Fear Kills, Caution Protects
Be not afraid of daily fears and stressors, many ways to get over these, and they all work well.
Recognise when fear is starting. Often there is a lack of confidence or lack of faith behind this feeling. None of these are major personality flaws or show-stoppers. These are momentary states of mind — dealing with these is well within your skill set.
Behind every feeling of unease is a fear that gets obvious when I acknowledge it. It’s more helpful when I accept that everyone has fears, even the folks who seem confident and put together.
Fear is lurking below the surface, guiding and manipulating my every thought and action. How often and with how much brazenness it reveals itself in full view is different between you and me. Its presence and its influence are universal.
I turn down the screaming voices when I acknowledge it. That’s when I get to put a foot in the door. It may be unpleasant at the moment, but like all things worth doing, the payoff is later. Now is the time to invest.
Action is an antidote to fear. Doing something about it, even small, takes the sharpest edge off. Gives you breathing space, puts some ease back in your thinking. You can plan for the next action from a place of better certainty.
When the unease strikes, I can go do something that I wouldn’t have planned for that moment. Like responding to an overdue email, some writing or creative work, or some plain heavy exercise.
Take a contrarian view — welcome the event that is causing the fear. Say it to yourself, in clear terms, that you welcome it. Because it’s going to help you overcome the moment. You are looking forward to it with glee, and with gratitude. It’s going to be beautiful.
No stress, I chose this, I want this; I welcome this; this is mine to extract Joy from and I will.
Fear strikes only when you believe that you can’t handle the situation.
Drinking a glass of water at home never brings up stress. You know from experience you can get water with ease and drink it too. No stress.
If you are in a desert though, getting a glass of water could be a high-stress situation. You don’t know how to handle this situation. Then again, if you are on a desert safari and have seen barrels of water being packed, you wouldn’t worry about thirst too much.
When it’s time to let the fear go, I can say my affirmations, “I’m Confident, Loving, Successful….”. This stops the assembly line in my thought factory, prompts it to start a new line, one that I’m a supervisor of.
Smiling when you can sense discomfort approaching is a talented hack for getting excellent results. There is something about trying to arrange your face muscles into a smile when your body is resisting it, that sets in motion events that bring useful results.
If you smile when everyone around you is falling apart, you risk facing another fear — of ridicule. Accept that fear, ignore it, and move ahead anyway. Outsmarting the f will already bring a smile.
Send love to others in anticipation — for any ‘upcoming’ event that’s beginning to cause anxiety. Use Ho’oponopono or any other technique you prefer. It doesn’t matter how you send out your message — it matters though that you mean it.
My observation on this — thought messages have a better chance of being received when I send these in a meditative state, that is, when I’m relaxed, focused, at ease, and when I’m intentional about it.
The feeling of unease, even foreboding, is almost always present, and always steering your thoughts in a direction you know isn’t right for you. The very subtle fears are hard to recognise and not worth the effort of being dug out and dealt with. There is no need to either.
Start with the funks visible in plain sight, with all the classic symptoms of stress. Let these go. The craftier ones will surface later. Then let go of those.
Can you stop trying to push the fear away and welcome it instead? Enjoying in the face of rising worriment a clear signal to myself, “I can do this”. That statement is often enough to set the release ball rolling.
Push through the wall of misery — it may be a very thin wall masquerading as something formidable.
The letting-go part doesn’t start till you acknowledge it, to yourself. No one else need be involved — they are all dealing with their own anxieties. If you accepted that fright is rather commonplace, you wouldn’t feel any disquiet on that count. No one is conscious of not wearing clothes, in a nudist colony.
Will I ever get rid of the fear ‘once and for all’? Unlikely. Neither do I want to. I’m afraid if I went all out I will dig too deep and pull the tree of fear out by its roots. Caution lives in the roots, and caution keeps my body safe.
There is no measure of how much worry is still inside you — only how much you have overcome. The boldness of your action shows how far you have traveled. You alone know your journey’s length — and that is exactly how it should be.
