So now let’s look at eliminating/overcoming the fear, rather than attempting to eliminate failure. First, let’s think about what fear really is. I don’t mean those cute phrases like “False Evidence that Appears Real”. I mean real fear.
Fear is an emotion that we chose, yes chose, to assign to certain physiological symptoms within our bodies, primarily in our brain. (Understand, the brain is an organ in our body; the mind is something much bigger and more powerful. But we won’t focus on that for now.) Our brain receives stimuli, either externally or internally, and tells the Amygdala to trigger the release of adrenaline and cortisol (stress hormone). We perceive all this as fear.
The release of these hormones results in several changes in our body including increased heartbeat, blood being sent to the large muscle groups, and the blood vessels constricting in both the stomach and the frontal lobe of the brain that controls our rational and logical thinking. (So when we say that “I was so scared I couldn’t think straight.” We’re absolutely right!) This is all based upon the age-old instinctive behavior known as the ‘fight or flight’. The logic goes, we don’t need to digest our food, or think too much, when we’re in the midst of determining if we should start running or fighting. The blood and energy needs only to go to the large muscles we’ll need to use to make our escape. Unfortunately, this entire process is based upon situations that are truly dangerous. But if we’re honest, in all the times we’ve been fearful over the last several months, the truth is that almost never we actually in real danger. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I was confronted by a man-eating saber-toothed tiger or a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
What this means is that in the vast majority of cases our ‘fear’ is actually a useless, outdated, instinctive emotional response that is of no use to us whatsoever. The point is, while ‘danger’ is real – albeit extremely rare – ‘fear’ is imagined. It only exists in our mind. It’s a product of our thinking.
It is also interesting to understand that two other emotions [physiologically] feel almost identical to fear. The first is when we are ‘startled’. (And unfortunately, the movie industry has learned this. So when they make scary movies, they actual startle us as often as they scare us, since it’s much easier to startle someone.) The second, is ‘exhilaration’. Think about it, some people go down a water slide and feel exhilaration. Others go down the exact same slide and feel fear. And physiologically they are having virtually identical experiences, but they are choosing to categorize it in a totally different way.
So fear is actually, an outdated (virtually useless in today’s society) instinctive emotional response to particular environmental stimuli. What’s the value in know that? Well it’s huge. What it means is that we can choose to respond differently to these stimuli. Since fear is a habitual emotional response, we can reprogram the response for the stimuli which trigger it.
We’ll cover that in part 3 of this series.
