Fear knot

Untying and overcoming fear

This is a copy of the original, issue 3 of season 3. If you prefer to receive the newsletter over email, head over to?its website and subscribe.

Fear drives indecision, short-termism, blame, and many other curses.

Where does fear come from? We probably can trace it back to the survival instinct. We fear what can hurt us. We fear, so we run away.

But wait, wasn't it “fight or flight”?

If fear is about running away, “flight”, what emotion is linked to “fight”? Or can you fight with fear because of fear? It's easier to think that we fight when we embrace fear and overcome it - maybe we accept it and overpower it.

But let's come back to fear and survival. For most of us, survival is no longer at stake. Not in the sense of physical survival. That's not what drives our day-to-day fear. Instead, we have a different kind of fear that comes from somewhere else.

Maybe we fear death. Not the pain, but the end, the "game over". We fear that we have no more time to live, even if we didn't do anything with the time we had. We regret what we didn't do, and we want more time. We want an extension. Because we fear irrelevance, we fear that we’ll be forgotten and turn into dust.

If you ask anyone: do you want to be a cog in the system? Do you want to be fungible, replaceable, just one more, irrelevant, unremarkable? Most people would not accept that. People want to be remarkable. People want to be remembered. It doesn't mean that people want to be famous or to be on?TV/YouTube, or on the red carpet. It is not about fame. It is about relevance. Meaning something to someone.

So if it is not about survival, what do we fear? When we're afraid to fail when we're afraid to be embarrassed. Does fear only makes sense in a social setting — is fear a social emotion? We only fear because we imagine “the others” and their judgment.

Can we fear alone, on our own, without others ever knowing, without considering them? Maybe. We may fear disappointing ourselves. It's called "self-esteem."

self-esteem: confidence in one's own worth or abilities; self-respect

In a nutshell:

• Fear comes from survival instinct
• but as socially dependent beings, our survival is also social - the need to be respected and accepted by others.
• Most of our day-to-day fears are about social acceptance, avoiding shame, and seeking respect. So why do we need others to feel we're enough and worth it?
• If we don't need others, we need our self-esteem - or maybe we need both.

Anyway, this looks like it is all an "inner game”. We can untie the fear knot if we devalue social judgment because we understand the bigger game. If we have confidence in ourselves and our path.

Or maybe there's no path, just principles. Can the solution be that we only focus on principles, on the building blocks of the self?

If we're true to who we are, our values, and our beliefs. If our efforts are honest and intentional, the outcome is just temporary feedback, a signal, a gift for us to grow and continue our journey.

There's no fear when we know that it only matters our intention, only the honest work. We can only control and decide the inputs - what we put in. We can't control the outcome - that's subject to many other influences, including luck (i.e., probability).

Fear happens when you focus on the output. On “what if”s. When you try to predict others’ reactions. When you believe that the people that matter care about the output instead of caring about your?self,?your honest input, your work, as is, at face value.

Untie the fear knot.

Fear not.

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