Can We Live Free From Fear?
Almost all of us at some point have harbored the desire to live free from fear. We are talking about a basic emotion that allows us to stay safe from real dangers. The problem is that fear is an emotion that likes to take control, sometimes not distinguishing too well what represents a real threat from what does not.
That is when the emotion becomes maladaptive. On the other hand, one of the most universal fears is the fear of the unknown. It is so universal because the uncertainty represented by the road not traveled on many occasions is also necessary to move forward.
In addition, many of the fears with which we negotiate can be unconscious, such as the fear of failure, of exposing ourselves to others, of rejection, of what they will say. Then there are greater fears, such as the fear of illness, death, the loss of a loved one, old age, loneliness … in short, we are afraid of suffering. Even on many occasions we are afraid to shine with our own light.
Identify the fears that hold us back
Think about the things that scare you and try to become aware of how they express themselves in your body. The thoughts, the emotion they produce and the corporeality are a triad of which we are often not aware. They feed back each other, for the good and for the bad.
In the same way that the emotion of fear affects thoughts and the body, we can reverse the process and lower the level of emotion through changes in thought and body. Fear has its own breath. It’s fast, short, choppy, and frequent. Making a conscious breathing change immediately lowers the level of emotion.
The story behind the fear
It is necessary to face our fears from the beginning and a good starting strategy is to identify their primary cause. This is a very valuable exercise when writing about fear and its possible seeds. For example, writing can help us bring order to mental chaos, which is the state in which fear likes to live.
In many cases, a specific fear is nothing more than a warning that we need more tools or resources. If we don’t let it paralyze us and focus on analyzing it in some depth, we can find a lot of valuable information about ourselves and even some clues about what decisions to make.
Some keys to living free from fear
It is good to learn to trust that we have the necessary resources to solve the situations that may arise in the future. We cannot have everything under control, and accepting it can do us good.
Remember that you have already lived through difficult situations in the past and that you have more and more skills. If you think it would be good to develop some other skill in this regard, and you have the possibility, get to work.
Stop being afraid of failure. Failures are just a rather ugly synonym for a failed attempt, but at the same time it provides the keys to success in the future. Life also consists of accumulating new, unknown experiences, with the challenge of uncertainty that they may pose to us.
Fear doesn’t go away clinging to safety
If we limit ourselves to always sticking to the safe side – prisoners instead of free from fear – we are limiting much of our potentiality. If the fear of failure, of making a fool of ourselves or being hurt does not allow us to go a little further, we will be letting fear and worry take over.
Generally, we all have almost equal parts of the two. Negative experiences are strongly recorded in our brain, but that does not mean that they have been more numerous than good experiences. Thus, an unfair memory of our past makes us less free from fear.
I propose that you read about the lives of other people. Doing so will allow you to see how almost all the successes have been preceded by attempts that did not meet the same fate. Thus, faith in what we can learn from error, giving ourselves permission to make mistakes, will make us freer from fear.
