What is fear to YOU?

For you to change your life you will have to find your fears, then understand them, acknowledge how silly they are, and then let them go. You will never stop a fear before you fully understand it. You have to face it and stop looking the other way. You have to find every good possible information for why your fear is useless. Go within yourself, think about it, then find the solution. Or face it with action, look into the eyes of it, and do it, find out how silly it is, how the fear is more scary inside your mind than it is when actually ''doing it''.

The important thing to remember is to be sincere. You will not qonquer anything if you dont truly belive in it. You have to belive in it from the bottom of your heart. No pretending allowed at all.

Once you learn this, you will become better at it. The more fear you remove, the less limitations do you have. The snowball will then eventually roll faster and faster down the hill while you are removing your limitations one by one. I can promise you this. The more fear you remove, the more of an open mind will you have. You will think thoughts youve never thought about before. Your life will give you a totally new meaning.

You will become strong enough to ''fight'' this ''fight'' in a resonable way. In a way that doesnt exhaust you! A more positive way that truly will inflict on others. A way that is suited for you! A real change!

Just think about things like; does it help ME to sit here NOW and be scared of something that MAYBE will happen in the future? Find it out! Use the brain you have!

Removing fears IS the one and only way to find your true self, to find out who you truly are. Your fears has covered this with darkness. Once you remove these fears you will learn to live your life the way you always wanted to do it. Becasuse you have no reasons any more to live your life in fear of what others might think of you. You will not be limited by the society around you. They will not put you down anymore.

Another biproduct of removing fear is that you will understand true passion, and what it really is.

You can only find this by living in the now. This is not possible with a mind full of concerns.

Very easily explained, you have to remove everything that is constantly making your head wander. You have to start living in THIS very moment!

Think about smiling! Do it RIGHT NOW! Think about laughing, having fun, and i BET that you had a feeling of joy inside you!

Its THAT easy, its a CHOICE! And to stay in such a state of joy is impossible with a fearwandering mind. Fear has to go to become FULLY free in the mind.

Like mentioned earlier, fear works like a spidersweb. Its hard to explain, but many of our fears are connected to eachother, you can remove one fear, and several others will go.

A fear will basically shadow a small part of your brain, it will remove a thoughtpattern/ a solution from popping up into your mind. It does this because your brain does not like to be afraid, it will stop your brain from thinking the solutions because it doesnt like to face the problem. If a fear is approaching on the doorstep of your mind, your mind will try to avoid it, it will try to surpress it, or to push it away. And while doing this it will also push away the solution, the freeing thought of that problem.

A fear is like an onion, it has several layers, where the outer layers are the fear itself, the solution is found in the middle, and to reach this part you have to dive through the outer layers. Something your mind doesnt like to do. Unless your force it to do that, you have to face it, through action or through thoughts.

We have been thaught that being afraid is being weak. And we have never been thaught how to handle our fears.

Most of us fear the feeling of fear more than the fear itself. We dont like the feeling we have when feeling fear, so we avoid it. We dont realise that this feeling is always the same feeling. It doesnt matter what the fear is about, if its big or small, the scary feeling is always the same even if the problem is different. We have thaught ourselves to avoid this FEELING. When we should learn how to embrace this feeling.

This feeling is a great great teacher, maybe the greatest one there is. It is so strong, so powerful and has so many things to teach. Its a feeling that ALWAYS has something to teach. But yet we keep avoiding it. And this my friends has to stop.

Whenever you feel fear, learn how to SPOT IT! Stay in the now and acknowlege that you are afraid. Look at it from an outside perspective. See yourself in the perspective of the flie on the wall. Think about what is REALLY going on in your mind when this happens. Learn to see how frustration blocks your cognitive thoughts (the inside of the onion), learn to see how much limitations that is caused because of this, and then face it.

Breathe in, breathe out, slowly, think cognitively, from the outside of yourself. Find back the reseaonable thoughts, and then start to remove one layer of the onion after the other.

Never RUN AWAY. Face it =)

Fear is like a yellow traffic light. Some times it means slow down and prepare to stop. Sometimes it just means check your position and cruise on through the intersection without changing speed. And yes, sometimes it means slam on the gas and get the hell out of there.

Ultimately to me it means caution/ pay attention and think fast.

The light bill...

Pay attention =) Focus!

I really like that!

What i see many people do though (including myself) is to run away, and to me that is never any good.

Except if you are almost run over by a bus or something.. ^^

Most of our fears comes from the ego. The ego is the charachter we have created around our true selves to protect ourselves from humiliation, getting into embarresing situations and so on. In a way its how we adapt to the world around us, the precautions we take to not ''stick out'' and be vulnarable to ''criticism'' in daily life. We have roles we play, different behaviours in different situations because we feel its ''needed'' to not get into social conflicts.

Some people are afraid of speaking in large groups, some people are afraid of dancing in public, some people are afraid of stating their true opinions and so on. The list is long.

Many of these thoughts that we create inside our mind (as fear) is a world that we have created in the mind, and it only exist in our own mind. We all have a world like this, we all have a different world in our mind. Both good and bad.

Think about yourself doing something VERY embarresing, for example lets say that you while walking the streets in a town full of people, you manage to fall flat as a pancake and you get the attention of 100s of people. You become red as a tomato, you feel embarresed and you keep this situation inside of your mind for maybe the rest of the day (and maybe even longer). You think back at it, how embarresing it was, you reconnect with that embarresing feeling everytime you do. This is YOUR perspective of this, how you percived it.

Now lets flip it, lets try to dive into the mind of all the spectators that saw you when it happend. Honestly, how long do you think they kept it inside their mind? How long do you think they thought about this incident before they ''forgot'' about it? Do you think they brought it back into their mind several times to laugh about it?

I am pretty sure they didnt. Because they are stuck in their OWN bubble of reality. They where/are too busy about judging what THEY DID THEMSELVES, and what you did was just a small part of their interactions this day.

People who have lots of social fears tend to belive that its all about them, and that people think about what they do, and do not do all day long, when the fact is that they dont. They are in a way pushing all the awkwardness they are feeling themselves into the world around them. They belive that everyone thinks the same thoughts. And then they forget that its not all about THEM.

Ask yourself the next time you are embarresed, from a different perspective. From their perspective if what you are feeling is really real. If the creation of the fear/awkwardness really has a base in reality (other than your own).

Ask yourself what YOU gain, to sit here NOW and feel stupid/afraid about something that happend in the past, or something that MAYBE will happen in the future.

The truth is you gain nothing at all, except wasting the present moment, the only place where you are truly alive.

The past/future is most of the time an illusion based on your own egocentrical point of view of reality. A very very different perception than the people around you have.

Stop fearing what other people think about you, because you cannot percept this in your mind alone. And if you do, it will most likely be much worse than what it really is.

Be happy :D

Right. In most cases if you find yourself running that means it caught you by surprise or you were not paying enough attention and got yourself in a jam. Good topic OP.

Fear to me .. is not dying before everyone else left here I love ..

I see Fear as Guilt, Condemnation, Attack, Defense, Uncertainty of Future, Pain of the Past.

Fear is the Ego. You are right. Face your Fears. Look at them directly. And simply See the uselessness of Fearful thinking. And undo the Fear by desiring to undo it. Only a little willingness is needed. Do not value Fear and it is gone. Then Love can rush in to say hello.

This is all the basis of A Course In Miracles by the way. It is dedicated to the undoing of Fear.

Great post OP

Peace

Thanks =)

Great reply, and a great understanding ^^

All fear is connected to one main fear and that is the fear of dying, the fear of survival. All the small fears you have, all the trivial fears you experience is connected to this one fear, this fear is untouchable until you have removed them all, and it will always be the last fear you will rid yourself of.

Many people have told me that its not possible to become fearless, or to rid yourself of all fears, i do not agree with them. You can, and you must if you really want to find your true self.

All of your fears works like a shadowing darkness upon your true self, it removes this and that much of your true being. All fears are limitations of your greatest potential. The less fear you have in life, the more free will your mind be, the easier will it be for your brain to navigate around in the mind without ''limitations''/blockages.

To find your true self, your REAL true self, you will have to get rid of fear entirely. Its the same if you want to find true passion, or true happiness, you will have to get rid of fear.

Fear is what makes your mind wander, fear is what keeps you away from living in the now. Its fairly easy to stay in the now, for some amount of time, but fear is the one that ''takes you away'' from this state of mind.

Many of you have problably tried the practise to ''live in the now'' and then found yourself loosing that state of mind eventually (usually in a short amount of time).

Fear is the reason behind it.

Yes it is!

And maybe you dont belive me, but staying in the past or the future is ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS connected to fear. Whenever your mind is wandering away on it is own (when your mind is driving on autopilot) its because of fear. Even if it doesnt feels like it.

Basically when you are NOT staying in the now you are in some sort of state of fear. Only the now contains REAL happiness.

Thinking about good things in the past or the future is not REAL happiness, its comfort for the ego and that only (it doesnt matter how happy you feel). It is what it is, its fear covered with happinness, its food for the ego to cope with the present moment.. Its your strawman, the fake charachter you created to protect yourself screaming for attention, screaming for good vibes.

Fear and happiness sticks so incredibly deep. And i can assure you that real happiness is ONLY found in the now, in the present moment. All the other thoughts are created for the ego out of fear.

Learning how to stay in the now is a practices that goes hand in hand with removing fear. The more fear you have, the harder it will be to stay in the now. The more your head wanders, both into negative thoughts (direct fear), and into happy thoughts (indirect fear for comfort of the ego) will tell you how long into the journey you have come.

Staying in the now is about action withouth direct thought/thinking, its about beeing free.

To have to go ''within'' for everything and anything as all spiritual gurus teach right now has nothing to do with freedom

Free yourself!

Free your mind!

Live now! Not in the past nor the future!

Learn through action, and be REALLY freeeeee =)

I will not post any more walls of text ^^ My contribution is finished, now i want to see YOUR contribution!

The unknown is the spark that inspires fear in humans. Always.

Is it always the unknown?

I belive that many of the times its something known from before that has been suppressed/ignored.

But yes, many times as well its the unknown that we fear the most =)

Our mind hates change/something new. It loves to stay where its safe, where it knows the passage from before.

Is it ALWAYS the unknown?

I belive that many of the times its something VERY known from before, its just that it has been suppressed/ignored. Its coming back, again and again.

But yes many times indeed, its the unknown that we fear the most =)

Our mind hates change/something new. It loves to stay where its safe, where it knows the passage from before.

Last Edited by D0NTBeAfraidEVER on 02/19/2014 12:28 AM

*edit*

Doublepost

I have feared too many things in my life. That is why I am reaching the age of 25 years old and have no career or anything to show for my intelligence, even after all the opportunities that have crossed my path, the fear of the unknown and of success has stopped me dead in my tracks. I even fear posting this anonymously on a message board.

Without fear humans wouldn't exist. People aren't the largest or the most fierce in the food chain. Running away in many cases means survival.

You state fear is the basis of all negative emotions. I will contend for arguments sake that all emotions can be positive or negative.

I state that fear is the basis of all negative emotions. And then i also say this is maybe the best teacher of knowledge we have. The problem is that we ignore most of our fear, we try to escape it.

Fear is good. But escaping it is bad =) Then it teaches you nada.

Ya actually it is always the unknown, but the unknown is the storm that shapes us. We have to charge into it. Its never as scary as we allow our imaginations to make it out to be. You just have to be guarded, mentally.

Withouth anything to show for your intelligence, i really doubt that =)

If you are thinking about superficial things like a cool job, a big wallet and all of that, well maybe you lack it. But your intelligence i really doubt you lack.

Maybe you have an ego that wants to proove your intelligence in a way that isnt suited for you?

Maybe your road leads somewhere else =)

Dont give up my friend.

Anyways, thanks for sharing, and please feel free to share more =)

What fears are you struggeling with? Social fears?

I agree with that 100% =)

But what im trying to say, is that my opinion is that many of our fears are old fears that were never faced, fears that keeps coming back and back again.

For example a person with social fears, afraid of speaking in public, that fear will come back and haunt him over and over hundreds of times, until he overcomes it.

But yes, he also would ignore the unknown, in a way, so i guess you are right =)

P.S Fear will keep your ass alive sometimes though haha. To say you are fearless is a farce. You wouldnt hold your face to a hot stove due to understanding the ramifications if you did...



Kinda like how people call Angelina Jolie fearless for cutting her tits off. Didnt she cut them off out of fear to begin with? Its a tricky line. You just have to admit that fear is a hardwired instinct. There is no getting rid of it.

Fear is something we make up in our minds. It doesn't exist, but it controls most of our behavior. The first step on the journey to abolish fear in your life is realizing that fear is just a choice.

Seems like you are thinking more along the lines of regret , not fear. The shoulda coulda woulda's are regret...

No i dont talk about regret.

For example:

If a guy named Tom is afraid of talking in big crowds. And tom is often in a place with big crowds. He will be ''afraid'' very often. From the same fear. The same fear coming back and back and back, everytime he faces this kind of situations.

It has nothing to do with regret. Its about fears that arent faced/fixed.

If you dont face/fix your fears, they will reoccur, come back everytime you face/meet the situations you fear.

The fear is all the same as before, but its ignored.

Some ignore a fear 100s of times, some ignore a fear 1000s of times, and some ignore it their entire life. The same fear...

Thank you, this is the type of thread I was looking for tonight in fact and I was going to post one about myself and my situation. My ego is pitiful and wants nothing more than to stay safe and comfortable in its magical bubble as you've described.

Yes I struggled with social fears for a very long time up until the last 2 years of my life, things have gotten better but the damage has been done, I've gone nowhere in my life because I fear my own success. I never figured what I want to do with myself or how to get there.

I'm capable of accomplishing anything and I know this deep within myself yet I lack the motivation, most likely because of the fear associated with it. It's been embedded within me since childhood.

Sometimes I feel like doing something extreme, maybe skydiving to PUSH all those other fears out of me, make them small and meaningless. But it's a big bad world out there and my ego says 'stay right here where it's safe and daydream it all away, yes I'm happy here in my thoughts alone'

I need to find a way out of this!

Fear is an irrational response to a hypothetical what if.

What fears me?

Not knowing...