How to overcome with fear in your life?

How to overcome fear is one of the most important questions everybody on this planet has. Everybody faces fear on a daily basis while doing some small uncomfortable things as well as big uncomfortable things.

It can be anything like while starting a business you have fear of failure while traveling outside you have fear of uncertainty, while talking in a meeting or on stage you have fear of being judged, etc. Any new thing you start doing and fear automatically comes to your mind.

It’s actually a part of our life so you can’t avoid it. You can’t remove it from your mind, there is only one option you have, which is to learn to deal with fear effectively so that fear will not create a problem in your life.

In this article, I am going to help you understand how to overcome fear in the easiest way and learn to deal with it. I will share 4 practical tips to overcome the fear every time whenever it comes to your mind. This is going to be a fact/practical-based discussion so let’s begin…

 

What is Fear?

Fear in simple terms is natural, primitive emotion. It is there in the body for a long time which creates an emotional response in the body. Fear comes when you face any unknown situation, an immediate dangerous situation, or you imagined yourself in a dangerous situation.

An unknown situation like Travelling in an unknown city or place, an Immediate dangerous situation like somebody starts attacking you or suddenly you push the break of your car or bike to avoid a dangerous accident.

An imagined situation like fear of losing loved ones, fear of failing the exam before even getting final results. Sometimes fear also come from some specific objects like some people have fear of a particular person or animal.

So basically fear is nothing but the alert system in the human body that gives you an alert of the presence of a dangerous or unknown situation in front of you. That alert system wants you to keep yourself safe from any unknown danger.

As per human psychology, fear has two reactions one is a biochemical reaction and the other is an emotional reaction. Biochemical reaction means the reactions created by your body when you feel fear. 

Basically, the moment you feel fear your brain releases one neurotransmitter called norepinephrine. Its function is to give you the signal to get ready to face an unknown dangerous situation.

On the other side, there is an emotional reaction. The emotional reaction to fear is different for different people, I can say it is more personalized. Because some people have fear of dogs, some people love dogs.

Some people have fear of boating while some people just love boating. Some people have fear of public speaking while some enjoy speaking in front of people.

That means the emotional reaction to fear is vary person to person like you may have fear of failure but your friend doesn’t. On the other hand, the biochemical reaction to fear is the same for everyone.

So depending upon your emotional reaction to fear you can say that fear is positive or negative.

You emotional reaction – (2 examples)

You have fear of public speaking = negative fear becasue it is learnable skill for your carrer growth and here fear just stopping you to become a good public speaker.

You have fear of fire = positive fear becasue here fear is protecting you from the fire.

You can’t control the biochemical reaction to fear because it’s an internal mechanism of your body that is good for you. It always helps you to prepare for any unknown situation. Don’t worry much about this.

You actually need to focus on the emotional reaction to fear. In order to overcome the fear, you need to understand how to deal with emotional reactions to fear. Because this reaction is sometimes in your fever and sometimes against you.

Eg- If you got an opportunity to speak and share your thoughts in front of people and you avoid this chance just because you have fear of being judged.

Well, in this case, the emotional reaction to fear is against you because you know this is a great opportunity for you but still, your mind doesn’t want you to do it.

That’s why you need to work on how you can deal with these emotional reactions that work against you. The moment you understand this after that fear will no longer be a problem for you.

Till now I discussed what fear is from a psychological point of view. Now let’s understand how this powerful emotion affects your life and what are the different types of fear that stop you from achieving your goals.

Read more – How to become mentally strong?

 

Types of fear that stops you from achieving your goals – 

Fear is the biggest stopping point in the path of your goals. Whatever goal you have but the moment you come across any decision point, the only first thing that comes into your mind is fear. That feeling doesn’t exist in reality but still, our minds want us to believe that as reality.

Then conflict creates in your mind which stops you from making a decision, which is very important in life. See it doesn’t matter whether your decision is right or wrong but if you are in indecision mode just because of fear then that’s a big problem.

I personally feel the biggest effect of any type of fear on our lives is that it stops us every time the moment we are making a decision. That’s why it is important to understand how to deal with this feeling.

Before that let’s see some of the common types of fear we all have. Once we cover all the types of fear then we will understand the 4 tips to overcome the fear so that you can make decisions and take action towards your goal easily.

1. Fear of failure – 

A single most powerful type of fear is the fear of failure, everybody faces this type of fear at some point of time in their life. Fear of job interview, Fear of starting a business, Fear of taking responsibility, Fear of taking action towards a goal, etc.

2. Fear of the unknown – 

Fear of the unknown is sometimes very difficult to deal with and people get into depression or anxiety because of this type of fear. So it’s supremely important to overcome this fear.

This fear comes when you are thinking about an unfamiliar situation or you are facing an unfamiliar situation like Fear of the future, Fear of getting uncomfortable, Fear of any unfamiliar situation, etc.

3. Fear of the change – 

Fear of change is related to Fear of the unknown. It comes when you try to push yourself out of your comfort zone. This fear tries to keep you stuck in your comfort zone.

But you know in life growth happens out of your comfort zone so pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is necessary for your growth and also to overcome this fear. Eg – Going to the gym, learning new skills, etc.

4. Fear of rejection – 

Fear of rejection is mostly associated with your heart like your girlfriend rejecting your marriage proposal, HR rejecting your job application, your customer rejecting your discount offer, etc. in all these cases you feel so bad and you take these things personally.

This fear comes when you need to convince someone because if you failed to convince someone (on any proposal) that means you get rejected and to avoid that rejection this fear pops in your mind every time you try to convince.

Some of the world’s greatest thinkers always say that rejection in life is very important to know your self-worth. But many people take rejection so seriously that they feel emotionally bad about themselves. 

5. Fear of success – 

Most of you can’t believe how one can have fear of success but let me tell you many people get failed in their life or won’t achieve their goals in life just because they have fear of success. 

Fear of success comes when you overthink too much like what will happen after I become successful? Will I be able to handle that success? Will I be able to handle that change in my life? Will that success stays with me for a long time? etc.

This is again a huge mental block that will never make you successful in life so it’s very important to overcome the fear of success if you really want to become successful.

6. Fear of being judged – 

Fear of being judged is again one of the most dangerous types of fear. Generally, this fear comes when you are surrounded by a lot of people like when you join social gatherings or social events where there are a lot of people.

When you are doing public speaking in front of a huge audience, When you are speaking in meetings, When you are talking with new people, etc. This fear makes it difficult for you to connect with people that’s why it’s very much important to overcome it.

 

These are some of the most popular types of fear. For this article, just understand these fear types and in the next article, I will discuss these fear types in detail and how to overcome each type of fear with some powerful tips. Now let’s see the 4 tips to overcome the fear in your life –

Read more – How to make your Mindset strong?

 

4 tips to overcome fear in your life – 

Here I am going to share with you some useful tips with the help of which you can easily overcome any type of fear. These tips I personally used many times in my life and I got very good results. Now it’s your time to use it – 

1. Identify the Fear and start learning about it –

You know that to solve any problem in life you need to first identify it and then learn more about that problem so that it becomes easy for you to solve because you can’t solve a problem that you don’t know.

Similarly, in order to overcome the fear problem, you need to first identify the fear. Start learning about that fear what is it that you are afraid of? why you are afraid of it? observe your thoughts, emotions, and feeling when you are in that fear mode.

Try to get as much information as possible about the fear. Don’t run away from your fear, go towards your fear and learn about it because this awareness will help you overcome the fear problem.

Take a notepad and write down all your experiences when you are in that fear mode. Write down how you feel, is there any common pattern of thoughts you observe? what triggers that fear? what happens in your body and in mind when you feel that fear?

Get the answer to these questions, it is not necessary to get the correct details but at least you should collect some basic information about that fear on paper. Because the moment you write things on paper your 50% fear problem is solved.

Writing about your fear will give you complete clarity on what to do to overcome it. That’s why the 1st step is very important and difficult as well. 

 

2. Sit with Fear and Reflect on it –

When fear comes to your mind initially you feel uncomfortable and in that uncomfortable mode, you feel to do something immediately to overcome that fear, which means during that moment you want a quick solution to overcome that fear.

But acting too quickly to overcome your fear can cause more harm to you than good. When you have fear don’t make any decision or don’t act immediately because your mind is completely occupied by fear at that moment.

That means whatever action or decision you will make at that moment, will create a problem in your life. So when you feel fearful the 2nd step you should do is to sit with fear and do nothing.

This step looks similar to the 1st but it’s different, in the 1st step you should write down all your thoughts, emotions, and feelings when you are in fear mode.

And in this step, you need to sit with that fear along with its information and reflect on it. Think about it and ask yourself what is the type of fear? what is its root cause? check your self-talk and ask yourself why do you feel it is difficult to overcome that fear? etc.

Reflection is very powerful to understand your behavior and thought process when you feel fearful. Because whatever inputs you get after the reflection will help you a lot to overcome the fear.

It gives you more time to take action or make decisions in the right direction to overcome the fear effectively. Ex- when somebody invited you to give a 20-minute talk in front of people, automatically the fear of being judged will popups in your mind.

And you start feeling uncomfortable. The best thing you can do in that situation is prior to that talk sit with fear for 5 min and reflect on it. At the end of 5 min, I will guarantee you that your fear will go automatically. You will easily speak in front of people. That’s the power of reflection.

 

3. Use your imagination in a positive way –

The moment you start feeling fear, you start imagining the bad outcomes of that situation because of which you feel fearful. Eg- You are going to speak on stage for 20 minutes before that talk you automatically feel a little bit nervous and anxious. 

Your mind starts imagining the negative things about your talk like, what happens if people don’t like my talk? What happens if I forget the things on stage? What happens if people laugh at me? etc.

Imagination can be harmful if you imagine negative things. There is one good thing about imagination, the more you imagine something the more you magnify that things in your mind, and it becomes huge in reality also.

Eg- If you imagine the problem every time, you magnify that problem and make it too big in your mind. Similarly, if you imagine the negative things more, you unknowingly magnify that negativity in your mind which creates a problem in your life.

So when you negatively imagine too much about fear, you magnify that fear in your mind which makes the situation seems much worse than it actually is.

Now let me tell you how you can use your imagination in a positive way. See, the moment you feel fearful your mind tries to imagine negatively about fear, at that moment just do deep breathing for 60 sec and after that Imagine the entire situation that causes fear.

In the imagination mode, Imagine yourself successfully dealing with that situation which you are afraid of. Imagine your picture that you won the fight against that fear and you are going one step ahead of your fear.

Eg- Let’s say you are afraid of speaking in the meetings at your workplace. Now here imagine yourself in that meeting at your workplace. Imagine that you are speaking confidently in the meeting and everybody in the meeting agrees with what you are saying.

Imagine you handling the pressure and arguments in the meetings peacefully. Do this for 2 to 3 min and then go to the meeting. This simple technique will help you deal with that fearful situation peacefully in reality.

That’s how you can use imagination in a positive way to overcome fear at the mind level. Because to overcome fear in the actual situation, you need to first overcome it in your mind and that happens when you use the power of imagination in a positive way.

 

4. Accept all the truths about life –

To overcome the fear you must accept the real truths about life, there are some true facts that nobody in this world can’t change. 99% of people suffer due to fear because they don’t accept these truths or the reality of life and they live in an imaginary world.

The first and biggest truth of life is death. Anybody on this planet who is born will definitely die one day whether it’s you, your family, your life partner, your friends, etc. Many people have fear of death and because of this, it becomes difficult for them to live in the present moment.

So you must accept the fact that death is the ultimate truth. You should enjoy life and live your life happily with your loved ones till you are alive because one day we all will die.

The 2nd truth about life is change. Change is the rule of nature, you can’t avoid the change in life. Many people have fear of change and they always try to run away from change but the truth is that if you can’t change by yourself then life will force you to change.

There is only constant thing in the world and i.e. change. You have to change or upgrade yourself many times in your life to survive in this world. To grow in your personal/professional life you need to change yourself continuously as per the requirements.

The 3rd truth about life is failure. No matter who you are and how much effort you put to achieve your goal, still there is always a chance that you will fail. There are world-class athletes, businessmen, actors, politicians, and many more who have failed at some point of time in their life.

Similarly, you can fail in your business, you can fail in your marriage, you can fail in cracking a job interview or exam, etc. Accept that like others you also going to face a lot of failures in your life.

Tell yourself that you are more powerful than any failure so even if you fail don’t worry because you have the ability to bounce back. Life always maintains a balance sometime you will fail, sometimes you will succeed but the only way to win in life is to keep trying.

I am sure that all the fears in your life are based on these three truths, the moment you accept these 3 truths you will automatically overcome these logical fear permanently. (Fear therapy)

Read more – Therapy for overcoming Fear.

 

Conclusion – 

Fear is a state of mind which is not reality. Sometimes fear will protect you from the worst and sometime it will stop you to grow in life. So every time you should understand whether fear is in your favor or it is against you and then act accordingly to overcome it.

In this article, I shared in detail about what fear is and the different types of fear that stops you from achieving your goals. I also shared the techniques that I personally use to deal with fear and I hope those techniques will also help you to overcome the fear in your life.

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