In a previous post – Fear-less (Part 1): Why we feel fear-ful – I shared some of the reasons why we feel fear-ful . Hopefully by now you can see that we’ve got fears and will continue to face fears but the onus is on us to learn how to control and overcome our fears so they don’t control and overcome us instead.
I had shared in the part 1 that I had unpleasant experiences with my fears for the longest time. I felt controlled by my fears and trust me it felt miserable. But I got fed up and decided it was time for a change . Along with the inner workings and research and actions I took, here’re 4 main ones that continue to help me with putting my fears in their place that they don’t control me:
1. Focus on the positive outcome that can be controlled
I’ve come to understand that I attract the things that I focus on most of the time. And so, now I’m obsessed with fixating only on the positive results that I want for myself irrespective of what that negative voice in my head says. Besides that, focusing on the things that I can control (e.g. my actions, words and behaviors) and not on the things outside of my control (e.g. peoples responses, economic outlook, etc ) has saved me from a lot of unnecessary anxiety & fear stings.
In fact, apart from deciding all these in my heart and mind, I also have affirmations that I regularly say to myself and about my situations to remind me to always maintain a positive outlook as I fix my attention on things that are within my control.
2. Confront the negative thoughts
The Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) are really real. We’re being bombarded with lots of negative news from different corners and so it’s not a surprise why we may tend to think negative almost by default (hence the truth in the study about ANTs ). After learning about ANTs, I soon made up my mind to wrestle against it. One thing I do in this regard is to regularly check in with how I am feeling. Because fear is a feeling and every feeling is triggered by a thought, whenever I feel fearful, I check in with myself to know what thought I’ve been entertaining. Invariably, it’s a negative thought.
In dealing with my negative thoughts, I practice two techniques:
i) Opposition thinking: this is where I capture the negative, “what if” thoughts that terrify me – (you know how when you’re attempting to do something new, and those “what if” thoughts come to tell you things like “what if you fail? ” Or “what if the interviewer/investor doesn’t just like you for no good reason?” Or “what if you forget your lines for the talk?” etc ) – and instead of yielding to them, I consider the opposite effect. For example, if a negative thought hit me that says “what if you mess up on that talk/presentation?” , I’d basically ignore it and then consider the opposite effect of me knocking the talk off the park and even getting a standing ovation 🙂 . Then I practice the next technique
ii) Creative, positive visualization: This is where I take the opposite version of the negative, “what if”. thought, and begin living it out in my mind that I can actually feel the experience as though it were real. I continue this until I can feel my confidence level skyrocket that I am pumped up to go take action. The aim is to drive this memory deep down into the subconscious which is our mental driver. The subconscious is unable to distinguish between the actually versus imagined experiences so this visualization is more like cheating 🙂
3. Act in spite of fear
The only way to overcome a fear is to confront it – eye-to-eye, face-to-face, man-to-man, woman-to-woman, etc . Each time I act in spite of my fears, I come out on the other side feeling like a conqueror and knowing that I am more likely to repeat the same thing for the next fear I face. I’ve learnt that that’s courage (I am obviously not perfect and I continue to work on exercising my courage muscle daily by doing something uncomfortable/scary) . Courage, they say, isn’t the absence of fear, but feeling the fear and doing it anyway. The funny thing is that, more often that not, after facing my fears, I realize that they weren’t as horrible and terrifying as I’d imagined and so I get motivated to face the next one.
4. Trust & surrender more to the Higher power (it’s God for me)
The moment I decided to consciously trust and surrender more to God, the more peace I began to witness in my life. The peace stems mostly from the fact that, I know that God is with me and for me and that He’s helping me even to face my fears (I know that He’s bigger than my biggest fears and worries and everything else). Especially for the things that are outside of my control, I take action on what I can control and then surrender to God that which I can’t control and so I have no reason to be unduly fearful because He’s got it and He can do all things.
How about you? What are some ways you’ve been able to manage and overcome your fears? 🙂
To your victory over your fears!