Your teacher unexpectedly asks a question in a classroom that you are unprepared. What do you feel?

Exactly fear! Fear of humiliation.

As an employee of a company, you are given work to finish but can’t meet the deadline. What do you feel?

Exactly fear! Fear of losing the job.

We will discuss and understand fear today. Additionally, we will discuss the science of fear and how it develops. What are the side effects? Why do you need to know about it?

So the question is what makes our life measurable – Big one is Fear.

Science of Fear

We have a part of the brain called the amygdala. Which constant alert about the threat and help us avoid the risk. It generates stress hormones in our brain and body to notify the alter.

What is wrong with it? How is that bad for us?

It is a system for detecting threats, but it doesn’t know if they are good or bad. In the old days, when humans lived in the jungle, it helped them survive life threats. But we are staying more secure place where there is no constant life threat.

What is wrong with the amygdala?

Amygdala does not know if a threat is good or bad. Any uncomfortable situation starts to trigger. If you have a difficult question to answer in front of another, that is not a life-threatening situation, but your amygdala will start releasing stress hormones. There is no immediate danger to our lives, but there are other factors.

1. Humiliation
2. Society
3. Not knowing about the subject
4. Self-doubt
5. Competition
6. Loosing of money
7. Exam

The list goes on and on…

Despite its role as a life-saving device, the amygdala now gets away with everything. It is blocking us from our progress. When we ask for a salary raise, propose to someone special, or invest in the stock market, the amygdala is activated. Also, It makes us anxious and feels restless.

Fear is part of human nature. Can we somehow stop it from happening? No – there is no magic pill that will make you fearless. But we can reduce it and manage it better just by knowing it.

Fear comes from thinking mind.

Our subconscious mind holds tremendous power to generate thought. It can be positive or negative. Our subconscious has three types of thinking

1. Past
2. Present
3. Future

At any given time, it can do one type of thinking. Out of those three, future thinking holds the most fear. However, for the short term, the present also holds fear.

Let’s understand this with examples.

Future Fear example: You are spending time to complete your graduation and you have a thought coming again and again, what happens if you won’t get a Job? what happens if you won’t do well in the exam? – After some time this tern into fear.

Present Fear Example: Your teacher asked a question in front of another student and you don’t know the answer.

There is no past fear only past guilt. But there is past did affect our present as future fear.

Here is a statistic to give you an understanding of what you fear and how much happens.

Research shows:

• 40% of the things we worry about never happen
• 30% of in the past and can’t be helped.
• 12% involve the affairs of others that are not our business.
• 10% relate to sickness, real or imagined
• So! only 8% of the things we worry about are likely to happen.

Fear comes from ignorance!

Let’s say you are in a situation where you don’t know anything about it, it has consequence attached to it. Like you will not get the deal or not get the job offer. During this phase, a fear of losing starts in your head which is nothing but a stress signal your brain is notifying you that you are not ready for this situation. You will LOOSE! LOOSE! LOOSE!

The brain reacts like this when we ignore out of laziness or overconfidence about the subject.

Ignorance → Knowledge gap → Future Event → Fear

You have been given a task to complete by today by your manager. The manager mentioned you need to create a PPT for some topic. But he didn’t mention what kind of info he need for that topic. And you assume that your manager will be happy if you put as much info put into it. But when you show the slide to him, He is not satisfied with your PPT and asks you to create it again in some specific way he wanted to be. Now you spend extra time building it. Still, you have doubts about what you are doing. The manager always gives you very little information, but you don’t ask questions to understand what the motivation behind this PPT is and what information will be helpful. Not asking the question leads you to extra work, self-doubt, and eventually fear.

Most fear exists for a short period.

Most of the time real fear has a short life span.

Like you are going to present something to a bigger audience in 10 min. After 10min passed there are two possibilities. Either you are delivering the speech or you are brock down. 92% chance you will deliver just fine. 8% chances you will fail.

After the effect of Fearful situation

After you have gone through a difficult situation, let’s say you lose it. The next day or two, our minds tell us how differently we could have done things. It is good for a few hours so you can evaluate the situation but when you see that is going on a constant loop. That is where it gives a negative effect. This makes your mind fog and you will not able to think clearly. Due to the constant loop, it is painful to you as well.

Identify fear

Most of the time we don’t understand what is the emotional state we are in. We experience it, for a couple of hours then realize something wrong with me. Even you realize it is hard to articulate the issue. But as you already read this article this far you can relate to situations and identify when you are fearful. Once you understand then the work of self-healing started.

We will cover that in our next post, I will put the link here as soon as that is available.

Summary:

Remember: “You create the fear and you can only fix it!”

The first step towards solving fear is to identify it. As soon as you identify it you will be able to find the solution for it. Remember all fear thinking is not likely to happen. To identify your fear, list out all your fearful thoughts. Understand that every fear has a short life span. After a fearful situation has gone, there is a high chance your mind will recall those moments and try to validate. That is good, but it continues for days then it is bad.

Well done you now understand fear. You can able to identify the fear and find out the real fears.

We will talk about how to overcome each type of fear in the next post.

Action:

1. Remember when you felt fear last!
2. Find out what makes you feel that way!
3. How likely is the fear will be a reality?