If hope is the thing with feathers, then fear feels like the weight that pulls wings back down to earth.
But there is a biological purpose of fear – to keep us alive. We rightly feel fear when standing at the edge of a cliff, as this fear makes us hyper-alert and preserves our life. Fear is programmed into us as synonymous with surviving.
It goes back further than this. Back when humans lived off the land in communal living, the fear of being rejected was not just some abstract thing. If you were rejected from your group, you’d be screwed. One human alone in the wild would die. This made fear a proportionally strong emotion, compared to other run-of-the-mill emotions.
Fast forward to today’s society, where not belonging to a group may sting, but it doesn’t mean we’re going to be left alone to die. Yet, fear has overstayed its welcome in non-life threatening situations.
Our modern minds often don’t consciously made the switch, though. We are running off old programming, which still heavily compels us to belong, to want to ‘fit in.’ The consequence may not be death. So what is the consequence now?
What am I afraid of?
This is an important question to ask ourselves, if we choose to live with more peace, mental clarity and fulfillment on a day-to-day basis.
What are you truly afraid of? What do you believe will happen if those fears came true? What is the worst thing that can happen?
Grab a pen and paper and write down the worst case scenario, followed by the next worst scenario. Fear doesn’t like living in the light of day, or being exposed. It comes into contact with logic.
You can start off with broad fears that you can consciously identify, for example a fear of failure, or a fear of rejection, a fear of doing something different to your family and friends.
If you feel up to it – imagine your list of fears happening in real life. Sit down in a quiet spot on your own, when you know you have a good 20 minutes to spare without being disturbed.
This is likely going to feel uncomfortable at first. Not one wants to feel afraid. But the truth is – these fears are already controlling your actions and your thinking. You’re simply letting them come to the surface now, to be observed like an impartial bystander.
(However, if this is really uncomfortable for you, or it brings up anxiety, then writing your fears on a piece of paper and becoming aware of them when they turn up can be helpful enough).
If you decide to do the exercise, here’s an example. Say you wanted to be an artist. In your fear scenario, you quit your job with the aim of taking commissions as your sole income. No one wants to buy your paintings. Despite working hard, trying and struggling, you don’t make any money. You try and get your old job back, but can’t. The job market is really terrible right now. You stop being able to pay your rent or groceries for your family, who then become homeless.
In this vision, you can see everything stable and good in your life falling like dominoes. This may terrify you from pursuing anything to do with art.
But the presence of fear should not be allowed dictate your life. There are ways to accept the fear – yet not be controlled by it.
Unravelling fear can be helpful as a 2 part process.
How can we overcome fear?
1) Bringing logic to the party
When you observing your fear manifesting as objectively as possible, you can identify and label it as a worst-case scenario.
A worst-case scenario is 1 possibility out of infinite possibilities. The chances that all the things in your fear-dominated fantasy will happen are highly unlikely.
Of course, no one is immune from having unfavourable things happen to them; there will always be a few sad, disappointing, unwanted things along the way. But the worst case often just lives in our heads as fear’s conjured way of trying to protect us from failure. Instead, it stops us living our greatest potential.
Try tweaking a few things in your worst case scenario. What if, in the artist’s scenario, you don’t quit your job straight away? What if, you enrol in a community art class, and pick your brains of your teacher for two hours every week, and practise for an hour after work?
Or – if you’re more advanced – what if you start by taking one commission at a time, which you can work on in a reasonable timeframe on your weekends without getting stressed about the deadline?
When we start making edits to our worst case scenario, it helps take us out of the crippling vices of fear and into a more practical place, allowing us to act rather than freeze, fly away, or fight ourselves on what we truly desire.
2) Being kinder to ourselves
We are often much harsher on ourselves than we would be on any other person. If a loved one, a dear family member or friend, confided their fears to us, we wouldn’t brush them aside and tell them to remain paralysed in their fears. We wouldn’t tell them that they should give up their dreams, plans or goals because they’re afraid of what could happen.
And yet, this is exactly what we do to ourselves.
When you imagine the fear playing out, picture the same scenario – but instead of you as the central character, imagine the person you love in the world, at your age, experiencing this worst fear.
It’s possible you’ll still feel fear on behalf of them, but now – you could also be feeling compassion, empathy, and kindness. A feeling of wanting to protect them, yet also still wanting them to make their heart full by doing their art, the thing they love to do most in the world.
You are also deserving of this kindness when you experience fear.
We must gently remind ourselves that it’s okay to be afraid sometimes. It’s in our programming, our reptilian brain, to go into fight, flight or freeze when afraid. But once we are aware of experiencing a fear, and have imagined these fears materialising in a safe, loving environment, we can allow them to start releasing their hold on us.
We can even say, ‘Thank you. I know you’re just trying to protect me, from heartache/ failure/ disappointment/ rejection. But I’m okay now. I know the risks. I will take steps that are careful and considered, yet give myself the best chance of peace and success.’
The result
In truth, it doesn’t matter what you end up deciding. You may still look at the list and decide that the worst case scenario is not worth the risk of materialising for you. But that’s okay – because at least now you know. At least there is a process involved that makes you aware of the fear – not a slave to it. Now, you are now consciously choosing not to be governed by hidden fears – you are making a choice, for a reason.
However, in most cases (if we are truly honest with ourselves), the worst case scenario is likely to only ever play out in our heads. What we are afraid of may be abstract things, like people judging or criticising us.
Even if it happens, that judgment and criticism is going to live in other peoples’ heads. Even if it’s voiced, it doesn’t have to affect you. If you know who you are, and you are aligned with your values and your higher truth – your purpose, they cannot affect you.
No one has the power to leave you to die in the wild alone. This is one of modern civilisation’s greater contributions – you don’t need to belong to everyone you know anymore, in order to survive. You don’t have to have your Instagram followers like every single story you share for social acceptance. Social acceptance is now an idea, not a death sentence.
It is not a weakness to have fear – it means that your survival instinct is still healthy. But to live governed by fear – to have it unknowingly hijack your thoughts, decisions and courses of actions – that is really a shame.
Humans are limitless, once we can get past the limits of our own minds. Fear is a major culprit in perpetuating a lot – if not all – of those self-imposed limits.
Let go, take the weight off your wings, and dare to hope and be optimistic about your life, not afraid of all the things that could go wrong.
