#113. Fear

Very few people today compete with the notion of human evolution. We agree that we had relatively less mature ancestors, and they evolved by persevering through very hard circumstances. Humans used to live in extremely dire circumstances, where death was around the corner at any time. Wild animals, starvation, poisoning or drowning; all of the above were real causes of death, and commonly so too.

The world we live in has advanced in a number of ways, and fortunately for us, the number of humans succumbing to the aforementioned causes have significantly reduced. However, the feeling around death is one thing that still exists in us.

Fear.

And today, we will try to demystify this very emotion, which also happens to be one of the biggest motivators for humans.

“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”

– Marcus Aurelius (in “Meditations”)

Fear is one of the most interesting emotions, in my very humble opinion.

We fear things we know. We also fear things we don’t know.

We fear things we understand. We also fear things we don’t understand.

After countless hours of thinking, I have come to one conclusion, one I believe most of us will agree with.

Fear as an emotion exists in us to prevent us from experiencing negative emotions in life.

Let me explain.

A parent is afraid of their child suffering through the atrocities of the real world. Hence, they stress and drive the child to dedicate themselves to a vocation.

The child is afraid that what they are being asked to study would not lead to fulfilment. Consequently, the child rebels and asks for alternative routes.

It’s ironic though, because isn’t fear itself a negative emotion?

I would think so, because we do like to tell others to not be afraid. And there are a number of impacts of fear on the human psychology; including, but not limited to: impaired judgement, irrational responses and just an overall unpleasant experience.

We experience negative emotions to prevent ourselves from experiencing negative emotions.

Then what’s the point of fear? Shouldn’t we just discard it in our lives?

Well, that would be just irrational.

Reason being, fear does exist in the human emotional spectrum for a reason, and that reason is one which has allowed humans to make it through the countless catastrophes across millennia.

The reason is, fear strengthens our survival instincts.

Think about it.

What would have happened if all of our ancestors would have been just as insane as the first guy brave enough to jump into a waterfall?

Or the guy who stepped in a huge fire?

Or one who tried to fight a bear with nothing but his hands?

I don’t think we would have made it that far.

Fear is a necessary evil, one that exists to guide us, but also exists to hold us back.

Fear prevent us optimism in some situations, but causes pessimism in others.

Fear evokes action in certain situations, and deters actions in others.

Fortunately, as we talked about in the introduction, the world we live in is much safer than the one we have evolved from. We have much less obvious physical danger.

But what about the fears we have in our daily lives?

The best way of dealing with fear, is the best way to deal with most situations; take things one at a time.

There are very few one size fits all situations in the world. Fear is no exception.

One way that I have found to deal with fear is using the 1 why and 4 so’s technique. It is loosely based on the 5 whys principle, but replaces 4 whys with so’s.

Example: Fear of Starting a New Project

Step 1 — The 1 Why

• Why am I afraid?
  “I’m afraid to start this new project I’ve been thinking about.”

Step 2 — The 4 So’s

So what does that mean for me?
“It means I’ll end up playing small and never realize my true potential.”

So what does that mean for me?
“It means I might fail and waste the time and effort I put in.”

So what does that mean for me?
“It means I’ll feel like I’m not capable of following through on my own ideas.”

So what does that mean for me?
“It means I’ll doubt myself even more the next time I want to try something meaningful.”

Once we get to the root cause, we get a real fear. One that we know we should truly be working on. One that will help improve us as human beings.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one. 🙂