly. This service is reasonably well known in many of the western countries. Personal coach role is very different from a physiologist. Phycologist (through CBT) would be beneficial when you are facing with specific and deep rooted fears/phobias. When we are dealing with fears related to key changes/decision/transformation, coach would be more beneficial. It is very difficult to get a good coach who can bring holistic understanding. Most life coaches provide first session as a free session so you can try out different coaches to get a feel for the right coach for you. A good coach will take accountability for your transformation or change and work with you until you get the desired outcomes.
Solution # 18 – RUB SHOULDERS WITH BRAVE HEARTS
Your environment has a huge impact on everything – how your beliefs will shape up, your emotions and your behaviors. Do you know why people from certain nations or regions or places bring more leadership and courage than others? It is all about environment. Even though it is very difficult to change your core DNA after very early age, it will still hugely benefit moving with people who have high level of courage and guts. Negative and fearful people will suck the energy from you and whereas brave hearts will give you energy. You will be average of five people with whom you roam around. Period.
Solution # 19 – KNOWELEGE IS POWER – STYUDY DEEP ABOUT YOUR FEAR
This statement looks very boring and old. Right? Not really. Fear ideally should not exist if one has good knowledge in that specific area. Did you notice you get angry and worried when you don’t know what you need to do about some problems or situations? Why? Because your brain does not know what to do and how to go about next. Hence it will try to ventilate through the emotions like anger and worry. Pick up the fear that is stopping you and making you uncomfortable and then study about it in detail. And talk to the people who have crossed the similar situations. You would gain good knowledge and there by you will be able to face the fear with power. It is real fun to dig deep into fear!!
Solution # 20 – JOURNALING
Any fear would have power when it is sitting inside the mind. The moment you take it out and go into the details like what you are believing in, what stories you are telling yourself, what emotions you are experiencing, etc then you will get the complete hold on your fear. In other words, you will get all the building blocks of fear. This solution is somewhat similar to “EXPERIENCE FEAR IN DETAIL” solution. But the difference with journaling is you are going to write it down in detail and hence the impact to bring awareness on fears is much higher. Also, when you write it down you would act as if you are watching someone else’s fear. When you watch the fear from outside it will look easy and somewhat funny. It is like feeling others fears does not make sense for you !!. Start typing about anything that you are concerned about. Trust me with in 10 mins of journaling you will either find out what is holding you back and/or come up with a creative solution. Try it out today !!.
Solution # 21 – STRONG FAITH IN GOD/INVISIBLE FORCE
Huh.. Does this sound like some religious preaching?. We often have tendency to ignore or call it as rubbish anything we have not experienced yet. Having faith in God (or whatever equivalent) come into this category for so called rational thinkers. I am sure you know the extreme stories of doing unbelievable acts on the name of God. It could be fire walking, killing themselves, wars, recovering from a deadly disease (so called miracles) etc. How is it possible? Some people freeze even to give a small presentation to a group of unknown people. It is only possible when you completely outsource your fear/doubt to the other party (in this case God) and there is no other solution that is as powerful as this. In the first place, there is no fear when you have strong faith. But rational thinkers would have problem with this outsourcing business. I think it is really worth to outsource when you don’t have the required capability. This cannot be done theoretically and only possible through experience.
Solution # 22 – RE-WRITE YOUR STORY
This statement looks very boring and old. Right? Not really. Fear ideally should not exist if one has good knowledge in that specific area. Did you notice, you get angry and worried when you don’t know what you need to do about some problems or situations? Why? Because your brain does not know what to do and how to go about next. Hence it will try to ventilate through the emotions like anger and worry. Pick up the fear that is stopping you and making you uncomfortable and then study about it in detail. And talk to the people who have crossed the similar situations. You would gain good knowledge and there by you will be able to face the fear with power. It is real fun to dig deep into fear!!
Solution # 22 – RE-WRITE YOUR STORY
We continuously tell stories to ourselves. Just observe how many stories you tell yourself in a single day. Stories get formed through our beliefs, experience and emotions. Unfortunately these stories are most often negative stories – why you can’t do certain things because of blah blah blah… Most successful people would visualize and tell optimistic stories and that is why they their stories becomes realities. Same thing happens for negative story tellers, i.e they their negative stories are prove to be true.
You can use the “Journaling” solution to write down story and you would realize that your story would look like story. Write your negative story to positive one if you want to conquer your fear. Also, some of the main stories would be inherited (from parents, friends, environment, etc ) ones. Don’t believe in others stories and delete others stories from your library. Focus on re-writing your own stories.
What are your stories? Share your experience on how you are changing your stories.
Solution # 23 – REFRAMING
As per Wikipedia “Cognitive reframing is a psychological technique that consists of identifying and then disputing irrational or maladaptive thoughts. Reframing is a way of viewing and experiencing events, ideas, concepts and emotions to find more positive alternatives”
Reframing is also heavily used in NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programing). Reframing mainly focus on shifting the perceptive from negative to positive. Based on whatever fear you face you can always use the reframing technique. In fact, in all the solutions what you are indirectly doing is reframing. But without labeling it as reframing might take long time. So knowing framing technique will help to get the positive outcome quickly.
- TAKE OWN DECISIONS
Sometimes fear comes when you are not used to take your own decisions. Underneath every fear there is a decision making related resistance and vice versa. So longer you avoid taking decisions then more weaker your decision making muscle would be. Take more decisions and experience failure or success and repeat the process. After some time, your thought on fear will fade away as you get used to experience both failure and success. One of the main fear people experience is fear of failure. This is the reason some people have hard time taking decisions. Start small. Start taking decisions based on your own thought process and build your decision-making muscle.
- SEPARATE YOURSELF FROM YOUR BODY
This is the last solution (just as number and not based on any specific criteria) in our list of 25 solutions. For every problem solution can come any dimension – physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. This solution is somewhat coming from spiritual area. Some of the advanced yogis or elevated people talk about they separating body from themselves. What this really means is that they can separate themselves from the physical body and observe all the drama (anxious symptoms, etc) that happens with in the body. On the extreme side if you really believe in this concept then you almost don’t have fear of death. I understand this looks like somewhat esoteric but the point is the most fearless people (esp spiritual people) are able to do control their body and do many things mainly based on this belief. This solution might not be easy for everyone to practice but at least I want to call out this powerful solution in case if you can practice it.
Conclusion
When I had started on this blog, I did not think that this will go into these many solutions and run as a series of blogs. Thanks for reading the series (part or full). You would have got bored a bit and lost some interest in between. But I wanted to provide the comprehensive information so that it can referenced forever by whoever needs it. At this same time, it is not practical for people to practice all 25 solutions and in fact it is not required. Based on the kind of fear you are dealing with, personality, preference and level of thinking you can chose which solution best works for you. Even if you can practice just ONE solution you can see phenomenal difference ( I believe so). Any theory is utter waste unless we practice it. Unlike any other thing, practicing on romancing with fear is real fun. Try it out !!.
I want to conclude this series with few thoughts.
Normally people don’t like to use the word “Fear” because it is negative and more than negative it may appear like “Weak”. One of my friend suggested to change the name of the blog to something else to so that it might appeal better instead of fear. But I wanted to keep it raw form and make it blunt and honest. Because I think most people try to use different names like “stress”,” I don’t like it”, ” I am very sensitive” , “not comfortable”, ” I have grown up like this” or “I am happy like this”, etc for the underneath fear. Our brains were designed for basic survival but we human evolution has progressed much beyond but brains had not upgraded. We have been conditioned by parents, society and our environment. Bottom line is because of various kinds of fears we may not experience sustainable joy. Go out and suck maximum juice out of life. Have fun !!.
Finally, I have two requests for you.
- Please leave your sincere and honest (without fear) comments and feedback in the blog site
- If this whole series is packaged as a small book (with some refinements), would you read this book?
Thanks again!!. Will start with new blogs . Don’t worry no long blog series soon
YK
