Your Relationship With Fear

Humans are an interesting bunch. We have this magnificent brain that affords us the ability to create and act on our environment on a scale no other animal is capable of. The caveat is that unless we utilize our muscles of focus and attention, we can create things in our minds that act as obstacles to optimization. Most notable among these are our fears.

Fear is the most irrational component of human creation. There is good reason for this. The brain is designed to look for what's wrong or what doesn't fit once we have exited the developmental stage. We fear the things that are not part of our prediction loops. Fear is subjective and it is created by us after it is conditioned into us. A burning building is something humans reasonably fear. Firefighters are trained to manage this fear and enter burning buildings anyway. We can eliminate conditioned fears, andwe can certainly manage them better and this starts with examing your relationship with fear.

Fear is necessary when there is an imminent threat. But ask yourself how many imminents threats you actually face. Five people die a year from shark attacks while one hundred and fifty people die from getting hit from falling coconuts. Yet people fear sharks lurking in the water more than walking under a coconut tree. Fifty people die a year taking selfies but I will bet that this information will not make anyone fearful of taking a selfie. We should fear donuts more than reptiles.

Humans are all afraid of the wrong things. This enhances our already poor decision making processes. Releasing ourselves from our fears starts with examining our relationship with our fears. Embracing that our fears are irrational, subjectively created, and applied to all the wrong things is a start.