3 Steps To Living Without Fear

Fear is the mind killer… a famous line from the Frank Herbert Dune novels. And it certainly is that. It paralyzes and stops you from doing things that move your life forward. It causes you to live in a constant state of stress and anxiety about what “might” happen in the future. Your mind is trapped by the constant — what if this bad thing happens to me — and then even worse, it creates a feedback loop, where there is fear of being in a state of fear. Fear becomes the little daily death that steals your spirit and your happiness.

Look: We all have moments of fear. That pending lawsuit. We heard the company is starting to lay people off — am I next? That upcoming doctors appointment, and so on.

Most of us whether we choose to admit it or not, are motivated in life more by fear than any other force. It rules us and our actions or lack of them in our lives.

But what if there was no fear in your life? Where you operate from a place of true fearlessness, where you can walk down your daily path with a calm and certainness and deal positively with all the experiences that come your way, not from fear, but from joy.

That’s something we all must learn how to do. First by understanding the true nature of your fears, and then facing them, conquering them and transforming them into power.

Let’s look at the concept of fear for a moment. We tend to think of fear as a natural response, but it’s not. Fright is a natural response, a biological mechanism designed to startle and stimulate the fight or flight system of survival to mobilize an organism into action and then once the danger is over, it’s immediately dropped from one’s consciousness. Fright is not the same thing as fear. Fear is a learned response, an intellectual act that we’re trained to produce. And we learn it early in our childhood.

If a rabbit in the wild were to retain its fear it wouldn’t be able to survive because it would be immobilized by the constant fear of being eaten. The feeling of “Fear” is a mental construct. a pattern for interpreting reality.

We can express fear in different ways. Guilt for example is fear over something that we’ve already done. Resentment is fear over something that was done to us. Hostility is the fear of something being done to us — in the present, and Anxieties are the fears of what might happen to us in the future.

Fear is not a natural bodily response to a survival need. A child learns to develop fear on a conceptual basis at around the age of three or four. Carl Jung wrote that a child lives in the unconscious of his parents. Anxiety and fear are transferred to the child and because fear including anxiety, guilt, resentment and hostility, are such a large part of the adult world. The child picks up this fear as naturally as any other part of his experiences. And then to really lock it in — the child learns to ward off fear by fearing fear. Learned fear, this is what creates our worldview and for most — the very source of our culture that operates out of a fear-based view of reality.

So if this is a learned thing, and something that really doesn’t benefit us at all — how do unlearn it?

You unlearn fear by recognizing it, and facing it.

By the very awareness of fear and allowing it to pass through you and when it’s gone, it’s power over you has lessened. This is the key to transforming fear into personal power. At first it may seem difficult to do but once you see it for what it is and unlearn it as a conditioned response to your experiences, it will slowly lose its power over you.

Here is how you process it and get rid of it.

Whenever you feel anxious over some future event, or guilt or resentment, or you feel a fear welling up inside of you do this…

See the emotion clearly in your mind. recognize it for what it is. It is not reality. It’s your learned fear response to a circumstance. And it’s only real power over you is the mental construct that you created. This is especially true regarding a future event… that you are afraid of facing. Or something you think MIGHT happen — but it hasn’t yet — and there is no reason to even frame it in fear because it hasn’t even happened.

When you learn to be conscious of your fears, guilts, anxieties, resentments, you can allow the emotion to pass through you on a conscious level. Each and every time it does — the fear has less power over you.

Let’s use an extreme example. A phobia for instance, which is a fear that’s become psychologically traumatizing. Let’s say it’s the fear of flying. The way to conquer it, is by facing it, perhaps in baby steps at first but eventually conditioning or relearning a new response to the unravel the fear. Many people who are terrified of flying learn to become pilots so they could conquer their fear by facing it and learning about it. They taught their mind to no longer be paralyzed by the thought of it. That’s how you conquer phobias, such as public speaking, fear of heights cetera.

But what about everyday fears, fears about success about meeting new people, about taking social or business risks. Again, it’s the same process. First, create an awareness of your fear, recognize it, see it, and then take steps to put yourself in it — to face it and let it pass over you — realizing the fear of it — is only a learned response, and you tell yourself that your fear does not serve you any longer — you’re allowing yourself to face it — so that it can pass through you.

If you see it, and do this simple mental exercise as I’ve described, as simple as it sounds, it’s the quickest and easiest way to conquer a fear. Do the thing that you fear and sure enough, it grows smaller and smaller.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Try it the next time that you experience anxiety or fear. Try it even on a guilt feeling or a resentment. It will work with past fears as well by recreating the experience in your mind and rescripting your interpretation of it.

Here then is the process to transform fears and anxieties into power:

1) Recognition: Recognizing them and becoming aware of your fear. This is an important first step, because a lot of the time — we are not even aware of what the source of the fear is.

2) Understanding: Once you understand it — let it surface from your subconscious mind into your conscious mind. You do this by saying it out-loud. “I am afraid of the meeting I have next week because (__________) and fill in the blank.”

3) Release: Then let it pass through you by forcing yourself to face it. Realize that your fear of it — is more potent that the actual event. If it’s a huge fear, perhaps you take baby steps at first. Knowing that when it’s passed and is gone, you remain.

Do this. Repeat the process over and over, and soon you’ll discover a magic power in your life. Your fears will no longer control you and you’ll be freer and able to explore more possibilities in your life.

A video of this article is below.

For the complete and detailed course on this method and how to do this, take a look at the Zygon program titled FEARLESS, which has exercises and a complete system for transforming the fear in your life into power.

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I publish stories, videos, and podcasts that allow people to unleash the full potential of their minds and live extraordinary lives. It’s my mission. You can access all of my content and mind tools on the ZYGON mind power app… Apple or Goggle Play