How To Overcome Your Fears

And why it is so important

Sapir Lala
Sep 7, 2018 · 6 min read

We all have fears.

Some are easy to overcome and some will be more challenging and will take us more time.

Fear can paralyze, can make you act like you will never act unless you had this fear or sometimes even lead to addiction.

Despite our fears affect our responses, we are not only our fears.

Dealing with a fear, small or big, is essential for our well-being and self-esteem.


At the beginning of this year, I shared a list of 25 things I am going to do this year.

There were two items I knew it will be a big challenge for me to take off this list - eating snails and experience extreme activity.

Simple because those two items represent some of my oldest fears.

So how could I do it anyway? How I could over-come those fears?

Well, I am a person who likes to have a meaning.

I like symbolic things.

So if you want me to do something, stick to it a meaning and I will jump aboard. Literally.

And as a person who likes symbolic things, I convinced myself eating a snail will be a milestone for me.

It will be a great sign of me moving on and putting my old life behind and accepting the new version of myself.

Doing a zip-line over the river was a bit different. My friend sticks a meaning to it for me when he saw I was about to turn around.

Knowing me, he transforms it into something I could understand and want to do.

He changed the way I was looking at this by stick a meaning to it, a purpose.

“Jumping means you are throwing away your past to this river and you are coming out clean on the other side. It means purifying, new start.”


You see, when the year started, everything in my life changed.

I started a new relationship, quit my job and relocated to a new city.

I wasn't completely happy with all of those changes, but I haven't done much to change things either and maybe make some better.

Jumping over this river was so symbolic to me, I couldn't ignore it.

Things had to change.

I had to start facing my fears one after the other.

This is how zip-line over the river in Kiev look like

One month after, I came back home. And things changes.

I start dealing with the biggest fear in my life at this point.

A fear which was buried so deep under hundreds of layers.

A fear which lived inside me ever since I was a child.

A fear which burst out only in the last year in the ugliest way I could ever imagine.

A fear which almost leads me to a self-destroyed.

I start to confront this fear with a professional help.

Eating snails and jumping on a zip-line above the river feels easy as pie comparing to dealing with this one.

It is a long process.

Some things are more complex and can’t be fixed over-night.

What is important is to be aware and work on it often, until one day this fear will disappear (or at lease shrink into a size it won’t disturb me anymore).


For months I struggled to get to the core of the issue.

I struggled to understand what is it that paralyzed me and made me act like a person I can’t even recognize.

Like a person I don’t want to be.

Since I couldn't put a name on it, I didn’t know how to deal with it.

I came back home and I found myself sitting on a therapist’s couch. There it hit me, that thing I have, it calls fear.

Through personal experience, I have learned there are many ways to overcome a fear or a phobia.

Ever since I have applied them to myself, I feel a big change in my life.

Those days I am mastering hypnosis as one of the methods of overcoming fears and phobias.

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Facing your fears

Running away from your fears is defiantly not going to help you to deal with them or to make them go away.

Facing a fear can make your life easier, your self-esteem higher, and prevent a possibility of addiction.

And as said before, A problem well-stated is half solved.


Talk about it

Sharing your fears will help you realize you are not the only one who has that fear.

Solidarity can be important to many of us.

Recognition of the fact that fear is legitimate and there is always a way to overcome it.

It is important to accept the fact we are not only our fears.

Most people tend to intensify their fear, which tends to paralyze them.


Have a positive approach

Some of us suffering from something called “Catastrophic thinking.”

Meaning our mind is tent to object to us the worse images. (Read here how to stop it)

It is crucial to embrace a positive approach while dealing with fears (and for life in general).

Since our subconscious doesn’t know to separate emotionally between what we imagine and what really happens.

We can use that tool to convince our mind we already overcame the fear by imagining we really did.

It is vital to feed your mind with positivity consistently.

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Find your motivation

It can be a book, a movie, a person or anything else you can think of.
Use any resource you got without thinking twice.

Surround yourself with great motivation, which will remind you why you doing this and help you to keep going.


Do not hesitate to ask for help

I have been asked many times why I have seen a coach or why I am going to see a therapist.

My answer is always the same -

Why carrying for the rest of your life something that can be fixed in an hour?

“And what if it comes back?”

Well, Do it again. If it helped before, it can certainly help again.

I have been trying Hypnosis as a method to solve an issue I had in my life, and let me tell you, it improved my life in such a shocking way that I have decided mastering it myself.

So very soon, I will be able to help others, the same way I got the help myself.


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The Ascent

A community of storytellers documenting the journey to happiness & fulfillment.

Sapir Lala

Written by

Couples Therapist | Entrepreneur | Ex-trader | Investor | Traveler | Writer

The Ascent

A community of storytellers documenting the journey to happiness & fulfillment.

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