5 Powerful Practices To Overcome Fear

Why live a crippled life when you can live a brave one?

Photo by Tom Roberts on Unsplash

Life today is easy and comfortable. There is no real danger we are exposed to in our lifetime and most people live to be old as life expectancy around the world is increasing.

Our ancestors on the other hand, had to fight anything which could kill them -predators, aggression from other species and starvation among other things. They faced real dangers and as we evolved, our brain learned from their experiences.

The first rule in the wild is ‘You either ate lunch or you became lunch’ Over the years, our brain evolved to pay extra attention to anything which could put us in danger and millions of years of being extra cautious has programmed our brains to be negatively biased.

Want to know the best part?

Despite the bias emerging in conditions very different, it continues to dictate our actions. We worry about our safety in spite of living in a much safer world. We make a big deal out of the smallest incident. We come up with different reasons why our survival might be in danger when the reality is far from it.

“Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

The number of times in our lives we actually find ourselves in a dangerous situation is often very few compared to the number of times our mind tells our body that we are in danger.

Bottom line is, we have actually forgotten to differentiate between fear and danger.

Do you know what is common between a lion, a high speed car and a human with a gun?

You try to stay as far as possible from all three because all of them are real signs of danger! All three can kill you faster than you can count to 10!

Danger is real. It is a threat that pumps adrenaline in your body and puts your survival instinct in supersonic mode. You either find a way to live and tell the tale…