My 4 Insights On Overcoming Any Fear In Life
What is the right way to overcome your fears actualize your goals? Should you convince yourself that fear doesn’t exist by ignoring it? Or somehow go around it?
You know what it’s like to have fears, you’ve experienced them many times in your life. It’s never pleasant, isn’t it?
Whether you’ve been giving up on promotion opportunities or canceled your trip to Hawaii because the thought of flying takes over the possible vacation fun. Perhaps you find yourself very quiet on wok meetings, keeping yourself under everyone’s radar, even though you have a lot to contribute.
Fear happens in all sorts of life areas, but all types of fear feel quite similar in the body.
What Is Fear
Fear is an emotion. It is a physical sensation you can really experience in your body.
Many times it feels like shivering, weakness, or a sense that there is no stable ground to walk on. It can be a feeling of shrinkage.
The energy of fear is a powerful force that always you down, inwards, and backward. It prevents you from moving upwards, open up, expand and thrive.
The result of fear is stagnation. This is true for most people who haven’t learned how to overcome their fears and step forward.
If you don’t handle your fears the healthy way, you end up feeling lost, trapped, and stuck. You may also find yourself developing anxiety and chronic depression later on.
Fear is something you can’t fight against, because we are programmed, biologically, to experience it. But you can manage it differently.
It is all about the way you respond to fear and interact with its presence, rather than disowning it.
Stop Fighting Your Fears
Fear never shows up for the purpose of harming you or make you suffer. It’s the complete opposite, actually. Fear arises to convey you a message, to tell you something about yourself.
Fear is a communication form that floats to your consciousness from deep within. It tells you “wait! stop for a second. Before you do it, before you move forward and grow, I want you to pay attention to something”.
When fear knocks on the door, it comes with a sensation that is very hard to ignore.
But unfortunately, our social conditioning taught us to go against our fears.
Many times, the way we grew up, we were conditioned to believe that fear is a weakness, that it is something to be embarrassed about.
You were taught to think that fear is something you better not show or feel. It was always presented in a negative connotation. We were told things like “stop crying. You have nothing to be afraid of”.
Fear was, in fact, oppressed and condemned.
So instinctively, you have shrunk yourself only to those parts in you who have no fear.
That is why you haven’t experienced any growth and expansion. Because you conducted yourself in a way that is limited to the fearless parts, you reached a point that you are stuck and helpless.
See, fear on its own is not a blockage. It only pinpoints the blockages that exist inside you.
It is not attacking you, but communicates with you. So instead of ignoring fear, try to understand it and see where it’s coming from.
As I said earlier, it pops up, seemingly out of nowhere, to tell you about something important you need to pay attention to, so you can actually move on to the next stage.
Re-parent The Inner Child
When children are scared, what they need most, is an adult to love them. They need someone to explain to them why they are afraid, and that will provide them the validation that it is ok to feel this way.
That type of nurturing response helps them to calm down and reduces the fear rapidly.
But instead, most of the caregivers’ reactions are not as ideal. They made us feel that something about us is wrong, that we should be ashamed of ourselves to experience this natural, biological, physical, feeling.
So as you can see, it is not only the fear that is bothering you, but also all the toxic social conditioning that told us it is wrong to feel fear.
Now, as an adult, you have the opportunity to become that loving, gentle, parent to the child within you. Every time you notice fear is rising, view it as an opportunity to explore yourself.
Don’t resist it, but welcome it.
For example, if you’re afraid to give a presentation at school, don’t berate yourself and call yourself “loser” or “stupid” or anything else that brings you down. Learn to give yourself that internal approval you truly need.
Hug your inner child and reassure it: “of course you are afraid to feel powerful. It wasn’t safe for you to express your authenticity as a child. You got punished, ridiculed, and was yelled at, so you learned that who you are — is no good.
You are not so terrified that if you embrace your power and be seen and visible, people will reject you and laugh at you. Because that is what you used to experience long ago, and that hurt you deeply. That is the part of you that is so scared.”
I invite you to check out my relaxing inner child meditation here.
The Power of Understanding The Source of Your Fear
As you understand the part of you that is afraid, a real transformation begins. You start to become whole.
The understanding of the root of the fear is very meaningful and healing. You show the inner child that it is not alone. You show it that you are aware of it, acknowledge it, and understand your past hurt. And that fear is the result of the internal intelligence that is trying to protect you from further harm.
Once you finally recognize the fear, identify it, understand it, and communicate with it with honesty, the fear starts to loosen its grip.
Something in you let go. The dynamic in you changes. At this point, the mature part of you begins to call the shots, rather than having the fear dominating you.
Fears Are Like Waves
Fear, just like any other emotion, operates like a wave in your body. Anxiety appears in us like waves. At first, they rise up, reach a peak, and then start to descend. Just like any wave, they eventually calm down.
When you try to fight your fear and anxiety, they get stuck in you and don’t move. But when you start to get curious about them, allowing them to be, they eventually pass.
When they finally dissipate, you start increasing your capability to be with yourself and manage your emotional world. Manage, not in a sense of control, but in a way of working with them.
Try not to resist your fear and tell yourself “there is nothing to be afraid of”. The more you resist it and argue with it, the more it will intensify.
Instead of pushing it away, talk to it genuinely. Figure out why it is always showing up. This approach will only make you love yourself more, and out of this love, you can take action, despite the fear’s presence.
The secret is that you meet the anxiety, without trying to influence it or change it, it diminishes on its own after it reaches the peak, just like the waves.
If you want a boost, then make sure to check out my mind-shifting formula to move through fear.
Take Small Steps
When you give room to the emotions in you to open up and flow through you, they don’t get trapped in you and go away shortly after visiting. In addition, talking to your inner child with words of validation and empathy can have a tremendous effect on soothing your anxiety.
These super powerful things will gradually allow you to take small steps to move forward and grow.
Why? Because the fear will stop being so dominant and you’ll know how to manage your emotional world. Then, you will feel ready to take small steps towards your goal. You will no longer have that strong force inside you that stops you from making progress.
Take small, consistent, steps that don’t paralyze you. Break it down into tiny pieces.
If you face huge internal resistance, break it down some more. Then — act.
As you gain more experiences, you will feel ready to move on to the next stage. That is how it works, you get comfortable in one level and then climb up to the next one.
In Summary
You can’t get rid of fear through forceful effort. That will only make you more anxious, stiff, and stressed.
Fear, in nature, has one purpose — to warn you from danger.
Your fear was created because of a painful experience. It was born within you to protect you, and all it needs from you is to understand it.
As you wholeheartedly understand it, your entire attitude towards it shifts. When that happens, the fear finally lets go and you can bring yourself to overcome it. Your nervous system will calm down as you stop convincing it to go away.
Fear only requires your acknowledgment. So try to understand it deeply and not see it as something separate of the self. You are not its victim, and it is actually here to help you.
