Deal With Your Fears & Overcome Them

“Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Before you start reading about defeating worries and fears, I want to tell you that this was one of the hardest chapters of the book to write.  I spent a few days in a deep funk, was angry, tense, and out of sorts.  The reason is clear to me; it is because for the period of time that I was writing and researching fear and worry, I was concentrating not only on my research, but on fear and worry itself.  It brought back the feelings I had when fear and worry ruled my life.  Fears and worries are really draining so if the writing here is stilted or doesn’t flow as you might like, cut me a little slack, I gave up several days of my life to studying fear and worry from every aspect simply so you don’t have to.  Am I altruistic or what?

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Your fears, indeed the fears that we have as human beings as a whole, are often largely unfounded.  What’s more, some of the greatest fears are fears of things we have no control over.  We will all experience loss of love, we will all die.  Fear, other than fear that is necessary for survival, brings nothing into our lives but stress and negativity.  Worrying about something will not make it better, will not make the cause of your worry go away.   If you, like me, were to add up all the things you did not do and regret not doing because of fear, it would probably be a long list of missed opportunities and lost moments.

You can simultaneously be afraid of failure and afraid of success, afraid of change and afraid of not changing. Fear is a great excuse to stay in your comfort zone or lack of comfort zone, as it were.  Phobias make great excuses; you can use your phobias to avoid doing just about anything.

Fear is the stop sign of the soul.  Worry and fear lead to depression and despair.  Neither is productive, and neither will move you closer to your goal or the realization of your vision.  In fact, worry and fear can paralyze you.  When you spend your thoughts on worry, your thought and energy capital decreases.

I believe fear is the cause of almost every emotional problem that exists.  It is a primary reason that people become alcoholics and drug addicts.  It is why people stay in destructive relationships, eat too much, eat too little, throw themselves off bridges, and kill other people.  Fear is indeed one of our greatest motivators and one of our most negative emotions.  The worst part about it is that fear originates in the mind and can be controlled. It is possible to conquer your fears through rational evaluation and clear thought.

As humans, we are all prone to basic fears, the fear of poverty, ill health, old age, death, criticism, loss of love.  If you take a look at your list of fears, you will see that they all fall into one of these categories.  In sales, they teach you that fear is a great motivator, if you want people to buy something, play on their fears.  Fear is at the root of wars and mass hysteria.  But fear is a state of mind.  Once you understand this, you can start to conquer your fears.

If you do not allow fear to set up shop in your mind, you will be well on the way to conquering it.  You cannot think of fear and poverty at the same time you are thinking of success and wealth.  Your mind can only process one idea, one thought, at a time.  The “don’t think of the elephant syndrome” can be put into play here.  If I tell you not to think of something, you are going to think about it.  Fears are your elephant, and I would be willing to bet that as you are reading this, your fears are popping into your mind.

We have the ability to free ourselves from the control of natural forces through our knowledge and technology.  The ultimate freedom, though, is acquiring a complete understanding of how the mind works and that thought is the cause of everything and the effects are the result of thoughts.  There is no intelligence in matter, there is only intelligence in the mind, and the mind is supreme in the Universe, from the mind of God, to the minds of each individual on the planet.

When you grasp the understanding that the mind is really all there is, it is all that society and our very being is built on, you will have no cause for fear.

The Most Common Fears

Fear of Poverty

Poverty is dastardly.  In today’s world being poor is misery.  Debt, homelessness, illness, hunger – poverty sucks.  Poverty translates to powerlessness.  If you are poor, it is hard to have control over your life and worry about poverty isn’t going to make it better.  If you are constantly concerned about money, about your debt, about how you are going to live in your old age, you are using up valuable energy that could be redirected to  turning your situation around. Fear of poverty can lead to feelings of indifference, powerlessness, anger, frustration, pervasive worry, and low self-esteem.

“We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.” ― Immanuel Kant

Money is not the end-all and be-all, but it is, in society and often in our own minds, the way we measure success.  Notice even the terminology.  If you have no money, you are broke.   If others perceive you as broke, they will steer away from you and if, worse, you see yourself as broken, your whole image of self is affected, your whole being, your whole life.  The danger is that financial poverty becomes spiritual and emotional poverty, and vice versa.  In the second that you heave a sigh and say, “I am broke,” you will put your head in your hands and yourself in peril.

There is nothing romantic about poverty despite the stories of great artists, authors, and leaders that grew up in poverty or died in poverty.  If you grew up in poverty or now live in poverty, perhaps you think it is your lot in life to remain poor, perhaps you feel hopeless in the hands of fate.  Get over it!

Being afraid of poverty won’t get you very far, worrying about it won’t gain you anything, obsessing about it and accepting it as your fate in life is equally useless and ultimately destructive.  No one consciously chooses to live in poverty.  No one says, “I want to be poor.”  But so many of us suffer from poverty that it seems inevitable, there are after all, a lot more poor people than rich people.  What makes you think you are special enough to be rich?  You need to be born into it.  You need to know the right people; you need to have money to make money.

Poverty is all around us, it is hard to ignore, and it is hard to not be afraid of ending up poor and alone.  It is a fact of life in every city, town and country. Poverty is all around us.  It is hard to forget, impossible to deny, poverty is a global problem.

Don’t make it yours.  Do not take ownership of poverty.  In fact, think about it, very few people are rich and the majority of people in the world live below poverty level.  There is a lot more competition to be poor than to be rich.

If you believe that the world is full of possibilities, if you believe in an infinite power, or in the basic laws of energy and physics, you will know you don’t have to suffer poverty.  You do not have to be poor.  You do not have to settle for less.  Once you have your vision and your plan, you will realize that the fear of poverty is decreased. You will not be fearing poverty; you will be working toward, achieving, and attracting the wealth that you envision.

A lot of us were raised in families where it was considered impolite to talk about money.  A lot of us grew up with very little and saw our parents struggle to put us through college or, sometimes, even to put supper on the table.  Baby Boomers grew up in homes where the parents had lived through the Great Depression and the fear of poverty was instilled at a young age.

When the fear of poverty is so great that you can think of nothing else but your debt and all you can’t have, you are stealing from yourself.  You are wasting valuable energy and resources worrying and you will continue to find yourself mired in debt and pinching pennies if you do not stop focusing on your fear of being broke.

Being poor, worrying about poverty or debt is much harder than focusing on how you are going to make money, how you are going to realize financial success.  Do not think, “I will never be able to get out of debt, how am I ever going to own a home?”  Replace that thinking with, “I am working on increasing my wealth and next year, I will buy a new house.”  Plan how you are going to do that and work your plan.  If you simply reverse the thinking and take debt and poverty out of your vocabulary, you will start feeling a difference.  Once you start feeling more optimistic, you will have more energy, and you can use that energy to fuel your success.

If you want to stop fearing poverty or living in less than ideal conditions, you need to have your vision in place, you need to have your goals and your plan and you need to focus on that.  Your vision, your dreams have to replace your fears.  Remember, you cannot think clearly about more than one thing at a time so evict poverty and welcome affluence, no ifs, buts, or hesitation.

Fear of Poor Health

We all want to be healthy, we want to be strong and dynamic all of our lives and we never want to deal with debilitating diseases or chronic illnesses.  This fear is amplified if someone in your close family has suffered an illness.  It is not unnatural to worry about having heart problems if your father died of a heart attack or having cancer if your mother or other close relatives have suffered from it.  If you have had an active sex life, there are always worries about STDs, and if you work with a lot of people on a daily basis, imagine the germs you are accumulating!

“Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.” ― Mark Twain

The fact of the matter is illness happens.  All the positive thinking in the world will not change that.  But thinking about illnesses, worrying about every ache and pain and about the potential for disease in your future is not going to make you healthier.  It is, in fact, going to make you sick.  If you have hereditary tendencies, you need to deal with it and move on.  If you are a hypochondriac, admit it, all of us are, to some extent, you are going to magnify every little thing to the point where you think yourself into being sick.

The stories of people conquering disease all have one thing in common.  People that conquer fatal diseases have done it using their minds, their faith, their sheer will power, and it can be done.  My mother is over eighty years old but she has battled colon cancer, lung sarcomas, and other illnesses all her life.  She never gave in to them.

A Catholic woman of great faith, my mother was told that she had a huge mass on her lung and surgery was the only answer, even then, the doctors said it looked bleak.  Did she wallow in despair?  No.  She believed it would go away; she had children to raise and a life to live.  She prayed.  She had total faith that the mass would go away.  On the day of her operation, she told the doctors they didn’t need to operate because the mass would be gone.  When they opened her up, there was nothing there!  She had thought, believed the mass away.

Worrying about being sick, about getting ill, is not going to prevent it.  It might, in fact, encourage your body to start getting sick, it will lower your resistance and it will make you a bit nuts.  You have to reach a point where you can say, if I do get sick I will deal with it, but I do not plan on getting sick.

Do not think about illness, think about health.  When you find yourself fearing an illness, think about the opposite.  Imagine yourself running a marathon when you are 70 or becoming a Yoga master.  Imagine being vibrant and strong, imagine grandchildren and great grandchildren.  Hold your Infinite Vision in your mind and see the healthy, vibrant you at 40, 50, 60,70,80,90 years old.

You can make yourself sick just by thinking about it too much.  You can imagine yourself into ill health.  Usually, this is a function of depression and perhaps a touch or more of hypochondria.  Websites today make a thriving income catering to people that find it necessary to look up every ache and pain and believe me, if you start researching one ache on the Internet, you will end your search session convinced you have a fatal disease.

Don’t allow yourself to worry about aches and pains.  If you are worrying because of smoking, drinking, sex with strangers, dirty toilets, raw fish, whatever it is, just stop it.  Start working on improving your health and start concentrating on getting fit as opposed to wallowing in fear about the awful possibilities that await you because of your lifestyle, your heredity, or a world rife with disease and illness.

When faced with illness and aches and pains, concentrate on something else, you know it works.  How many times in your life have you forgotten to be miserable because you were engaged in doing something you enjoyed?  Remember when you were a child and your mom kissed it and made it all better, it worked, didn’t it?  How many scrapes and bruises have been forgotten with a simple kiss or an ice cream cone?

You cannot think of more than one thing at a time, think health, not illness.

That being said, the best defence against illness is a good offense.  Lead a healthy lifestyle; maintain your body as assiduously as you maintain your car, your house, and your most treasured possessions.  Treat your body with respect, love it and nurture it.  Make good health a habit that you don’t even need to think about – eating right, exercising – neither takes much time out of your day and neither requires much thought.

We breathe without thinking; our heart pumps without putting any thought into it, make healthy living a habit and you don’t even have to think about it.  You can concentrate on other things and use your mind to start attracting all the other things you want in life by simply getting in the habit of being healthy.

All this is not to say that illness does not exist and that you should ignore it.  If you are ill or have fears about an illness, go to a doctor.  Do it.  If you are truly sic k, they can help you and if you only have a minor problem, they can tell you how to deal with it.  Worrying about actual pains and health problems will not make them go away; ignoring them will not make them go away.  Go to a doctor!

Fear of Death

“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.”— Socrates

We all fear death, it’s a simple fact.  Death is scary.  But here is another fact; we are all going to die.  Fear of death can be a good thing.  It is our instinctual fear of death that makes us avoid life-threatening situations.  But bottom line, fear of death is not going to make it any less inevitable.  I have to admit, I rarely think about my death.  It’s just way too creepy.

“If you don’t know how to die, don’t worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don’t bother your head about it.” — Michel de Montaigne

I don’t think fear of death merits a lot of discussion.  We are all afraid of it.  It is inevitable.  It will happen sooner or later. The only way to conquer fear of death is to live life.

If you are busy living and loving life, you will forget about fearing death.  If you have phobias that are crippling you because of your fear of death, you need to face them or stay away from them.  Fear of water, heights, flying, freeways, falling…face them or learn to live with them and forget them.

Once you have achieved infinite vision, once you have a steadfast goal, you will be surprised at how many fears you can conquer simply because you know those fears are holding you back from achieving your goal.

“The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.” – Albert Einstein

Fear of Old Age

Fear of old age is also a bit silly. What, after all is the alternative?  It’s natural, though, especially in today’s age where age is not revered and the economy is unstable.  Certainly age in today’s society can be a handicap in employment, in health, in economic status and relationships.  The fear of old age brings along with it the other fears of poverty, poor health, loss of love, fear of death.

“It`s not how old you are, it`s how you are old.” ― Jules Renard

What if you grow old and are alone, or ill, or poor?  What if you die alone and penniless in a state funded hospice?  What if your children end up hating you or your spouse dies first?  Fear of old age becomes more predominant as we reach middle age and realize that life is uncertain, that loneliness may be someday inevitable, and that genetics may take their toll on us.

The fact of the matter is, if you are reasonably healthy, you will probably live a long life. Average life expectancy in developed countries is between 70 and 80 years old, compared with as young as 40 or younger in most African countries.  Be grateful that you have the opportunity to live a long life, imagine all the opportunities that are before you.

• Always keep active, enjoy your interests and hobbies and make a lifelong habit of doing the things you love, gardening, walking, reading, music…keep the things you love in your life.
• Keep learning, be open to new things, be tolerant and enjoy ever increasing wisdom and knowledge
• Keep your sense of humour, just think, when you are old you can be crotchety and eccentric and say all those things you want to say now but don’t.
• Stay young at heart and enjoy your life. Life is a journey, not a destination and your journey can be full of beauty, adventure, and discovery, no matter how old you are.
• Know that in old age, there is experience, wisdom, that elderly people are valuable members of society, that as you grow older, you have the opportunity to explore your spirituality, your true self, more and to perhaps do the things you were not able to do when you were younger
• Think of the older people you know in your life that are role models, who are living full lives in their retirement years. Look at the examples of people who have achieved things in later years.

“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.” ― George Bernard Shaw

Old age is a fact of life.  Wrinkles happen.  Try to make sure that your wrinkles are not worry lines from worrying about old age.

Fear of Criticism

Most people are terrified of public speaking.  Why?  Criticism.  We do not want to be criticized.  We do not want anyone to judge us negatively, and we want others to like our ideas and us.  Oh, how we want to be liked.  We do not want others to judge us, or think negatively of us.  Worrying about what other people think is ingrained in us from an early age.

Our parents tell us to be a big boy or girl, our classmates laugh at us or call us names, our teachers grade us, people rate us, berate us, and criticize us for one thing or another all of our lives.  That is never going to change.  People will like you or not like you, agree with you or disagree with you and fearing what other people think is like walking through a minefield.  If you live in constant fear of what other people think, you are living in a virtual war zone.

“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” ― Aristotle

Criticism happens.  It is part of life.  Face it, you are also critical, how many times have you snickered at someone’s appearance or rolled your eyes at someone’s statements.  How often do you criticize someone else?  We do it all the time, as the scorpion said to the frog, “It’s in my nature.”  Criticizing someone else, whether in word or thought, gives us a sense of power, a sense of superiority, regardless of how false that sense may be.

If you put yourself out there to any extent, you are going to meet with criticism.  Everyone is a critic, but not everyone is a creator, not everyone has the courage to open himself or herself up to criticism.  It is much easier to simply “keep the peace”, don’t rock the boat”, “go with the flow”, than to risk getting egg on your face.

But where’s the fun in it?  What is the upside of fearing criticism?  What is the upside of being a lemming?  If what you are doing does not illicit some criticism, you are not doing enough.  If you are so afraid of criticism that you fail to act on your beliefs and desires, you might as well resign yourself to a life of stable mediocrity.

If no one disagrees with you or criticizes you, you must be one hell of a boring person.   Conformity, taking the path of least resistance…if you do what everyone else does and your goal is to ensure that no one criticizes you, you can realize that goal.  However, you will also insure that you are absolutely unexceptional, unsuccessful and unfulfilled.

Do not view negative criticism as negative.  Negative criticism can be an opening for discussion, you may learn something, see a different viewpoint.  The old adage, “any publicity is good publicity” is not too far from the truth.  Your detractors will mobilize your supporters to stand behind you.  The criticizer becomes the criticized.  Ever notice how you get an adrenaline rush when criticized or in the midst of an intense argument?  People blush when they are embarrassed or criticized, but they also blush when they are pleased or complimented.

“Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Take criticism and don’t be afraid of it, you can even go far as to embrace it.  Your critics care enough about you to criticize you!  I am not making light of criticism here, it can be extremely painful, especially when it comes from those closest to you.  If you take negative criticism to heart, you can lose your sense of worth, your sense of direction, your sense of optimism and adventure.  For my part, I would rather be criticized than be invisible.

Fear of criticism manifests itself in many ways, all of them detrimental to the way others see you, thus probably provoking even more criticism.  You know you are suffering from fear of criticism when you find that you are overly self-conscious, shy, timid or nervous. When your hands sweat and your voice shakes you know it is coming out of fear of criticism.  You forget things, you are unsure of yourself, you feel like a child in school again.

If you find yourself being too much of a people pleaser, you need to step back and review your motives.  If you are trying to avoid criticism by doing what others want or expect, people, like predators, will see your weakness and take full advantage of it.

Do not be a patsy!  Sure, you may irk some people if you do something a bit off the wall or out of the ordinary, or if you take a stand on a controversial subject.  But do you really want to spend your life filtering everything you do simply to avoid harsh words or disapproval?

Something else to remember, the person that criticizes or judges often makes a habit of it, so their criticism of you is not going to mean a hoot to them.  You will find that judgmental, critical people are not all that discriminating about who they criticize or judge, and believe me, as soon as they have finished with criticizing and condemning you, they will move on to the next target.  It is in their nature.

Fear of criticism is natural; it affects all of us from the smallest of children to the greatest of men.  Once you are aware of how the fear affects you, you can start to remedy it.  In the face of criticism, you need to:

• Keep the intent of the criticism in mind, not all criticism is bad. Constructive criticism can be, well, constructive.
• Do not argue. Do not be defensive. If someone is criticizing you negatively or heckling you, listen, and don’t engage.  Simply nod or smile and move on to make your point.
• Don’t be hypercritical of yourself. The old saying that you are your own worst critic is most often true, so use your self-talk skills, don’t start second-guessing the criticism you may get.
• Take criticism for what it is, it is an opinion, someone else’s opinion or your own, it is not anything more and everyone has a right to express his or her opinion.
• Always hold your vision and your belief in yourself in your mind and heart. If you truly believe in yourself, then no amount of criticism is going to stop you.  If you find that criticism bothers you on a regular basis, you need to work more intensively on your self-esteem.
• Learn to appreciate criticism rather than fear it. At least if people are criticizing you they are acknowledging that they feel something about what you are doing or saying.  It is far worse to illicit no comment then to illicit a negative one.

Someone is always going to have something to say, negative or positive, people have opinions and people love to express their opinions.  What you do with it is your choice.  You need to take criticism for what it is worth and not take it to heart.  One of the best ways to do this is to be confident in your own beliefs, in your own vision, to believe in yourself to such an extent that you can accept criticism, and even use it to better yourself, to make yourself stronger, and to learn more about the people around you.

Fear of Loss of Love

Loss of love is one of our greatest fears.  No one wants to suffer a broken heart and no one wants to lose the person they love most in life.  Face it; we are inundated with movies and books about finding your one true love, finding your soul mate.  Little girls dream of the day they will find their Prince Charming and little boys, well, little boys dream of bigger toys.

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” ― Khalil Gibran

Fear of loss of love has extremely deep roots.  We have an innate desire and need to be loved from the time we are infants.  Infants that are not held, even if fed and clothed, will die.  Children, deprived of affection and love develop countless mental illnesses.  Study after study shows that humans need to be loved, it is part of our nature, part of what makes us, well, human.

If you are afraid of losing love, it stands to reason that you are also afraid to love.  It becomes a vicious cycle.  As adults, most of us have grappled with jealousy, insecurity, lack of confidence, and broken hearts.  If you have not had a broken heart at some time in your life, you are one lucky (or very cold) person.

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ― Lao Tzu

We don’t want to be alone, we don’t want to be rejected by the people we love, and we certainly don’t want the people we love to die or leave us.  Unfortunately, we cannot control others; we cannot control the feelings of others, or their actions, not really.  The heart wants what the heart wants.

We all know the stories of married couples who die within weeks of each other, their love so great that for one to go on living without the other is not physically possible.  You can die of a broken heart, but it is a slow and painful death, and ultimately, we all die alone.

“Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.” ― Dylan Thomas

The best way to defeat fear of loss of love is to love yourself and love others.

• Realize that sometimes loss of love is inevitable, people change, situations change, and that is a fact of life
• Learn to love yourself, really love yourself and take care of yourself as you would a child
• Appreciate those you love and let you know you love them on a regular, if not daily basis
• Learn to appreciate solitude
• Don’t sabotage yourself by worrying so much about losing love that you become needy, clingy, or jealous

“Love will fly if held too lightly, Love will die if held too tightly.”   Don’t expect or give too much or too little.  The only person that is going to be with you all of your life is you, so the best way to insure you are always loved is to love yourself.

Your Personal Fears

“Do one thing every day that scares you.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt

You may experience the same fears that others have experienced or you may have fears of your own that are crippling.  I have more personal fears than I want to think about.  Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of crowds, fear of being alone, fear of being with others, fear of relationships, fear of clowns, fear of not being attractive, fear of not making enough money, fear of … OK, you get the point.  You may have fewer or more fears than me but we all have things we are afraid of.  Where does all this fear come from and what good does it do us?

Fears come from our past programming and the people and events that have shaped our lives.  It’s all very good to dismiss fears as being unfounded or negative.  Most of them probably are.  But that doesn’t make them go away.  It would be great if it were that easy.  It’s not.

I am terrified of confrontations.  My coping mechanism for this in the past was to get drunk enough that I could talk about what was bothering me, which in turn, created even more problems.  Today, I deal with it differently.  I rest on it, try to gather my thoughts and wait to talk to the person involved until I feel I am ready and the situation has cooled.

What’s the worst that could happen?  If I don’t confront the problem nothing will happen, or worse, something may happen that is detrimental to me.  If I do confront the problem and the person or people involved, they may be angry, they may tell me I am full of shit, they may not do what I want or they may do what I want.  Obviously a confrontation has more possible outcomes than doing nothing at all.

Do you regret the things you did or do you regret the things you did not do?  I most often regret what I did not do.  Naturally, I regret some of the things I’ve done, but more than that, I regret not doing what my heart and mind were telling me to do because I was too afraid or wanted something too much.

“He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.” ― Aristotle

Whatever your personal fears are, attack them head-on.  The age-old story of the father throwing the child into the water so the child would swim can be applied here.  How many children drowned as a result of their fathers throwing them into a pool?  I would venture to say, not many.  In the same way, addressing fears, reality based or not, can be a great liberator.

You need to grab fear by the throat and shake it.  Most fears are rooted in our subconscious.  Often, they are not based on reality or even our own experiences.

• What is the fear?
• Why do you have the fear?
• Is your fear based on past experience?
• Is your fear realistic or self-created?
• What would make you overcome this fear? (i.e. swimming lessons if you are afraid of water, accomplishing something to defeat the fear, realizing the fear is not fact-based)
• What is your plan to face the fear or eliminate it?

Your fears need not immobilize you or control your life.  Take control today, know where your fears come from and conquer them!

SEEBEDO Your Fears

SEE your fears for what they are.  Envision a life without fear.

BE fearless, be bold. Be pro-active.

DO what it takes to overcome your fears.