Do that thing you’re afraid of

I don’t know, maybe you can’t fight fear in your head. Maybe, you have to face your fears.

The words of stoic philosopher, Seneca the Younger, are more relevant today than they were even 2000 years ago

“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

The thing that crushes us is fear itself; fear that is more often than not unwarranted.

So, what can we do?

For our powers can never inspire in us implicit faith in ourselves except when many difficulties have confronted us on this side and on that, and have occasionally even come to close quarters with us…

In our soft modern lives, how could we not fear the things that we have not felt? We have been spoiled by our distance from real, daily suffering.

For many people, money is a real driver of fear. Seneca offers a solution here:

“Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?”

We prepare for more difficult times by practising for the worst. And then, what is there to fear?

This is the touchstone of such a spirit; no prizefighter can go with high spirits into the strife if he has never been beaten black and blue; the only contestant who can confidently enter the lists is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent’s fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary’s charge, who has been downed in body but not in spirit, one who, as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever.

Plunge yourself into that which you fear. Practice what you can of the worst case. And then ask yourself, “Is this the condition that I feared?”