Generational data has been passed down from our ancestors through our genes. Knowing what to be scared of in the cavemen days was literally the difference between life and death.
As the years passed, technology progressed, and humans became wiser, fear became less and less imminent. Unless you willingly put your life at risk in the jungle somewhere, it’s very easy to avoid danger to an extent.
How to overcome fear in life requires a strong mindset, determination, and a simple understanding that fear is an illusion.
What is fear?
According to the Oxford dictionary, fear is the emotion of pain or uneasiness caused by the sense of impending danger, or by the prospect of some possible evil. In other words, fear is an emotional response to either immediate danger or evil.
If you allow it, it will take over your life and keep you from trying new things, doing what you want, and living the life of your dreams.
A fearful person is scared of everything. They won’t try a new cuisine because they’re scared they will not like it, they won’t do something that will take them out of their comfort zone because they are content with living an uninteresting life.
Fear will stop you from being who you are meant to be.
What makes you fearful?
In order to figure out how to overcome fear in your life, you have to understand why you are fearful.
What traumatic event happened in your life that causes you to shy away from everything?
Why is fear your first reaction to something new?
How will you elevate and become a better version of yourself if you are scared to live your life?
Besides your instinctive fight or flight mode, something happened in your life that caused you to become fearful. It could be something as simple as someone you trusted telling your secrets or someone you depended on letting you down when you needed them the most.
Don’t disregard any situation that affected you. If you remember all the details when retelling what happened, that situation has impacted you. The difference is, if it’s a negative impact, it will spark an incline of fear within you. The spark can easily become a raging fire if you allow it to go unchecked.
How to overcome fear in life
After completing the beginning step to overcome your fear by identifying what created that fear in the first place, you can begin to dissolve that fear from your life.
Being fearful limits your abilities and introduces doubt and second guessing to your life.
You have control over how you allow situations to affect you.
Even though emotional responses are unpredictable, you still have the choice of whether you’d like to act on that emotional impulse or not. Not everything requires an emotional response from you. Giving any situation your attention is giving a piece of yourself to that situation. Detaching your emotional responses to predict how that situation will turn out is releasing your attachments, and ultimately, your fears.
You become fearful when you can’t pinpoint what the outcome of any situation will be, which is why I’ll repeat what I wrote earlier: fear is an illusion.
Trying to predict the future creates unnecessary stress and anxiety. Your fear manifests in different forms. Anxiety, being the main form, can dominate your life and leave you locked in a room scared to go to the window. Whenever you let go of what you think an outcome should be, you’ll begin to start trusting the process. Fear only exists when you are confident that everything will always work out perfectly for everyone.
When you’re having fun, all of life’s problems seem to slip away. Your life should be exactly how you want it with the amount of fun you want, every day. Fun introduces happiness to your brain which keeps it busy creating the endorphins to make you happy, fear dissolves that. Don’t take life too seriously!
Stretch your comfort zone
Unlocking your true potential requires you to get out of and stretch your comfort zone. Constantly challenging the way you think will increase your experiences while eliminating your fear. The more you do, the braver you’ll become.
Know and understand that there are some things in life that you have no control over, so trying to control those things will only cause you pain. Fearing the outcome of everything serves you no purpose other than creating different solutions to things you can’t control.
Practice the art of detachment and only focus on changing the thing you have the power to change.
“There’s no fear when you’re having fun.” – Will Thomas
So true about fear giving you anxiety about an outcome. Perfectly said! I love your content and can’t wait to read more!