Fear comes from our most basic instinct to survive.
It comes from our “old brain”, sometimes called the “reptilian brain” that has had a lot more evolutionary experience than the newer parts of our brain.
This added evolutionary experience of the reptilian brain may often work at your disadvantage when you are trying to live a meaningful life.
Why?
Because fear marks a greater possibility of permanently setting a level of understanding of the life you need to live.
Your brain’s fundamental goal is to keep you alive. The scary part is, it will consider just about anything a threat to your life if you let it. If you let fear-memories concretize — through neuroplasticity — everything you do in life will need to first walk-through the doors of those fears.
And it is this prerequisite of fear that can greatly limit your happiness.
How?
Fear keeps you from applying for that job at a well-respected company because you might feel ashamed of rejection.
Fear keeps you from helping others because you think it will make them come for more or become dependent on you.
Fear keeps you from taking sensible risks that will challenge you to think differently and have different experiences in life.
Fear keeps you less tolerant and agile to the changes that are sure to come from an unpredictable future.
The truth is: I have missed out on many opportunities to get more out of life because I was afraid, and I have enjoyed so much in life because I wasn’t. Sometimes, our fears are born out of the very personal things we have seen.
I, for example, have always been afraid of the water. Not only was I introduced to swimming much later than I perhaps should have, when I did finally go in, the fear of drowning had set a permanency that I still carry till this day.
But one day, I challenged this fear, and walked away with a massive lesson.
I few years ago I found myself standing in front of what has to be one of the most violent waterfalls in the world, Victoria Falls in Zambia. Literally meters away from the edge of death, I had to decide whether I would jump into this unforgiving water and swim my way to a place that promises the most beautiful experience ever or stay back and yet again let my fear prove victorious. After a few minutes of watching my friends swim to purgatory, I decided to face my fear: I told my fear that it could no longer imprison me. I took a deep breath, uttered, “not today fear…today I will succeed!”, and jumped in. I swam to my destination with total ease and had an incredible memory I will cherish for the rest of my life.
So here’s what I’ll tell you…
Sit down and self-audit your fear memories. What experiences in life were extremely painful for you? Have those past experiences kept you from having enriching experiences later in life? Do they still control you? Should they?
When you re-engage such self-conversations, you create opportunities to change these memories over time toward a more enriched life.
Because what is life if the experiences you have aren’t born out of our natural yearning to find meaning, to explore, and to keep loving this beautiful opportunity that is life.
See you next time.
