Turning fear into favour - Mastering fear for growth

 

·        What is fear?

·        Should we be afraid of fear?

·        Can I use fear instead of being crippled by fear?

·        How can I use fear for my favour?

 

Have you heard the saying, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself?”

After reading this article, you will understand this statement and how to overcome fear. As well as to have a better understanding how to manage your fear emotion and make it work for you.

 

Let’s dive in.

We will never be able to rid ourselves from fear completely. Fear is part of the cycles of life. (i.e. There is no happiness without sadness, there is no courage without fear.)

 

Let’s break down fear a bit.

Fear is an unpleasant emotion/feeling caused by the perceived threat of danger, pain, or harm, real or imagined.

Fear is a response.

Fear is an instinctive response to protect us from a perceived danger.

It is a strong emotional response to a perceived threat or danger.

Danger is real, Fear is a choice

 

Makes sense? Fear is coming from withing, not without. A danger can be on the outside, but does not mean you should feel fear on the inside. In order to be courageous in a dangerous situation, you can not allow fear to overpower you. An example are soldiers or the police. If they were crippled by fear in a dangerous situation, the outcomes would look a lot different.

 

When we say ‘perceived’ threat, it means that there might be a real threat or not, it depends on the meaning we as an individual give it.

For example, some people are afraid of dogs while others are not. The dog fearing person will avoid dogs and trigger a fear response in their body while the dog loving person will not have that fearful response or feelings. The dog stays the same, it’s the meaning we give it that change.

 

Fear is thus a learnt response. We can say, fear is an emotional response due to a mental thought. Can we go as far as to say that fear is a learnt response? Let’s say something happens to you that you do not like and you want to avoid it in the future, like a dog or a type of person, so you teach your body to feel fear in order to avoid the perceived pain(Dog or type of relationship).

 

 

Becoming aware of fear

Fear is an emotion/feeling. When we refuse to feel or acknowledge fear, we suppress it. Supressing any emotion never did us any good, even if it is something we do not like or want to feel. Suppressing fear is like spring loading fear, eventually it will pop up all at once.

 

Here are some questions to become more aware of fear.

·        You do not have to accept fear or let it overpower you, however you must be aware of it, notice it.  Where did it come from?

·        What thoughts created this feeling of fear inside me?

·        Is it necessary to feel it?

·        Is it necessary to allow it to overpower me?

·        What do I rather want to feel and experience?

·        What actions can I take to feel a better emotion that is more aligned with my goals?

·        Do I have clear goals? Not having clearly defined goals and plans tend to lead to fearful and uncertain feelings.)

 

If you can identify the thought that made you feel fear, then you can stop, notice and change the thought.

 

Here is the “stop, drop and roll” of fear.

 

Stop – Stop what you are thinking

Drop – the emotion from your body

Roll – turn the emotions around into a favourable feeling and experience

Remember, thoughts create emotions. Manage tour thoughts and your emotions will be your servants.

 

How can I start to control my fear emotions and thoughts?

 

Train your brain with awareness exercises.

By far one of the best methods is solitude. Briefly, how do solitude work? By sitting alone for 30minutes to an hour in a quiet and undisturbed location and only observing how your body feels. Be aware of it. Use your breathing as a focus point the entire time to bring you back from your thoughts to the present moment of feeling. 

 

When you start noticing thoughts that trigger fear inside you, you are then able to change those thoughts. To what do I change them? You might ask.

To what you really want. That is the reason clearly defined strong goals are so important. If you do not have proper goals, then any fear will overpower you.

After you have identified the fear, create a strategy to change the fearful thoughts to courageous thoughts instead. When that fear thought pops up, immediately change your thoughts to that of your goals, to that what you rather want to experience, and feel your desired emotion instead. It will take work and effort, but the payoff is life changing.

Let say it will take you 6months to make these changes inside you to have no fear for that thought anymore. 6 months sound long, but what is 6 months of the rest of your life? 6 months looking forward is very long, but 6 months looking back after 20 years, is a drop in the ocean.

 

Make the decisions that is important for your future self. Trust the process and enjoy the change.

Your future self will be very grateful.

 

Remember, Fear is a choice, choose wisely how.

 

Live SourceFull

 

Francois

Here is how you can use your habits to your advantage

What are habits? 

How does habits serve us?

Can we employ habits to serve us?

How does habits play a role in forming our life as we know it?

Are we not just a bunch of habits?

What habits are you?

 

 

Wikipedia define habits as follows.

A habit is a routine of behaviour that is repeated regularly and tends to occur subconsciously. The American Journal of Psychology defined a "habit, from the standpoint of psychology, [as] a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience."

 

Habits are very interesting. Habits may serve us or drive us to our own destruction. Some build habits of love and prosperity and others build habits of destruction and gloom. (Addictions, poverty, bad friends, emotional addiction)

 

If you look at the successful people in the world, they have built their life around success habit. Habits that is supporting the life they want and desire.

All habits are difficult to start and build, but once you have set the habit in place, then it is on auto pilot and you can focus on enjoying the experience of that habit.

 

A reason it is so difficult for people over in the 30s and up to change is, because of all the habits they have formed when they were younger. If you formed bad habits, then it is very difficult to change them, but possible. It is very important for young children to form good habits early on, habits that support a powerful thinking, to make their life easier later on.

Build success habits and good relationship habits. Plan your life. Help your children to plan their lives and help them create the habits they need. If you don’t know, then ask someone who does now.

 

Building habits

It is said that it takes about 21 days to form a new habit, just to be safe use 30 days. After doing an activity for 30 days in a row you will feel as if it is part of your life and routine. Take exercise for example.

When you start it is very nice for the first few days, then it becomes very daunting to even think of going to the gym. It is your old habits that is trying to keep the status quo, the ego does not like change.

However, if you persist and continue going to the gym everyday if you feel like it or not, then after 30 days it will feel awkward not going to the gym. You have an empty feeling, like ‘what am I going to do with myself now.’ Which is good, then you take your body to the gym again and repeat.

This is in a nutshell how to build habits. Easy, right?

The concept is easy, the will power is the hard part. Life happens so slowly for us on the inside, that you never realise the small progress or regress you make on a daily basis. Skipping one day might feel like its ok, but that leads to another day, then a week pass and sooner than later you are out of shape, unhealthy and back to your old habits.

Part of building habits is having a strong ‘will’, and even will power if formed by building a habit around strong will power.

 

(Will power is built by practicing your ‘will’, like doing what you said you will do no matter what. If you said you are going to the gym every day, then go to the gym every day, that is what builds will power, sticking to your commitments.)

 

Successful people know how to build habits and use it to their advantage

 

Once you realise how important a strong ‘will’ is for building habits, and you feel like you do not have a strong ‘will, then perhaps you should consider a strong will to be one of your first habits you need to build.

 

What if I want to strengthen my “will”, how would I do that? 

 

The exercises are simple yet effective. Any subconscious work needs time and repetition, so stick to it. These methods make changes in your subconscious mind. It changes the way you process a certain situation or happening. For example. If you have a habit of sticking to your commitments, then you will also plan to be where you said you will be. Because you already know you are going to a certain place or event, there is no reason for you to complain or to make up fake excuses in your head of why you do not want to be there.

 

These exercises change a set of thoughts and expectations that influence the way you experience life.   

 

Stick to your commitments – You know those moments you talk to yourself in your head? When you make those empty commitments? Like, “tomorrow, I’m going to the gym.”

Just because no other person can hear you does not make that commitment less important. In fact, it makes it more important. You are the most important person in your life. Don’t disrespect yourself.

Stick to your commitments. There is always a good reason you made them, not to break them.

Create a new habit, something inline with your goals. Romance, career, life etc

 

“I am going to do my taxes tomorrow after work, this time I promise.”  If you say to yourself that you are going to do something, then it is a good idea you follow through with your word, even if you don’t feel like it, even if it rains, just do it. You will feel better after doing it in unfavourable conditions than the excuse you made up for avoiding it. Build that will.

 

Create a challenge – Create a challenge for yourself where you can practice implementing your will power. Like going to the gym or start an exercise routine for 30 days in a row. Don’t skip a day, you are building a new habit. Remember to do it, weather you feel like it or not. You might eventually notice either way is your choice, to feel like it or not to feel like it. Make the best choice for your future self.

 

After you have built an exercise habit, you will feel empowered to build another habit. Do it when the inspiration is there, ride the wave of change. Set another goal and build another habit.

 

‘Will’ power is strengthened by practicing your will, sticking to your commitments. Even the ones you make to yourself. 

 

Your life experience is just a bunch of habits. The time you wake up. The food you eat. Your morning routine. The thoughts you think. The reactions you have.

You are your habits.

 

Creating your next habit?

What habits should I create next?

It all depends what your goals are. Its always good to start with the body, create a good healthy habit (Exercise and diet). The body is easily adaptable, meaning you get easily used to your circumstances and surroundings. If you think eating healthy is less tasty, give it a month and you would have forgotten how you use to eat and accept the new diet.

Life has formulas for us to use, use it to your advantage, don’t be the victim of life, be the master. Choose good feelings above unhealthy food. There are a lot of benefits from a healthy diet.

As you are mastering this habit, you will start to become aware of how it is unfolding and you can make changes as you are going along to your goals.

You will notice that you will need another skill or way of thinking. Perhaps you should get your temper under control. Now you start the process of creating a habit for his new skill.

 

In this case, choose a way you would rather want to react instead of angry. Find ways to use this new way of reacting and implement it.

Make a commitment to change

And stick to it.

 

Some habits run deeper than others. For example, to change a behaviour like anger, you need to go to the source and change it. You have to work out ‘thinking’ and ‘reacting’ plans in your head.

In contrast…

To get your body in shape, you need to get your body exercising.

That’s why its best to start with your body habits before you go into your mental and emotional habits.

 

You will always know what habit to create next. Trust yourself.

 

As you create and master these habits, you will notice that you do not consciously have to implement these behaviours anymore, it is on auto pilot. In fact, it feels awkward if you do not do these habits.

Choose how you would like to be in life, and figure out what habits you need to live that life. It will take you some planning, nut it is planning worth making.

 

What habits are important for you?

What habit do you need to implement immediately?

 

Share your experience with habits. Let’s grow together.

 

Live a SourceFull life

 

Francois