Being Afraid Is A Good Thing

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Most of us are told to be fearless throughout our lives and when you sit back and think it through, you will see how that is the biggest lie we are ever told.

Fear is a biological instinct instilled in us to guide us for survival. It is the foundation of Darwinism.

We often view fear as a weakness but that to me is not the case. Over the years in my journey towards becoming the person I now am today, here is what I learnt about why fear is an important asset for success.

Rewind to about four years ago when I was a freshman in college.

Being born with an autoimmune disease Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS)(undiagnosed at the time), my whole life centered around one thing. This condition led me to have a limp when I would walk. This would give me crippling anxiety and would make me self-conscious all the time.

I was afraid of how funny I would look when I walked. Among the many things I was called “Penguin”, “Duck” and “hey what's wrong with your feet, are you injured?” were my favorite.

Sometimes we are so caught up in hiding ourselves that we don’t even realize it until we ourselves forget who we truly are. The very thing we are afraid of is what would be the source of our greatest strength. But I did not know that.

For the longest time, I was afraid of participating in PE class where my peers would get up and play volleyball and I would fake a migraine every now and then. I was afraid of acting in the school play even when the theater was secretly a passion of mine.

Only because I was afraid of being made fun of the way I walked.

I did not realize how slowly this condition was taking over my life and I was letting it define the person I was. I found excuses to tell myself, how keeping my weakness hidden would give me a sense of belonging.

I was so afraid of not being accepted; I had rejected who I was.

Had I known at the moment “to be accepted we must be like everyone else, or we will suffer for what makes us different” was not the holy end-all-be-all truth. So many people have it far worse than I did and go on to accomplish so much more.

The condition I had was not even physically holding me back at the moment. Most of it was a plethora of mental restraints, I was shackled in cages inside my own mind.

Determined to be accepted and a fear that would cripple me to hide in the corner of every room was something I very much had the power to overcome but did not know back then.

We are often told to be courageous in life. But what we don’t recognize is that for the courage to exist, a requirement was the presence of fear.

As the years passed, I came across a quote that completely shifted my perspective on life and my own disability.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the realization that something else is more important than fear. ― Franklin D. Roosevelt

This became a mantra to me in the years to come. This made me look towards my fear with a completely different perspective.

This, however, was not an overnight process. It took me some time, but I built this mental system which I would slowly incorporate in my everyday life.

The system went like this — — every time I would be afraid to do something, for instance, participating in PE class or walking around the college gym, I would feel the fear in the pit of the stomach and the tips of my fingers which would go cold or numb. And with that little voice in the back of head chanting my new mantra, I would do the very thing I was afraid of.

To walk in the college gym.

Now, this to most of you might sound completely ridiculous, but to me, it meant breaking the invisible barrier that was holding me back from doing things that were ordinary to most people.

It was shifting my focus from what I was not to what I could be.

Now, it was not like my limp had gone away, it still is here to this day. But what is gone is the girl inside me that had shaped her entire personality and who she was to one consistent fear.

What I would like you all to take away from this story is that we all have fears. But in order to grow and become who we are meant to be, we must walk in the very direction of our fear.

Even if it sometimes means to fight the very Adrenaline or the fight or flight response biologically engineered in us .

Growth of any kind requires expansion and that can be terrifying. Whether you’re afraid to be vulnerable, financially stable or afraid to open up that business you have always dreamed of running. It will require you to shift your perspective and break whatever barriers you have built upon yourself.

If you come across this article, take this as a sign to go do what you are afraid of doing. Having the mental system in place to feel the fear and chant the mantra back to yourself.

Only when you realize fear is your greatest weapon , will you truly become courageous.