Becoming Fearless

Fear can deceive us, stop us achieving our goals and paralyse us. Is it possible to lessen its hold over us? Here are some suggestions from a recent talk hosted by Inner Space.

Cultivate the capacity to see things differently
Something happens and we experience fear, is it possible to look at what has happened in another way and experience something else? Such as, we loose our job and there is fear OR is it an opportunity for me to pursue a long-held dream? Take small situations and see if you can find at least one positive way of seeing it.

Life is a game
Make everyday a game. See yourself and everyone as actors on the stage in this big theatre called ‘Planet Earth’. In this play we all have more than one role to play, the parent, the single-person, the employee, the manager, the tennis player, the friend etc. We are all first-class actors playing all our parts perfectly. Take a day and count how many parts you play.

Play the game
The scene: the difficult meeting. The script: 2 parts. One is X- the aggressive manager. The other is mine- to see myself as an actor playing the part of the employee. Action: my part is to not let X pull me into being 'part' conscious. X’s part is to catch me out. If X makes me 'part' conscious X gets a point. If I stay ‘actor’ conscious I get a point. Scene over: image going for a drink at the bar as two actors after a days filming.

When we become 'part' conscious we become, for example, the anxious employee. The trick is to stay 'actor' conscious and aware that this is just one of my many walk ons-offs.

Create a balanced attention
Balanced attention is to have the right balance of being aware of what is going on around me and within me. We tend to be more heavy on the out than in!

To re-balance:
(i) Be curious. When something happens that causes you to react ask yourself, ‘Who is the I that is reacting?’ Who feels threatened? I or the role? When our sense of self is not so fully invested in our roles we begin to change our relationship with fear.

(ii) See yourself as the actor. As the actor our sense of self is separate to the roles we are playing. It is a much more secure sense of self, more secure we feel less defensive of our roles. Calmer we are able to see the opportunity and every situation then becomes beneficial, with nothing to fear only chances to grow.

Emphasise the positive
The more time we spend feeling building positive feelings the less time we have to worry. One great practise is that of gratitude. Every hour find 1-3 things to be grateful for, such as, a smile, a hot drink, a flower, a comfy chair, sunshine, rain, lunch, a friend, a kindness from a stranger, a near miss, a song, a bird, a text, laughter, just catching the train, a holiday, etc.