Living with Fear

Fear is important. It is a survival mechanism critical to our existence as human species.

It played an evolutionary role in keeping us safe from sabre-tooth tigers, crawling serpents, and poisonous plants.

Fear is one of our oldest emotions, hardwired into the most primitive parts of our brains. So, even though we evolved and built civilization keeping us away from the wild, the fear remained but mostly in the form of anxieties.

Fear of failure
Fear of public opinion
Fear of societal rejection
Fear of not fitting in
Fear of growing old
Fear of the future
Fear concerning our status
Fear of not getting enough Instagram likes
Fear of not enough social media followers

Instead of the fear of something powerful and real, we have developed general anxieties for a thousand things.

Unfortunately, it comes with the package of being human. It is inescapable. 

This realization should not make us powerless. Fear is not an unwelcome guest, it is a cousin that has always lived with you and who will probably not be leaving anytime soon.

You can’t banish it, but you can acknowledge its presence and learn to live with it.

Seth Godin talks about it as a compass. And that is the most useful description of the relationship we must adopt with fear.

What you are afraid of is what you should probably be doing. It is a compass that shows you the task to be done. The greater the fear, the more important the task. Instead of hiding from it or engaging in the fruitless endeavour to banish it - use it instead as a means to grow. 

Courage is not the lack of fear, but the ability to act despite it.

Again and again, I am convinced that the people who create lasting change in the world are even more afraid than we are - they’ve just learned how to live with it.

Have a scary Halloween!