Making Friends With Your Fears

Since the name of this blog is ‘Fearless Endeavors,’ I think that it is fitting that I begin to address this topic. First, I want to make it clear that I don’t consider myself a person who is fearless by any means. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I’m full of fears and I have probably spent most of my adult life repressing these fears instead of addressing them…well, up until the past year or so at least.

Through the process of meditation and mindfulness, my fears have become more apparent as well as my desire to really study them and, in a sense, welcome them into my life. I think one of the first steps we as human beings can take in addressing our fears is opening up to them and welcoming them instead of banishing them to the hollows of our sub-conscious mind.

I have a poem from Rumi on my about page that addresses this. We have a tendency in our lives to shun, avoid, repress and run away from bad things in our lives including pervasive fears that have been with us for countless years. So, instead of viewing fears (and other ‘bad’ things) as the enemy, we should treat them as our friend and as an opportunity to learn and grow.

The process can be thoroughly unpleasant and even scary at first. Addressing our fears many times gets to addressing who it is we really are. How we define ourselves. How we view ourselves in relation to others. It can bring about feelings related to our self-worth, or anxieties and stresses that have been with us for such a long time that it almost seems like it’s normal to live in a way where our fears and anxieties guide our life. It might be better to say that we unknowingly or even sometime willingly let them guide our life.

Since the process can be so overwhelming and scary, many people avoid it as I had done. Because of this, I thought it might be helpful to provide an exercise you can do when you begin this process.

1. Write your fears down on paper

This is a very basic, yet very powerful first step. Specifically, what you should do is a free-form writing of any fears that come to mind, say for 60 seconds or a couple of minutes. I recommend writing by hand on paper as opposed to using a computer. Make the conscious intention before doing this that you will be completely honest and open. Nobody has to see this except for yourself.  Do not censor anything that comes to mind, even if you don’t necessarily think it’s a fear – just right it down anyway. It could be frustrations, worries…anything that comes to mind.

2. Examine what you have written

While the above step was about complete free-flow writing with whatever comes to mind, the next step is about organizing what you’ve written so you can start to make some sense of it. What themes do you notice? Common themes could be money, health, relationships (not just romantic) and career. Once you have some fears categorized into common themes you will be able to take a more holistic view of what you’ve written. An example could be that you have fears about losing all your money, your job or possibly even your relationship. These all fall into different categories, but if you take a larger or completely different view of these fears you might notice one large underlying fear, such as abandonment. Or, more times than not, you will find that the root of the fear is a deeper issue, which you can then begin to explore.

3. Change your frame of reference

Once you become familiar with and make friends with your fears, you can begin to address them. I believe that a large part of this involves changing how we view ourselves in relation to the world.

When you do the above exercise you are allowing yourself to open up so that you can look at your life in a completely new perspective. I think a big part in overcoming a lot of our fears is changing our frame of reference.

Most, if not all of us have an outward frame of reference. That is to say, we live our lives in accordance with how we think we are perceived by the outside world. This could mean we take a job because we think we’ll be perceived as successful or smart by others. It could mean that we act in certain ways to preserve an identity that’s created largely by others. Example: The football player who has a longing to open up a flower shop, but doesn’t because of fear of what other people would think.

If we can begin to change our frame of reference from outwards to inwards we will better be able to share our uniqueness and talents and they will come forth more easily. When we’re living from a place of true centeredness, the truth of who we are (i.e. stripped from any stories or attachments of how we should be) comes forth and we can slowly begin to break down and overcome our fears.

What are some steps you’ve taken to overcome fears you’ve lived with?

Photo Credit: stumayhew