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The Ultimate Guide to Overcome ALL your Fears

Posted on September 10, 2023

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Fear is one of the greatest problems in life. A mind that is caught in fear lives in confusion, in conflict, and therefore must be violent, distorted, and aggressive. It dare not move away from its own patterns of thinking, and this breeds hypocrisy. Until we are free from fear, we may climb the highest mountain, invent every kind of God, but we will remain in darkness. -Jiddu Krishnamurti, On Fear

If you are like most of us, you experience fear every day, many times. For example, you may be afraid of

Those are everyday situations you may be afraid of. But most are relatively simple, and you don't overthink about it. On the other hand, there are more abstract fears that you may be unaware of. Yet, they habit your mind more permanently. Some of them are, for example, 

I want you to become aware of those abstract or psychological fears, which I'm interested in discussing in this newsletter. Think of one situation you may be afraid of now that it is related to each category. For example, you may fear not being good enough in your relationships. 

This step is necessary so that you become aware that you are living in fear now. It is not to scare you. I want you to notice that fears are a brake that stops you from reaching your full potential.

If you are into self-development, you will agree with me that you want to grow as fast as possible. Imagine driving on a straight highway without any other cars, just yourself. Your car represents yourself. Personal development is about improving the speed of your car. Living in fear is like driving with the brake pedal all the time. Living without fear is like accelerating the car to its maximum speed. In other words, you can grow, but at a way slower rate. Without fear, you will grow at full pace. Of course, your car may be a Volkswagen Beetle or a Lamborghini. But no matter what your car is, you want to use it to the largest capacity. 

That's why understanding and overcoming your fears is one of the most crucial self-development principles. If you agree with me, let's move on to understand WTF fear is.

What is fear?

To overcome our fears, we need to understand it from a psychological point of view. 

A first approximation is understanding fear as an emotion, which may differ from person to person. For me, it's usually felt in my gut. It's an intense, acute sensation that feels heavy. But where does emotion come from? What triggers it?

Ultimately, fear is a survival mechanism. It is rooted in our biology so that we can survive. It is present in basically all living creatures. However, I want to focus on the psychological fear created by your mind. Yet, the principle is the same. Only that, in this case, is your mind "protecting you." In other words, it is trying to protect itself and avoiding change. The emotion is a trigger that makes you aware of a dangerous situation. But here, it is essential to be explicit: the "danger" is relative to your mind. For you, a hazardous situation may be to fly on a plane or talk to a girl. For another person, this is not dangerous at all. 

Thus, even though the mechanism is the same, it will be different for each person. Think of your mind as a living organism on its own. It is always trying to survive. But what is trying to survive in this case? Ultimately, your sense of "I" or identity. 

For example, suppose part of your identity is being a "high achiever." In that case, failing at your career threatens your identity. Or imagine part of your identity is being a vegan. In that case, you will get defensive and triggered whenever someone mocks veganism or criticizes it. Notice that the same behavior wouldn't trigger a meat eater (or someone not attached to being a vegan). So, fear is not absolute but relative to who you think you are. 

As a kid, I was afraid of having bad grades. Part of my identity was being a good student, so I over-studied to get good grades. Also, until recently, I usually did not express my opinions because I was afraid of confrontation or being seen as "stupid." 

This distinction is crucial since it will give us the keys to overcome our fears. After all, if a given situation does not threaten your identity, then you won't experience fear! At the end, we will discuss how we can overcome our fears. 

What is the root of fear?

There is fear of the present, of the future, fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of not fulfilling, fear of not being loved—there are so many fears, all created by the machinery of thought. -Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Awakening of Intelligence.

Pay attention the next time you are afraid. You will see that your mind starts to create a mental image of everything that can go wrong if your fear comes true. For example, you hesitate to express your opinion to others because you visualize the other person disagreeing with you and starting a discussion. Or you may be afraid of taking risks in your career because if you fail, your career will be over, and you won't be able to support yourself. This mechanism is triggered automatically by your mind. It is trying to warn you that something wrong will happen if you do whatever "dangerous" act. 

This concept is also vital. It's telling you that you don't want to believe what your mind is portraying when wanting to face your fears. Considering all these bad scenarios and getting scared by them is very easy, so you don't take action. And that's precisely why your mind does these tricks on you: because it works.

Notice also how one fear (e.g., failing at your career) feeds into more fears (inability to support yourself). In a nutshell, fear works in a recursive structure. 

Also, fears are supported by beliefs. We are afraid of some things because we have limiting beliefs. For example, we may fear talking to girls because we believe we are not good-looking or interesting enough. Or you may be afraid of expressing your needs to your partner because you think this could upset them and end up breaking up with you. 

You can visualize any fear at the root of a tree, which will be based on beliefs and other fears. Each of the "children" fears will supported by different beliefs and fears, and so on. For example (see the picture below) of this)

A tree of fears and beliefs
Recursive structure of fears.

and so on. This chain can be long, but it has to end somewhere. If you do this exercise, you will notice that it always boils down to your sense of "I" or self, which, for simplicity, I define as a set of beliefs and values. Those will be "dead ends" of the tree.  

I will go deeper into this exercise at the end of the post. You should do it and get these conclusions by yourself. Remember: personal development is not about believing others but finding the truths in your direct experience.

Fears and pathological behaviors

I get it. Facing our fears is painful, and we would rather ignore them and get distracted instead of facing them. But we create a lot of "pathological" behaviors to avoid confronting the fears. We spend much time distracting ourselves, which is relatively easy nowadays.

For example, you may be a workaholic because you don't want to face your fear of failing at your job. Or, you may want to escape from your relationship problems by spending more time at the office. 

Another common pathological behavior is being a people pleaser, or the opposite of being an asshole. Both are two different ways of avoiding our fear of rejection of who we are, or not being good enough. We put either a nice-person-mask or an asshole-mask, but the ultimate purpose is the same. 

Ultimately, we develop bad habits that will impact our lives. After all, you are being inauthentic. Keeping all these masks adds permanent pressure to our psyches. This pressure manifests in the body as chronic stress, depression, and anxiety. 

Can we eliminate ALL fears?

In principle, there are infinite types of fears, so going one by one seems futile. But is it possible to drop all fears at once? Is there an ultimate "root" to fear? 

In the end, we are afraid of dying. Observe that this is only possible since our minds can visualize a reality where we are not there. But, it is not necessarily our physical death that we fear the most, but our conceptual self. EVERY fear can be tracked down to the death of your conceptual self (or identity). 

Notice every time you feel triggered by someone. What part of your identity feels threatened? For example, if you fear being ridiculed, notice that your self doesn't want to feel ridiculed. You may say, but isn't it obvious that nobody wants to feel ridiculed? Well, see that there are people out there that don't give a damn about making the clown out there. So, it is not as evident as you think –remember, ALL fears are relative.

On the other hand, is being ridiculed that bad? I mean, are you in danger because of it? I would say no. Even if your "reputation" is at risk, is this life-threatening? What is the worst that can happen? You may say, "Being excluded from my peer group would be very painful, and I couldn't be happy without them." Notice again how your mind is constructing hypothetical situations. How do you know that you wouldn't be happy? What if your peer group is not as good as you think they are? You may be attached to it because it is the only people you interact with. And then you realize you are also afraid of being alone. As you can see, this process can go quite deep. Starting with almost any fear, you can see a chain of fears behind it. 

Uncovering your beliefs is thus a crucial component in understanding our fears since it provides a powerful tool to drop them. As I mentioned earlier, all fears are relative to your sense of self, so changing it can remove those fears forever. But of course, this is easier said than done. Changing your identity can be as painful as your physical death. That explains why most people live in fear. 

Now, you may ask yourself, "But if I eliminate all my fears, will I become reckless?" The answer is no. You need to use your brain! Eliminating fears doesn't mean that you won't take precautions in life. But you will act from a more "rational" point of view instead of running on your emotions. Our bodies have self-protecting mechanisms that aid our survival. But if you are afraid, you will be paralyzed and unable to act in a dangerous situation. 

How to overcome our fears

In a nutshell, facing your fears is the ultimate strategy. But without a conceptual understanding of fear, this advice is quite pointless. People know that many of their fears are irrational, but they cannot control them. And it can be paralyzing. There are also traumatic experiences that make people terrified under some circumstances. That's why I went pretty deep to explain how fear works. Otherwise, it is very easy to succumb to our emotions and the stories our mind is creating to stop taking action. 

On the other hand, it's not enough to have a theoretical understanding (which can be very helpful; see my previous post). You need to use these concepts to solve your own problems (remember, Happiness = solving your own problems). Think of facing your fears as a skill to master over time. 

Removing fears in your life can be quite a painful and lengthy process. But the rewards are also evident: a life with less worry and anxiety and more peace of mind. You will be unstoppable. 

Here are some pointers to overcome your fears:

You may believe that Eliminating ALL fears is impossible. It's not. Many people don't experience any psychological fear. I claim that after enough personal development and conquering fears along the way, you can prove it yourself. 

But only some people will have the courage to go through the process because it's painful. But there is no other way.

Now, the choice is up to you.

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