Everybody experiences fear. All that heart palpitations, sweaty palms, racing thoughts, awkward expressions, spinning head and queasy feeling in the stomach...Whether it is the fear of spiders, of heights, of networking or of public speaking....and the list goes on, we cannot run and hide from fear. FEAR finds us and it is fruitless trying to eliminate it. So, that begs the question: How can we overcome our fears? But before we can attempt to surmount this great challenge, it is always helpful to first understand what fear really is, by getting to the root of it. We cannot possibly solve any problem without a proper comprehension of what it is really that we are confronted with. Studying about fear is what I have been slightly obsessed with recently - especially when fear itself seems to be holding us up from taking the necessary actions and moving forward. Yes, debilitating fear that makes us feel small and inferior, therefore constantly settling us down for mediocrity.
The most common explanations on fear out there are the breakdowns of its acronym; it can either be "Face Everything And Rise" (bold manner), or, "Forget Everything And Run" (cowering manner). More metaphorically speaking, it has also been broken down to as "False Expectations (or, Evidence) Appearing Real" - which suggests that it is something of our own making. There are three common themes of fear:
(i) Fear of Failure or Rejections: For instance, when starting a business, speaking in public or asking for promotions. These are examples of situations where we must do certain things that are outside of our comfort zones, for which the outcomes are largely unknown or unfamiliar. This kind of fear may keep us from experiencing new things and advancing to the next level of life.
(ii) Fear of Success: As opposed to (i), people with this kind of fear often worry or stress about how they could consistently keep up with their past achievements, up a notch and produce even better results. For examples, writing the second book after the first book made the #1 New York's Times Bestsellers list, or closing another multi-million sales deal with a valued client.
(iii) Fear of Change: This literally means do not break anything that is working, even though what is currently working may no longer serve the purpose. For individuals, this may mean breaking the deep-seated beliefs and patterns, while for organizations, this may mean restructuring or reorganization - where in both contexts, breed a lot of resistance from people involved and hence a tremendous effort to mobilize the change required.
Fear, like anger or pleasure, is a form of emotion and it is always in relation to something. Just as it will arise, it will subside on its own. Since emotion is a product of our own thoughts triggered by the external environment, so does fear. What usually happens when we are gripped by fear, is that our thoughts proliferate by means of imaginary scenes in our minds, continue to feed the fear as we identify ourselves with it, that it grows bigger and stronger than what it should be. In other words, we are actually affected most not by the fear as an emotion, but the idea of fear itself. This idea of fear is informed by one's memories of the past, which then tends to modify one's experience in the present now, and with an outcome somewhat projected into the future. As an example, a traumatic experience of you coming face to face once with a huge cobra king in the woods will likely conjure up images of the scene the next time you think of revisiting the woods, which then creates the fear in you, like pulsating temples, and keeps your alert all-time high on the possibility of it happening again that you might want to avoid it altogether. Therefore, fear either concerns something that has already happened or something that has yet to happen and possibly might not even happen. So if we can let go of the idea of fear and understand that fear does not exist in the moment, it allows us to stare back at that which we call 'fear', do nothing more than observing it until it dissolves. As the saying goes, 'allow your thoughts to come and go, just don't serve them tea'. This way, instead of being influenced by the past memories, helps us to focus specifically on the challenge before us and objectively tackling it. This is what Susan Jeffers recommended to just 'feel the fear and do it anyway'. Embracing the fear becomes the first step towards conquering it.
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