The fear
It’s just that primitive man cheated us! Yep, that’s right. Do you know how fear arises, any type of fear? It was born precisely from primitive man who, poor thing, every day in addition to being faster than the gazelle, if he wanted to eat, also had to be faster than the lion, if he didn’t want to be eaten. This is why nature has endowed it with fear, a feeling that actually arises from chemistry, or rather from the increase of a hormone in the blood, cortisol, which corresponds to an increase in heartbeat and greater energy flowing through the veins. Here, the fear, this unknown, is all here; an excess of cortisol.
Easy to explain, very complicated to handle. Yes, because, believe me because I have seen it with my own eyes, fear is perfectly capable, if you try it, of ruining people’s lives. I’ll tell you more: fear is, in my opinion, the main deterrent to happiness. From primitive man to today, the concept of fear, its causes, its manifestations, have evolved; As there is no longer the aforementioned lion to threaten us, modern man has been very good (sarcasm) in finding new reasons for fear. It is even said that even political power, not only that of dictatorships to be clear, is based on the fear of the subordinates (pandemics, wars, do they tell you something?): Those who are afraid are more easily governed.
Remaining more practical, fear has become part of the life of many of us, an unwelcome companion, worsening it, precluding us experiences and choices, which we would be able to make of it. You have no idea how many times I have seen people, even close to me, who have perhaps given up a new job opportunity, or even, even love, because of fear. It is said that love is the reason for everything, the Sun that moves our lives, the most powerful engine yet, if fear gets in the way, even this engine jams. Trust me!
Be honest
Fear is not a fault. We must therefore not feel guilty if, faced with an important choice or opportunity, we are seized by fear. But you have to at least be honest and acknowledge it. Yes, because when we go to recognize and know what are the causes of our fear, in addition to doing an exercise of honesty towards ourselves and towards others, we also take a first step towards a possible liberation from fear itself. Indeed, how can we stop being afraid of something if we have not yet focused on it. That is why, therefore, psychologists and mental coaches, in the face of pathological fear, recommend first of all to put pen to paper what things scare us, and already this first step, statistics in hand, they say, is able to alleviate that sense of suffering.
Then there are other practices that are suggested to try to overcome fear. For example, if we are scared of news, a useful exercise is to try to “taste” them in small doses. Suppose, for example, that you are frightened by the idea of changing your city and moving permanently to another: a useful exercise to allay the fear could be to initially go to the new city for small periods of time gradually increasing.
Then there are fears related to the sense of “damage”. For example, there are those who have a fucking fear of losing a loved one, through abandonment or death, or losing their jobs, losing their well-being; all fears related to a sense of damage to oneself deriving from such losses. In this case it is not possible to apply the above method and it is instead useful to apply a different technique which is the following: are you afraid that an event X will happen? All right, try to write on a piece of paper what you think all the consequences of this event X on your life might be. They don’t need to be realistic causes, write them all down anyway. Well by doing this exercise you will most likely come to see that all in all, already in your own imagination, the damage resulting from such an event would not be as disastrous for your life as you have imagined them up to now! Before writing them maybe in your head you had created many more than you then, rationally, came to imagine.
Overrating
And here comes a nodal point common to both types of fear listed above which is the “overestimation of fear”. What’s it about? It consists in the fact that in 95% of cases (very high percentage if you think about it) we are afraid of things that either will never happen in our life, or, even when they do, do not bring all the damage we had supposed. 95%!
And are you willing to ruin your life for that damn 5% bad luck? And mind you, it’s not a question of courage. Often when we talk about fear we tend to contrast it with the concept of courage: those who have courage are not afraid, and vice versa. Bullshit! The truth is that anyone, even the most cowardly, has the tools to win, I don’t mean all but almost all the fears that grip him. And the recipe is much simpler than you think. In fact, we do not necessarily need courage that, we know, has not been distributed to all in equal parts by Mother Nature. Do you know what it is for? All you need is the ability to accept that there can be failures in life.
Something scares you? Try it, accept the risk, bad thing you will have failed but if you have not even tried it you will have wasted your time in unnecessary waiting. And believe me, on balance, especially when the years begin to pass, it hurts much more to think about lost time and not failures. Looking back at one’s failures, one even looks at it with compassion. On the other hand, you look at lost time with anger … Towards yourself. This is why every day I try not to be scammed by fear. I listen to her, I evaluate her, because I am not unconscious, but I never leave her the last word. Try it too!
