How to Identify Your Fears, Win over Them and Live a Brave Life
It’s time to break the shackles and live the life you have always wanted.
My uncle pushed me into the swimming pool when I was 10 years old.
Swimming to me was like speaking impromptu in a stadium of 50000 people. I didn’t know it. He noticed it and wanted me to overcome this fear.
My hands and legs rose and fell automatically when I was in the pool. The urge to save one’s life makes you do toughest of the task. But then rescuer got hold of my hand and pulled me to the corner. I saw my uncle grinning as I was thanking God. I couldn’t control my hesitant smile.
Something happened that day. I enjoyed the water and experienced the thrilling moment. And I learnt the consequences of being thrown into the 5 feet pool.
The experience became a lifetime memory.
Fear keeps you from living your life to the fullest. Fear of losing your — job, loved one, your money, being judged by other people, your parents, society, the law, powerful people stops you from living your dream life.
Fear causes you to settle for less in this limited life — a onetime opportunity to experience this wonderful world.
People say fear is necessary. Fear is religion. It helps you to be on the right path and not commit sin.
But necessary is the ability to make a wise, risky decision. Every choice we make in our daily lives has some potential for failure. We should all be able to analyze the risk and evaluate it based on our risk tolerance. With our upbringing and experiences, we develop this threshold limit of tolerance as we grow and age in life.
For an individual who is already dealing with the demands of a mundane life, increasing risk tolerance is a more demanding task than climbing the Everest. Beyond that, our minds subconsciously stop us from taking risky actions.
If you truly want to live a life you desire, identify your fears, overcome them and increase your tolerance limit
You will discover a new world that has been waiting for you for ages.
Follow These 5 Steps to Identify Your Fears
- Watch for tasks that you wait for other people to do first. You want to see what happens to them, and based on the outcome, you decide.
It could be as simple as having a conversation with the CEO of your workplace But you should know, the CEO will not kill you. He’s only killing you in your mind. In reality, he is also a feared soul like you, but perhaps with a different risk tolerance.
2. Identify tasks that require you to think deeply about the implications. Of course, weighing the pros and cons of certain decisions like buying a house is totally fine and necessary.
However, if you overthink your vacation choices, it indicates you worry about the smallest issues in your life.
3. When you are doing something for the first time, find out which types need preparation like an exam.
Like you will think for ages to share that one photo of PDA (personal display of affection) with your loved one.
4. You think too much about other people’s thoughts, for example, your hesitation to exercise in an open area.
5. Your communication style completely transforms to a more reserved, defensive tone with a certain group of people. For example, in your first outing with your new colleagues.
Check out if you can identify your day-to-day fears.
Below are some of my fears and causes of anxiety I have overcome with time.
- I was afraid of driving in a crowded city.
- I never used to do water sports.
- I was afraid of being judged for my writing by others.
- I remember being afraid to talk to some of the professors throughout my engineering course.
- When I started working, knocking on the CEO’s door used to give me goosebumps.
At certain time, these fears had kept me from doing one thing or another.
Please take out time to write down your fears that are stopping you from living your life.
Think about what you are most afraid of, is it people? or, the outcome of what you are attempting?
How to Win over Fear of The Failure
- Prepare well. Give your best. It helps you overcome the anxiety in challenging tasks.
- Do a risk analysis and think about the worst-case scenario and its impact on your life.
- Always set a risk limit that you can tolerate. For example, keep the six month salary as a safe deposit to reduce the impact of a sudden job loss. This can proportionately increase your confidence in your workplace, because fear of losing the job sometimes hold us from taking challenging projects or role.
- Sometimes even good preparation doesn’t help, but if you believe and trust in your actions then even a moderate preparation can let you comfortably wade through tough times.
Trust doesn’t come over night, you need to expose yourself to tough situations. Prepare well, take a deep breath and jump ahead to face the challenges. These little successes will add up to increase your trust and belief in your actions.
How to Win over the Fear from Other People
1. Never underestimate yourself.
People you think are smart are only smart in your eyes.
You will not know what is breathing inside them.
2. You should not compare yourself to a CEO or a powerful person. He has his job and you have yours to do. If you are good at your capacity, then you will always be ready to face the challenges. He has to do a CEO’s job and you have to do your job. If you work well, there is no reason to fear him.
3. Think about the worst case scenario and prepare a workaround.
4. Wear confidence on your sleeves when you speak with someone. People are afraid of confident people, be that person.
Write sentences on a piece of paper and practice speaking out loud. Doing this will uplift your confidence in a real scenario. And the person in front will think twice before challenging you.
Final Thoughts
Every decision you take and deny has an underlying risk. Do not simply decide on your biases of upbringing and people around you. Take calculative risk and live your life like a toddler.
My 2.5-year-old boy rushed out of our 2nd floor apartment and ran all the way to the entrance of the community, which had 300 houses. Time was 11pm. No one could stop him.
I hope he continues to live that way, and you and I can live as he and other toddlers do.
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