Why Fear Shouldn’t Be Feared
What is fear and how do we overcome it?
Psychology Today defines fear as an emotional response created by a perceived threat, which causes a change in brain and organ function, as well as in behavior.
Fear is scary.
I’m not here to tell you how to eliminate fear from your life. It’s impossible to completely eradicate fear.
I am here to hopefully give you a different perspective of fear, which will empower you to become the master of your fears and utilize it to your advantage.
What’s the purpose of fear?
From an evolutionary standpoint, fear is the reason that we’re alive to day. It’s what we owe the survival of our species to.
Back in prehistoric days, fear was what we relied on to ensure our safety and the safety of our families.
If there was a threat within our environment, like a saber-tooth tiger, fear is extremely useful to motivate us to immediately flee and find safety.
Fear shuts down our logical brain so that we can instantly act in the midst of danger.
If we had to rationalize if we should flee or fight when there was impending danger, we would already have been a delicious lunch for a predator in the wild.
This isn’t as useful today as it was in the past.
In our current society, we’re not faced with literal life and death situations every day like our ancestors.
The problem is that we treat decisions in our lives as if it were life and death situations.
Think about your dreams and what big goals you have in your life for a second.
Now think about the things you must do in order to make that dream a reality.
If you’re like most people, you probably felt an immediate dose of fear as soon as you began thinking about what you had to do in order to achieve your dreams.
It could be writing a book, speaking, quitting your job, asking for that promotion, asking to marry your significant other or starting a business.
But as soon as you began thinking about what you had to do, you were paralyzed with fear.
When thinking about bigger ideas, goals and dreams that you have, your brain is treating it like you are encountering a saber-tooth tiger in the wild.
What your brain does when a potential threat enters your environment is that it signals to your body that this is important.
It could be a life or death situation.
Thus, you begin to feel fear and you’re forced to make a decision of either fighting it or fleeing from it.
Your brain is an amazing mechanism of ensuring that you do everything possible to avoid pain.
So when you’re thinking of the big dream that you want to achieve, your brain immediately makes you feel fear because there is a potential that you could go through pain.
It’s actually inevitable. You will go through pain, but it’s more of a psychological pain instead of a physical one.
In order for you to achieve your dreams, you must grow into the person that is capable of accomplishing those things.
This means that you have to change who you are and that means there will be some growing pains.
Growing into who you need to be to achieve your dreams is like building muscle. You can’t build muscle without going through pain.
This is why your brain makes you feel fear. It knows you will have to go through pain to achieve your dreams and it will do everything it can to avoid pain.
Fear is an indication that whatever is brought to your attention is important, otherwise you wouldn’t fear it.
If it wasn’t important, you wouldn’t fear it.
Have you ever wished that you knew what decision you should make or what you should do in life?
Fear shows you the exact path you need to go on in order to grow into the person you want to become.
It’s that voice you wish you had to tell you what you need to do. It’s your personal compass to show you what you need to do.
Everything you want in life is behind what you fear.
Think about every single great accomplishment you’ve ever had.
It could have been asking for that raise, going up and introducing yourself to the love of your life, quitting your job, having your first child, or going to the interview of your dream job.
What was the feeling you had right before you accomplished that goal?
It was the feeling of intense fear immediately prior to achieving that goal of yours.
Where your deepest fears lie, all of your greatest desires hide.
So how do we face fear?
In my previous article, I wrote about the secret of how to breakthrough your psychological barriers and become limitless. It shows you exactly what you need to do to overcome all of your fears in order to accomplish everything you want in life.
In a nutshell, the reason why we become paralyzed from fear is because of our past.
The only reason we have fear is because we have memories of our past experiences that makes us not want to do certain things.
Fear is a projection of the past into the future.
But why would we sacrifice the future we desire for the past we’ve already lived?
Why would we sacrifice the possibility of the future that contains everything we want for the familiar, predictable past?
As humans, we always seek comfort and don’t want to change. That’s why we like going to the same restaurants, talk to the same people, do the same hobbies and have the same habits every single week.
We are always going to feel fear when we begin to try to make our dreams a reality because it requires change and our brain doesn’t like change.
It likes the predictable and consistent.
The way to overcome this is by thinking about what your life will look like in the next 5–10 years.
If nothing changes, you’ll be in the same exact spot as you are in right now. Do you want your life to look the same in 10 years as it does right now?
Then things have got to change. We must act in the face of fear.
The most “fearless” people in our society actually aren’t fearless. The word itself is quite misleading.
A better word to describe those people is courageous. Those heroes we look up to still feel a massive amount of fear, but the difference is that they act despite feeling a significant amount of fear.
Become your own hero. Do it, not only for yourself, but for your family and the people you love.
Rely on your purpose to push you through all of your greatest fears.
If you have a big enough purpose where you’re willing to do and sacrifice anything for that mission, fear is just a speed bump on the road to your destination.
But remember that fear is an indication that what you’re doing or facing is of significant importance.
If you feel fear, you know you’re going the right way and will find everything you’re looking for if you keep going.
So don’t try to be fearless. Be courageous and act despite facing the fear.
Become your own hero and the hero of the ones you love. You’ve got this.
