Can We Live Free From Fear?

Most of us, at some point, have had a desire to live free from fear. We speak of a basic emotion that allows us to keep ourselves safe from real dangers. The problem is that fear is an emotion that likes to take control, sometimes not being able to distinguish very well what represents a real threat from what does not.

That’s when the emotion becomes maladaptive. On the other hand, one of the most universal fears is fear of the unknown. It is so universal because the uncertainty of the path not taken is, on many occasions, also necessary to move forward.

Also, many of the fears we deal with may be unconscious, such as fear of failure, fear of exposure, fear of others, fear of rejection, or fear of what they will say. Then come the bigger fears, like the fear of illness, the fear of death, the fear of losing a loved one, the fear of old age, the fear of loneliness… in short, we are afraid of suffering. In fact, we are often afraid to shine with our own light.

Identify the fears that hold us back

Think about the things that make you afraid and try to be aware of how they express themselves in your body. Thoughts, the emotion they produce, and corporeality are a triad that we are often not aware of. These are factors that feed back into each other, for better or for worse.

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 thinking and in the body. Fear has a breath of its own. It is fast, short, choppy and frequent. Making a shift in conscious breathing immediately lowers the level of emotion.

The story behind fear

We need to face our fears at their origins, and a good starting strategy is to identify their root cause. This is a very valuable exercise when writing about fear and its possible seeds. For example, writing can help us bring order to the mental chaos that is the state in which fear likes to live.

In many situations, a specific fear is just a warning that we need more tools or resources. If we don’t let it paralyze us and focus on analyzing it in a little depth, we can find a lot of valuable information about ourselves and even some clues about what decisions to make.

Some tips for living free from fear

It is positive to learn to trust the idea that we have the necessary resources to resolve situations that may occur in the future. We can’t have everything under control, and accepting that can do us good.

Think that you have lived through difficult situations in the past and that you are acquiring more and more skills. If you think it would be positive to develop some other skill in this regard and, of course, you have the possibility, then get to work!

Stop being afraid of failure. Failures are just a synonym, very ugly by the way, of an ill-fated attempt, but at the same time provide clues for future success. Life is also about accumulating new, unknown experiences, with the challenge of the uncertainties that may arise.

Fear does not disappear by clinging to what is safe

If we limit ourselves to clinging to what is safe – becoming prisoners rather than free from fear – we are limiting much of our potential. If the fear of failing, embarrassment, or being harmed doesn’t allow us to go a step further, we’re letting fear and worry take over.

Generally, we all have nearly equal parts of both. Negative experiences are well engraved in our brain, but that does not mean that they were more numerous than good experiences. Thus, an unfair memory of our past leaves us less free from fear.

I propose to you to read about other people’s lives. Doing this exercise will allow you to see how almost all successes were preceded by attempts that were not so lucky. So the belief that we can learn from error, knowing that we are allowed to be wrong, will make us freer from fear.