Overcoming Your Fears
What is fear?
"an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm." - Definition from Oxford Languages
Fear is an emotion that even the most successful and respected amongst us will encounter and experience. Yet, these people do not seem to be fazed by the paralysing emotion. In fact, they leverage on their fears to accomplish amazing feats that leave us all in awe. So how can we attempt to emulate how these people deal with fear?
When you take a step back and examine, fear is an emotion that can be generalised into two types: imaginary fear driven by ego, and fear driven by real and tangible risks.
The first type of fear essentially originates from judgement by others or even your ownself, that your actions or outcomes will fall short of certain societal standards or expectations. A common faulty belief would be that your accomplishments and material belongings determines your self worth. Sadly, there will always be someone doing better off than you, causing you to fear that the outcome from your actions will be inadequate in comparison. The second type of fear can be rationalised and measured. Examples of such fear include missing a deadline, getting injured or getting things done incorrectly. Often, there are tangible countermeasures to address such fears, either to eliminate or reduce the risks it entails. It could be as simple as setting clear and realistic milestone to measure your rate of progress, wearing protective gear when doing sports or clarifying all assumptions before getting started. Now that we are able to differentiate the types of fear, how can we overcome them?
An overused advice on how to deal with fear, is to act despite of fear. Muster your courage and do it anyway. Although I believe that there are some truths to such an advice, let’s refine it further for clarity and better application.
It is important to identify which type of fear you are experiencing. If it is driven by ego, it will be helpful to understand and come to terms with yourself that you will never be able to determine the thoughts and actions by others. Neither will you be able to easily change the existing societal norms. What you can control however, is to recognise that you are unique and worthy as an individual. Instead of worrying about the “what if” scenarios, focus on identifying the real benefits you can accomplish to fuel your motivation to take action now. Ego driven type of fears will always be present, but they ought to be identified and written off.
For fears encompassing real risks, courageously taking them head on in blind faith that things will turn out well isn’t the most intelligent approach. Instead, you should take additional measures to mitigate or reduce the identified risks. This can be by making data driven decisions. If there are ways to completely eliminate the risks, that would be the ideal way of overcoming your fears. Drawing insights from my other post on the concept of modularity, explore the choice of multiple possibilities. Often than not, there are more than one approach to achieve your goals. Don’t be over fixated on pursuing just that one path. Explore numerous options, break down each option into smaller milestones. Completing them will not only build positive momentum and motivation for yourself, it will also reduce the risk of failure as you now have multiple pursuits towards your goal.
The next time you experience fear, don’t be paralysed by it. Nor should you blindly take action despite of fear. Take a deep breathe and identify the type of fear first. Remember, it is a strong unpleasant emotion that everyone will inevitably experience. How you choose to deal with it lies with you and no one else. So choose for your highest good today!