Overcoming Fear
What Is Fear And Where Does It Come From?
Fear is powerful, no doubt about it. We fear what we perceive to be a threat to our mental, emotional or physical wellbeing. This emotion has kept our species alive since the beginning of time. The emotion of fear can be split into two distinct responses, one being emotional and the other being biochemical in nature. The emotional response generally is of an individual nature, whereas the biochemical response is vastly universal. When you perceive a threat your body goes into a ‘fight or flight’ mode, which is a biochemical reaction. Blood is then sent to the areas of the body (like hands and feet), which will aid you in either fighting or fleeing the situation. An emotional reaction to fear is individual because each one of us has a different relationship with fear. People who enjoy extreme sports generally appreciate the adrenalin rush of fear. A BASE jumper will enjoy and push past the fear of jumping off a building, whereas to a regular person even the thought of doing something similar will likely appear traumatic. The emotional response to fear is based on individual conditioning. A child born into a family of acrobats may never feel the level of fear for heights that a child who has never experienced aerial sports may feel. They former had been exposed to the aerial arts from a very early age and jumping from bar to bar hundreds of feet up in the air seems completely natural, while to the rest of the world it would seem like a death wish. The danger of fear is that it manipulates our emotions and clouds our sound judgement just because our brain perceives a threat in our environment. One of the ways in which I have come to lift the limitations on my life is by recognizing fear, actively working on developing tools that will help me cope with it, then coming face to face with whatever triggers my fear and consciously overcoming it.
These days, when I am faced with a situation which triggers fear, I isolate the trigger and observe my body’s emotional reaction. I learned to do this through years of meditation and self development work. Frankly there came a point in my life where I had to become proactive in isolating and eliminating fear factors. I was afraid of trivial things which most people can relate to: heights, dark spaces, and discovered much deeper ingrained fears which seem to run through our collective consciousness like rejection and abandonment. Throughout the years I made the observation that succumbing to my various fears and allowing them to run my life or keep me from enjoying new adventures and forming new relationships in the world systematically defeated my confidence. I simply got exhausted of feeling like there was a cap on my potential, which was largely in the hands of my mind and conditioning. So I started throwing myself head on at everything that scared me. I climbed towers, jumped out of planes, ventured into abandoned spaces at night, and found, faced and healed my wounds around rejection and abandonment, realising that the only way I could feel them again is if I abandoned myself. I sat with the fear and discomfort which would bubble up inside my chest, observing it and learning from it as I went. I metabolised the fact that emotions are largely based on individual perception and not reality. With this knowledge in hand I am able to navigate and regulate my own fear quite successfully. It doesn’t mean I don’t still get sweaty palms when I’m climbing or flying, or that I don’t still get triggered emotionally or physically by fear. I have just developed an internal system of powerful mechanisms to deal with the fear, objectively evaluate it and make sound decisions from a neutral space about whether I wish to engage in a particular task. Fear is no longer the deciding factor. I could honestly say that The Fearless Nomad is one of the byproducts of the journey I have embarked on in regards to understanding and neutralising my own fears. Many of the remarkable minds and talents I feature weekly on ‘TFN Talks’ have gone through a much similar process around the subject of facing their fears and pushing beyond their limits to achieve great success in life and become role models for others.
Fear Mindfulness Exercise
Makes a list of your greatest fears. Look at every single one of them and beside each one write out how these fears may have limited you in having an extraordinary life in the past. Maybe you are afraid of airplanes and this has kept you from flying overseas. Maybe you are afraid of public speaking and have given up leadership roles in areas of your expertise so you wouldn’t have to present in front of a group. Maybe you are afraid of rejection so you have never taken a chance on love or gone after that job you have always wanted. Maybe you are afraid of abandonment and you have driven relationships away by trying to control the people you were involved with. Write it all out. Now look at the page and create a third column. In this column you will write what could happen if you overcame your fear. Maybe you would be able to travel to dozens of beautiful places around the world and experience different cultures, make unforgettable memories, share your ideas and innovations with people, have a loving healthy relationship with another human being that is based on love and mutual trust. The point of this exercise is to observe all the ways in which we limit ourselves by living in fear and projecting that fear into a future that hasn’t happened yet. Hopefully by the end of this exercise you will be able to understand how fear has affected your life and be inspired to begin lifting the limits which it has put around the potential of your experience.