Contextualize and Embrace Fear: Awesomeness Chapter 6
My first recommendation on conquering fear
This is the full sixth chapter of my book, and first on the subject of fear, from my book Awesomeness: An Amateur Potpourri of a How-To-Guide.
See part 5: Pareto’s Autopilot: here.
Contextualize and Embrace Fear
Fear is one of, if not the greatest, barriers to success and happiness that we all face. It keeps people, myself included, mired in stagnation and mediocrity. Thereby, conquering fear is of critical importance.
The first thing to note is that fear is often useful. It is not something that we should try to defeat per se, it’s something that we need to understand and overcome. Fear evolved to protect us from that hungry saber tooth tiger or whatever other danger lied behind the bushes. Today however, in our advanced and much safer world, it tends to be counterproductive and even debilitating. But it’s not fear itself that is counterproductive; it is caving to that fear.
Understanding that everyone deals with fear about a whole range of things is the first important insight. No one is alone when it comes to fear. But recognizing that “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them” as Henry David Thoreau has been misquoted as saying[1] does not bind us to the same fate. In fact, recognizing fear’s universality is the first step to liberating us from it.
Virtually every time that I can remember a famous or successful person opening up, they discuss the many fears they had along the way. For example, Warren Buffet admitted he was “terrified” [2] of public speaking and Lebron James admitted to having a severe “fear of failure.” [3]
In addition to recognizing that fear is universal to humanity, it is also important to identify what particular issue is causing said fear. Most fears boil down to either a fear of the unknown or a fear of criticism. Isolating the causes of fear can by itself help dispel them because many, once stated explicitly, become visibly absurd.
So figure out what the fear actually is and then list out what the potential consequences could be. Are you afraid of asking that girl/guy out? OK, well the fear is probably of 1) not knowing how he/she will respond (fear of the unknown) and 2) being rejected (fear of criticism). But so what if you are rejected? Has your state of being—not being in a relationship with said person—changed at all?
Dale Carnegie gave one such anecdote in his famous book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, noting that,
“After discovering the worst that could possibly happen and reconciling myself to accepting it, if necessary, an extremely important thing happened: I immediately relaxed and felt a sense of peace that I hadn’t experienced in days.”[4]
And that’s after accepting the worst that could happen! Indeed, my father once told me that 99 percent of the things we worry about don’t end up coming true at all. That may not be technically accurate, but it sounds about right given my experience worrying about all sorts of irrelevant fantasies and fictions.
And even for those fears that do come to pass, they are usually not nearly as bad as they originally seem. From my experience at least, it is usually the unexpected things that blindside us which cause most of life’s problems, not the things we are incessantly worrying about.
Most people (myself included) get too wrapped up in the minutia of everyday life that we forget to look at the bigger picture. We become attached to and mentally exhausted by all of this baggage. Brian Tracey, in his excellent book Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life, mentions that,
“The great spiritual teachers, such as Buddha and Jesus, have emphasized the importance of separating yourself emotionally from the situation (disidentification), in order to regain your calmness and composure.”[5]
Separating ourselves from the situation and even the potential outcomes can be of great service when it comes to fear. Just compare whatever problem you’re facing to the size and history of the universe and it starts to seem rather trivial.
Even our own mortality can be viewed in a way to alleviate fear. As one popular Youtuber noted “we all die” and that once we accept this, all we need to ask is “Will this thing you’re afraid of matter in 300 years?”[6] Once you really start to think about it, in all likelihood, it probably won’t even matter next week.
OK, but we’re all irrational and not being aware of that irrationality is in itself irrational. Recognizing that a fear is ridiculous doesn’t make it go away, even if it does diminish the effects of it.
But we shouldn’t want fear to go away. Instead, we should go even further and actually embrace our fear. As Susan Jeffers notes in her fantastic book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyways, “The fear will never go away as long as [you] continue to grow.”[7] This is because, as mentioned above, one of the greatest fears is that of the unknown. And thereby, whenever you’re doing something new or reaching a new level in your career, life or relationships, it will be scary.
And it should be.
Fear is thereby often a good thing; a sign that you are growing or taking on something new. If you ever think to yourself, “you know, I haven’t been afraid of something for a long time,” it probably means you are doing something wrong.
So embrace fear and seek after that which makes you afraid.
[1] “Henry David Thoreau Mis-Quotation Page”, The Walden Project, https://www.walden.org/Library/Quotations/The_Henry_D._Thoreau_Mis-Quotation_Page, Accessed April 20th, 2015,
[2] Carmine Gallo, “How Warren Buffett and Joel Osteen Conquered Their Terrifying Fear of Public Speaking”, Forbes, http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2013/05/16/how-warren-buffett-and-joel-osteen-conquered-their-terrifying-fear-of-public-speaking/, May 16, 2013
[3] Matt Moore, “Lebron James: ‘I’m afraid of failure,” CBS Sports, http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on-basketball/24087923/lebron-james-im-afraid-of-failure, October 15, 2013
[4] Dale Carnegie, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, Pocket Books, September 15, 1990, Pg. 14
[5] Brian Tracey, Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., August 15th, Pg. 24
[6] Storm Clouds Gathering, “How to Overcome Fear When Facing Real Danger,” October 8th, 2014
[7] Susan Jeffers, Feel the Fear… and Do It Anyway, Random House Publishing Group Copyright 1987, Pg. 22
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