#48 What are you afraid of?

The moment I had the idea of starting a blog and a podcast, I was very scared of what other people could think. I was very introverted in social networks at the time. I didn’t like to show what I was doing. I couldn’t even publish a picture. Somehow I felt the weight of thinking what others would think.

The envy that some people could show. I didn’t have a perspective that could let me understand what is really important and what being afraid really means. 

Every animal, including ourselves, has a series of prefabricated actions that come up depending on what we can be afraid of. For example, a small animal can be afraid of a bigger one and use a specific action to defend itself. Like when a squirrel hears a dog barking and climbs a tree to escape from it. Or when a rabbit sees an eagle and hides under the ground. And like that many other actions are provoked by fear. Fear in this sense helps them survive. 

In our case, it is the same except for one key difference, the external cortex of our brain. A part of our brain that allows us to rationalize our thoughts. We can come up with ideas and actions that not necessarily are aligned with our instincts. But that can sometimes be more accurate at the time of “survival”. 

When we understand that being scared is a prefabricated action that comes from our instincts and that we can rationalize them. We can also understand that we can change that when the fear doesn’t really make sense. We can think of the best reaction we can take to have the best outcome. The problem is that most people, even knowing this, don’t decide to take action and they let their irrational fears control them. Sometimes the situation that triggers that fear hasn’t even happened yet. But they don’t go through it because they are afraid of having that trigger that comes from instinct. That is what I call “being scared of fear”. 

We can think about our instinct in a different way, use our outer cortex to come with something more rational that calms us down, and this way we can stop being scared of fear. 

What we need to do first is learn the difference between, what produces that fear and what really deserves to be scared of. Most animals can’t do this, but we can. For example, when a baby elephant is tight up by the neck of a small log, he tries to set himself free but when he tries it hurts his neck. So he develops fear against pulling the log. Once he is grown up, he never tries to pull it out. Being so big it is certain that he would pull it out easily without any pain in his neck. But the fear is there and he can’t make a reason out of it. But we humans can avoid that. 

All these fears are triggered by our senses. We should see our senses as instruments that many times can’t be trustworthy because they can process and create a fear out of a completely safe situation. They can have errors. They can even get to destroy our lives if we don’t understand that fear and what it really is. We need to distinguish between that fear and reality and we need to learn how to do it all the time. Because maybe sometimes we can identify that the fear is irrational and stop it, but some other times if we forget to check that and rationalize each time, we can go back to the cycle of fear without noticing. 

There is an analogy that explains this very nice, and it is as follows: 

If you go inside of a pool that has a colder temperature than the environment outside. You will feel very cold once you are in. But after a couple of minutes, your body will get used to it and adapt, then you will feel ok. But if you decide to get out of the pool for a couple of minutes. Once you try to go in again you will feel cold again. 

That is exactly the same thing that can happen with irrational fears, you can think about them and avoid them once, but if you don’t do that all the time, you might get back to feeling it and letting it control you. 

This is what happens with traumas, if we don’t face them we can have them for the rest of our lives. Even when they are completely irrational since they are something that is not happening anymore. 

For example when someone as a kid had an encounter with a ferocious bear. That probably was a thread at that time, but years later it is not anymore. This person can start associating the fear that comes from the bear with many other things. Like the smell of coffee that was being cooked that day. Looking at a tree that is similar to the one that was there when the bear came out. Some kind of noise. Anything can be associated with this for years. Even if the kid is an adult already, the relation between the things that happened and the memory makes it a trauma. Because the senses in the body remember what it felt when they were activated in that certain way. 

Fear is always a response of our body to help us survive what could come. But that is why this person with the bear trauma needs to understand that the fear of the bear is not about something in the future anymore but in the past. This trauma can be even because of not knowing exactly what happened or could have happened in the situation that triggered the trauma. If this person starts remembering with details that moment, like the kind of bear it was, what circumstances made the bear appear there, and how much danger was the person really facing. Then the person might notice that nowadays that bear is not everywhere he looks, and turn that fear into past history, something that he already overcame. Stop being scared of fear. 

Doing some analysis on similar cultural behaviors around the world and throughout history. Trying to understand how people do what they do. I stumble upon the idea of sacrifices done by so many different tribes around the world. People being scared of the unknown, such as the arrival of storms, a volcano that could erupt, or anything that they could not predict when it would come. They dealt with it by offering sacrifices. Either objects, animals, or even people. 

If we think about it, what this means is that we have always known how to deal with these fears. 

We just need to sacrifice something we have to make that fear disappear. Psychologically speaking and with a much more accurate sacrifice, we can deal with our fears. We just need to sacrifice part of our present, so we can assure a better future. We need to face those fears and learn from them so we are not scared anymore in the near future. Always taking in account what part of the fear is rational and what other is just our senses playing with us using our instinct and our pre-fabricated fears. 

The idea is that you could get close, cautiously and voluntarily to that fear. Step by step, don’t run away, especially if that fear you have is a step on your way to achieving an important goal. Because otherwise, it will grow instead of getting better. Just like that kid had the trauma with the bear. Because he didn’t deal with it but avoided it for many years, it still haunts him in the future. It got bigger and bigger until the point where he could see and hear the bear in many different and unrelated situations. What happens to us with any fear, the more we let it there, the more fear we will have. Avoiding the achievement of many things. But if at some point we understand that we can confront by ourselves the fear and make it disappear, we can get back to the time when that trauma was not there. 

Fear is very useful in life or death situations, but in our daily lives, it can stop us from achieving many things. We tend to overlook many opportunities that can come just because of thinking in the fear we would have if we do them. Instead of overseeing it as an observer that can catch all his senses and feelings and rationalize them. If we do this we can see all the real opportunities we have and how silly it is to have that fear. It is not the fear of achieving the goals, is the fear of feeling scared when the moment to start with them comes. 

Otherwise, we could end up like Captain Hook in Peter Pan’s movie. Being one of the only adults on Neverland, he had an irrational fear for time. He could not see all the advantages that came from him being an adult, such as all the chemical reactions that his body could feel that kids couldn’t, making him understand the world in a different but important way. He could only see the fear of getting old. The time he was losing, in a land where time is not a factor. And in the movie we can see this fear reflected as the crocodile with the clock inside of him, chasing him to finally finish with his life. 

So going back to the story of when I started my podcast and blog. After thinking for a while I could understand that it was just an irrational fear about what people would think if I published my content. Because actually, no one cares. Maybe some family member or someone close to you might. But mostly no one is paying attention to your actions and more to their own. Their reactions to what you do will come once you do something that impacts them. But in the beginning, it was just an irrational fear. I needed to face it, so I could start with my content. 

Once I understood that this small change opened thousands of doors for me. The people I have met and the much I have learned so far with this. I wouldn’t have it if it wasn't for me facing that irrational fear. 

Your willpower expands your comfort zone every day if you keep this though. Understand that we can always go back inside of the cold pool and get used to the temperature. Each time because it is not only once. We can face that fear and keep getting better every day. 

Don’t be scared of fear. 

Thanks for taking your time to read this. 

Until next time.