How to be nice. How not to be afraid of anything: recommendations of a psychologist. How to overcome fear How to stop being afraid of everything in the world

What would you do - whether it's life or work - if you weren't afraid of anything? Such a simple question awakens countless fantasies, desires and regrets.

If the fear of failing or looking like a complete idiot has ever held you back from doing what your heart was calling for, you'll need some very important advice from business consultant Sandia Brügmann. You don't have to fight fear. Just accept it and don't let worries slow you down on the path to your dream.

We usually view fear as an unpleasant emotion that we do our best to avoid. Fear literally paralyzes, so instincts willy-nilly switch to survival mode. Alas, such behavior can lead to actions that have nothing to do with moving towards our goals.

Sandia Brügmann, business consultant

In other words, if you let them control you, you can forget about success.

This is especially dangerous for entrepreneurs. Running a business is a pretty daunting and exhilarating thing in itself, from having to make financial commitments, dealing with frustrated customers or subordinates, and realizing that the decisions you make affect not only your well-being, but also the lives of other people.

On the other hand, notes Brügmann, fear is an emotion inherent in man by nature. You won’t be able to get rid of him once and for all, and you don’t need to.

We are not faced with the task of curbing fear and preventing its occurrence in the future. Our goal is to understand what it is and learn how to act, relying on willpower and not hiding our heads in the sand.

Richard Branson phrased the same idea in a slightly different way.

Fear sometimes makes you wet yourself, but courage makes you act even in wet pants.

Richard Branson, Entrepreneur, Founder of the Virgin Group

The metaphor is not the most elegant, but the essence conveys absolutely correctly: do not give up on dreams because of fears, just accept them as part of life. Here are some tips to help you stop being afraid and start doing something.

1. Accept your fear

"What if I told you that your fear is a gift?" Brügmann asks. Pain and tension help us to fill life with genuine depth, because without all this it would be boring. Fear indicates the direction of growth and ultimately helps you understand who you really are. When we view fear from this perspective, it evokes curiosity or even gratitude.

2. Control your instincts

When faced with something frightening, people usually exhibit one of the following types of behavior: trying to fight, running without looking back, or falling into a stupor. If you have noticed this in yourself, know that you are guided by instincts. It is they who make us trust decision-making to fear. What will come of it? Absolutely nothing good.

3. Treat every situation as your choice.

Entrepreneurs know that things often turn out the way you never planned. As Eckhart Tolle said, “Whatever the present moment brings you, take it as your own choice.” For both you and your team, this is the most humane way to deal with what happened. By fully accepting the status quo, you rid yourself of various forms of emotional resistance, including fear.

4. Give everything you have to work

This is not about savings under the pillow, it means the ability to fully. It's how easily you engage with colleagues and activate your thinking skills to look at a problem from a non-standard perspective and find a creative way to solve it.

5. Handle objections and criticism positively

“If you're doing something really new, get ready to be rebuffed by traditional thinkers,” Brügmann says. By creating something that did not exist before, you challenge the status quo. Some people are frightened by innovations, while others are made ashamed that they themselves did not think of it before.

You can measure your success by the amount of criticism you receive.

Sandia Brugmann

6. Make fear and failure work for you.

If you, like most people, are afraid of failure, make fear your assistant. What is needed for this? Sandia Brügmann advises revisiting the definition itself. "Failure for me is not the exact opposite of success, failure is what will happen if I don't get out of my comfort zone."

Look at any business from this angle, and the fear of failure will force you to act.

7. Don't let superfluous thoughts take over.

You will never be able to control everything that happens, but you are free to choose how to react to it. When something bad happens, we tend to look for the cause of what happened in ourselves.

For example, you worked for a long time on the launch of a large-scale project or negotiated with an intractable client, but in the end everything went to pieces. Does this mean that the project or idea was so-so? No. It doesn't say anything about you as a person at all, so don't waste your time reflecting. Think better what will be the next step towards achieving the goal. And remember, your path to success is by no means tied to just one particular person or opportunity.

8. Learn to hear your fear

Try to recognize the signs of fear as early as possible and understand how it affects you. Yes, it's not that easy. Sandia Brügmann believes that explaining to ourselves who we really are is one of the most difficult tasks. The biggest lie, in the truth of which we ourselves believe and make others believe, is the idea of ​​ourselves as a whole and unchanging person.

In fact, we are made up of many subpersonalities. Our task is to thoroughly study each of them, finding positive features and those that should be corrected. Judgment has no place here. This is just a path to growth, change, the ability to curb fear and make informed choices based on your inner strength.

9. Rest in the heart of the storm

“Find a stable and balanced position within yourself and stay in it for as long as possible,” advises Sandja Brügmann. This is the point of your self-confidence, it is here that you can draw strength in order to follow the goal during periods of ups and downs in work and in your personal life.

If your well-being, peace and happiness depend solely on external factors, the level will be too high and in the end will become an obstacle to success.

Get rid of the event orientation. So you can go on the chosen course for as long as you like. You will gain the ability to make the right decisions and stop postponing them for later, justifying yourself with fear and the tension generated by it.

Today we will talk about how to get rid of fear of a very different nature: fear of death, fear of animals or insects, phobia associated with illness, injury, death as a result of an accident, etc.

In this article, I will not only talk about techniques that will help you overcome fear, but also how to properly deal with feelings of fear and how to change your life so that there is less room for anxiety in it.

I myself had to go through many fears, especially during that period of my life when I experienced. I was afraid to die or go crazy. I was afraid that my health would come to a complete disrepair. I was afraid of dogs. I was afraid of so many things.

Since then, some of my fears have completely disappeared. Some fears I learned to control. I have learned to live with other fears. I have done a lot of work on myself. I hope my experience, which I will present in this article, will help you.

Where does fear come from?

Since ancient times, the mechanism of the emergence of fear has performed a protective function. He protected us from danger. Many people are instinctively afraid of snakes, because this quality was inherited from their ancestors. After all, those of them who were afraid of these animals and, as a result, avoided them, were more likely not to die from a poisonous bite than those who showed fearlessness in relation to crawling creatures. Fear helped those who experienced it survive and pass this quality on to their offspring. After all, only the living can reproduce.

Fear makes people feel an intense desire to flee when faced with something that their brain perceives as danger. Many people are afraid of heights. But they cannot help but guess about it, until they are high for the first time. Their legs will instinctively give way. The brain will give alarm signals. The person will long to leave this place.

But fear helps not only protect yourself from danger during its occurrence. It allows a person to avoid even potential danger wherever possible.

Anyone who is mortally afraid of heights will no longer climb onto the roof, as he will remember what strong unpleasant emotions he experienced when he was there last time. And thus, perhaps save yourself from the risk of death as a result of a fall.

Unfortunately, since the time of our distant ancestors, the environment in which we live has changed a lot. And fear does not always meet the goals of our survival. And even if he answers, it does not contribute to our happiness and comfort.

People experience many social fears that prevent them from achieving their goals. Often they are afraid of those things that do not pose any threat. Or this threat is negligible.

The chance of dying in a passenger plane crash is about one in 8 million. However, many people are afraid to travel by air. Getting to know another person is not fraught with any threat, but many men or women experience great anxiety when they are around other people.

Many quite ordinary fears can go into an uncontrollable form. The natural concern for the safety of their children can turn into acute paranoia. The fear of losing one's life or hurting oneself sometimes turns into a mania, an obsession with safety. Some people spend a lot of their time in seclusion, trying to protect themselves from the dangers that supposedly lie in wait on the street.

We see that the natural mechanism formed by evolution often interferes with us. Many fears do not protect us, but rather make us vulnerable. So you need to intervene in this process. Next, I will tell you how to do it.

Method 1 - Stop being afraid of fear

The first tips will help you understand fear correctly.

You ask me: “I just want to stop being afraid of mice, spiders, open or closed spaces. Are you suggesting that we just stop being afraid of fear itself?”

What reactions does a person feel fear? As we found out earlier this:

1. Desire to eliminate the object of fear. (If a person is afraid of snakes, will he run away? when he sees them
2. Reluctance to repeat this feeling (A person will avoid snakes wherever possible, not build a dwelling near their lair, etc.)

These two reactions are prompted by our instincts. A person who fears death in a plane crash will instinctively avoid airplanes. But if he suddenly has to fly somewhere, he will try to do everything so as not to feel fear. For example, he will get drunk, drink sedative pills, ask someone to calm him down. He will do this because he is afraid of the feeling of fear.

But in the context of fear management, this behavior often doesn't make any sense. After all, the fight against fear is a fight against instincts. And if we want to defeat the instincts, we should not be guided by their logic, which is indicated in the two paragraphs above.

Of course, during a panic attack, the most logical behavior for us is to run away or try to get rid of a fear attack. But this logic is whispered to us by our instincts, which we must defeat!

It is precisely because during attacks of fear that people behave as their "inside" tells them, they cannot get rid of these fears. They go to the doctor, sign up for hypnosis and say: “I never want to experience this again! Fear is tormenting me! I want to stop being afraid! Get me out of this!" Some methods can help them for a while, but all the same, fear can return to them in one form or another. Because they listened to their instincts, which told them: “Be afraid of fear! You can only be free when you get rid of him!”

It turns out that many people cannot get rid of fear, because they, first of all, seek to get rid of it! Let me explain this paradox now.

Fear is just a program

Imagine that you have invented a robot that cleans the floors of your house, including the balcony. The robot can estimate the height at which it is located by means of the reflection of radio signals. And so that he does not fall off the edge of the balcony, you programmed him in such a way that his brain gives him a signal to stop if he is on the border of the height difference.

You left home and left the robot to clean up. What did you find when you returned? The robot was frozen on the threshold between your room and the kitchen and was unable to cross it due to the slight height difference! The signal in his brain told him to stop!

If the robot had "reason", "consciousness", he would understand that there is no danger at the border of two rooms, since the height is small. And then he could cross it, despite the fact that the brain continues to signal danger! The consciousness of a robot would simply not obey the absurd order of its brain.

A person has a consciousness, which is also not obliged to follow the commands of his "primitive" brain. And the first thing you must do if you want to get rid of fear is stop trusting fear, stop perceiving it as a guide to action, stop being afraid of it. You need to act a little in a paradoxical way, and not in the way your instinct tells you.

After all, fear is just a feeling. Roughly speaking, this is the same program that the robot from our example executes when it approaches the balcony. This is a program that your brain starts at a chemical level (with the help of adrenaline, for example), after it receives information from your senses.

Fear is just a stream of chemical signals that are translated into commands for your body.

But your mind, despite the operation of the program, can itself understand in which cases it encountered a real danger, and in which situations it deals with a failure in the “instinctive program” (approximately the same failure that occurred with the robot when it could not climb over over the threshold).

If you experience fear, it does not mean that there is some danger. You should not always trust all your senses, as they often deceive you. Do not run away from a non-existent danger, do not seek to calm this feeling somehow. Try to just calmly wait until the "siren" ("alarm! save yourself!") in your head is silent. Often this will just be a false alarm.

And it is in this direction that you must move in the first place if you want to get rid of fear. In the direction of allowing your consciousness, and not the “primitive” brain, to make decisions (get on a plane, approach an unfamiliar girl).

After all, there is nothing wrong with this feeling! There is nothing wrong with fear! It's just chemistry! It's an illusion! There is nothing terrible in having this feeling sometimes.

Being afraid is normal. No need to seek to immediately get rid of fear (or from what this fear causes). Because in case you only think about how to get rid of him, you follow his lead, you listen to what he tells you, you obey him, you take it seriously. You think: "I'm afraid to fly on a plane, so I won't fly" or "I'll fly on a plane only when I stop being afraid of flying", "because I believe in fear and I'm afraid of it." And then you keep feeding your fear! You can stop feeding him if only you stop betraying him of great importance.

When you think: “I'm afraid to fly on a plane, but I'll still fly on it. And I will not be afraid of an attack of fear, because, it's just a feeling, chemistry, a game of my instincts. Let him come, because there is nothing terrible in fear! Then you stop giving in to fear.

You will get rid of fear only when you stop wanting to get rid of it and will live with it!

Breaking the vicious circle

I have already spoken about this example from my life more than once and I will repeat it again here. I took the first step towards getting rid of panic attacks, like sudden attacks of fear, only when I stopped obsessing about getting rid of it! I began to think: “Let the attacks come. This fear is just an illusion. I can survive these attacks, there is nothing terrible in them.

And then I stopped being afraid of them, I became ready for them. For four years I followed their lead, thinking: “when will this end, when will the attacks go away, what should I do?” But when I applied tactics against them that were contrary to the logic of my instincts, when I stopped driving away fear, only then did it begin to go away!

Our instincts lure us into a trap. Of course, this thoughtless program of the body is aimed at making us obey it (roughly speaking, the instincts “want” us to obey them), so that we are afraid of the appearance of fear, and not accept it. But that only makes the whole situation worse.

When we start to fear our fears, take them seriously, we only make them stronger. Fear of fear only increases the total amount of fear and even provokes fear itself. I personally saw the truth of this principle when I suffered from panic attacks. The more I was afraid of new attacks of fear, the more often they happened.

With my fear of seizures, I only spurred the fear that occurs during a panic attack. These two fears (fear itself and the fear of fear) are connected by positive feedback and reinforce each other.

The person covered by them falls into a vicious circle. He is afraid of new attacks and thus causes them, and attacks, in turn, cause even greater fear of them! We can get out of this vicious circle if we remove the fear of fear, and not fear itself, as many people want. Since we can influence this type of fear much more than fear in its purest form.

If we talk about fear in its “pure form”, then it often does not have a very large weight in the totality of fear. I want to say that if we are not afraid of him, then it is easier for us to survive these unpleasant sensations. Fear ceases to be "terrible".

Don't worry if you don't quite understand these conclusions, or if you don't really understand how to achieve this attitude towards your fear. Such an understanding will not come immediately. But you will be able to understand this better when you read my following tips and apply the recommendations from them.

Method 2 - Think long term

I gave this advice in my last article. Here I will dwell on this point in more detail.

Perhaps this advice will not help to cope with every fear, but with some anxieties it will help to cope. The fact is that when we are afraid, we tend to think about the very moment of realization of our fear, and not about what may await us in the future.

Suppose you are afraid of losing your job. It provides you with comfortable working conditions, and the salary at this place allows you to buy the things that you want to have. At the thought that you will lose it, fear seizes you. You immediately imagine how you will have to look for another job that may pay worse than the one you lost. You will no longer be able to spend as much money as you used to spend, and that's it.

But instead of imagining how bad it will be for you when you lose your job, think about what will happen next. Mentally cross the line that you are afraid to cross. Let's say you lose your job. Ask yourself what will be in the future? Imagine your future over an extended period of time with all the nuances.

You will start looking for a new job. It is not at all necessary that you will not find a job with the same salary. There is a chance that you will find even a higher paying place. You cannot know for sure how much you are willing to offer a specialist of your level in other companies until you go to interviews.

Even if you have to work for less money, so what? You may not be able to frequent expensive restaurants for a while. You will buy cheaper food than you used to buy, prefer to rest in your country house or at a friend's cottage instead of abroad. I understand that now it seems scary to you, because you are used to living differently. But a person always gets used to everything. The time will come and you will get used to it, just as you are used to many things in your life. But, it is quite possible that this situation will not last your whole life, you can achieve a promotion in a new job!

When a child's toy is taken away from him, he stamps his foot and cries because he cannot realize that in the future (maybe in a couple of days) he will get used to the absence of this toy and he will have other, more interesting things. Because the child becomes a hostage to his momentary emotions and cannot think in the future!

Don't become this child. Think constructively about the objects of your fear.

If you are afraid that your husband will betray you and leave you for another woman, think about it? Millions of couples break up and no one dies from it. You will suffer for a while, but then you will begin to live a new life. After all, all human emotions are temporary! Don't be afraid of these emotions. They will come and go.

Imagine a real picture in your head: how you will live, how you will get out of suffering, how you will make new interesting acquaintances, how you will have a chance to correct the mistakes of the past! Think about prospects, not about failures! About new happiness, not suffering!

Method 3 - Be Prepared

When I'm nervous on a plane that's coming in, it doesn't help me much to think about the statistics of plane crashes. So what if accidents happen rarely? So what of the fact that getting to the airport by car is statistically more life-threatening than flying by plane? These thoughts do not save me in those moments when the plane starts to shake or it continues to circle over the airport. Any person who experiences this fear will understand me.

In such situations, fear makes us think: “what if I am now on exactly one of the eight million flights that should turn into a disaster?” And no statistics can help. After all, improbable does not mean impossible! In this life, everything is possible, so you need to be prepared for everything.
Trying to reassure yourself, like “everything will be fine, nothing will happen” usually does not help. Because such exhortations are lies. And the truth is that it will happen, anything can happen! And you need to accept it.

“Not a very optimistic conclusion for an article about getting rid of fear” - You might think.

In fact, everything is not so bad, willingness helps to overcome fear. And do you know what train of thought helps me out on such intense flights? I think, “Airplanes really rarely crash. It is very unlikely that something bad will happen right now. But, nevertheless, it is possible. At worst, I'll die. But I still have to die at some point. Death is inevitable in any case. It ends every human life. The catastrophe will simply bring closer what will happen someday with 100% probability anyway.

As you can see, being prepared does not mean looking at things with a doomed look, thinking: "I will die soon." This means simply realistically assessing the situation: “it is not a fact that a catastrophe will happen. But if that happens, then so be it.”

Of course, this does not eliminate the fear completely. I'm still afraid of death, but it helps to be prepared. What is the point of worrying all your life because of what will definitely happen? It is better to be at least a little prepared and not to think about your death as something that will never happen to us.
I understand that this advice is very difficult to put into practice. And, moreover, not everyone always wants to think about death.

But people who are tormented by the most absurd fears often write to me. Someone, for example, is afraid to go outside, because they believe that it is dangerous there, while at home it is much safer. It will be difficult for this person to cope with his fear if he waits for this fear to pass so that he can go outside. But it can become easier for him if he thinks: “Let there be danger on the street. But you can't stay at home all the time! You can not completely protect yourself, even being within four walls. Or I will go outside and put myself in danger of dying and getting hurt (this danger is negligible). Or I will stay at home until the day I die! Death that will happen anyway. If I die now, then I will die. But it probably won't happen any time soon."

If people stop dwelling so much on their fears, and can at least sometimes look them in the face, realizing that behind them there is nothing but emptiness, then fears will no longer have so much power over us. We shouldn't be so afraid of losing what we will lose anyway.

Fear and emptiness

An attentive reader will ask me: “But if you take this logic to the limit, it turns out that if there is no point in being afraid of losing those things that we will lose anyway, then there is no point in being afraid of anything at all! After all, nothing lasts forever!

Exactly so, even though it contradicts ordinary logic. At the end of every fear lies an emptiness. We have nothing to fear, because all things are temporary.

This thesis can be very difficult to understand intuitively.

But I'm not trying too hard for you to understand it on a theoretical level, but to use it in practice. How? I'll explain now.

I myself use this principle regularly. I am still afraid of many things. But, remembering this principle, I understand that my every fear is meaningless. I don't have to "feed" him and get carried away with him a lot. When I think about it, I find in myself the strength not to submit to fear.

Many people, when they are very afraid of something, subconsciously believe that they "should be afraid", that there are really scary things. They think that in relation to these things, no other reaction is possible than fear. But if you know that in principle there is nothing to fear in this life, since everything will happen someday, if you realize the meaninglessness, “emptiness” of fear, if you understand that there are no truly terrible things, but there is only a subjective reaction to these things, it will be easier to deal with fear. I will return to this point at the end of the article.

Method 4 - Observe

The following few methods will help you deal with fear as it arises.

Instead of succumbing to fear, try to just watch it from the side. Try to localize this fear in your thoughts, feel it as some kind of energy that is formed in certain parts of the body. Mentally direct your breath to these areas. Try to make your breathing slow and calm.

Don't get caught up in your fear with your thoughts. Just watch it form. Sometimes it helps to remove fear altogether. Even if the fear doesn't go away, it's okay. Becoming a dispassionate observer, you begin to realize your fear as something external to your "I", as something that no longer has such power over this "I".

When you are watching, fear is much easier to control. After all, the feeling of fear is formed like a snowball. At first, you are just scared, then all sorts of thoughts start to creep into your head: “what if trouble happens”, “what kind of strange sound did this make when the plane landed?”, “what if some kind of trouble happens to my health?”

And these thoughts feed the fear, it becomes even stronger and causes even more disturbing thoughts. We find ourselves again inside a vicious circle!

But by observing the feelings, we try to get rid of any thoughts and interpretations. We do not feed our fear with our thoughts, and then it becomes weaker. Don't let your own mind reinforce the fear. To do this, simply turn off reflections, evaluations and interpretations and go into observation mode. Don't think about the past or the future stay in the present moment with your fear!

Method 5 - Breathe

During attacks of fear, try to breathe deeply, taking longer breaths and exhalations. Diaphragmatic breathing is good for calming the nervous system and, according to scientific studies, stops the fight-or-flight response, which is directly related to feelings of fear.

Diaphragmatic breathing means you breathe from your belly instead of your chest. Focus on how you breathe. Count the time of inhalation and exhalation. Try to keep this time equal for inhalation and exhalation and long enough. (4 - 10 seconds.) Just do not need to choke. Breathing should be comfortable.

Method 6 - Relax your body

When fear attacks you, try to relax. Gently move your attention over every muscle in your body and relax it. You can combine this technique with breathing. Mentally direct your breath to different parts of your body, in order, starting from the head, ending with the feet.

Method 7 - Remind yourself of how your fear didn't come true

This method helps to cope with small and recurring fears. For example, you are constantly afraid that you could offend a person or make a bad impression on him. But, as a rule, it turns out that your fear never came true. It turned out that you did not offend anyone, and it was just your own mind that scared you.

If this is repeated from time to time, then when you again become afraid that you said something wrong when communicating, remember how often your fear was not realized. And most likely, you will understand there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

But be prepared for anything! Even if there is a possibility that someone is offended by you, then it's not a big deal! Make peace! Don't give too much importance to what has already happened. Most of your own mistakes can be corrected.

Method 8 - Treat fear as a thrill

Remember, I wrote that fear is just a feeling? If you are afraid of something, it does not mean that there is some kind of danger. This feeling is sometimes not related to reality, but is just a spontaneous chemical reaction in your head. Instead of being afraid of this reaction, treat it like a thrill, like a free ride. You don't have to pay money and put yourself in danger by skydiving to get an adrenaline rush. This adrenaline you have appears out of the blue. The beauty!

Method 9 - Embrace Your Fear, Don't Resist

Above, I talked about techniques that will help you quickly deal with your fear at the time of its occurrence. But you don't need to get attached to these techniques. When people hear about ways to control fear or fear, they sometimes fall into the trap of believing in self-control. They start thinking, “Wow! It turns out fear can be controlled! And now I know how to do it! Then I will definitely get rid of him!”

They begin to rely heavily on these techniques. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. And when people fail to manage their fear using these methods, they start to panic: “I can’t control this! Why? Yesterday it worked, but today it doesn't! What should I do? I need to deal with this urgently! I have to manage it!"

They begin to worry and thereby only increase their fear. But the truth is that far not always everything can be controlled. Sometimes these techniques will work, sometimes they won't. Of course, try to breathe, observe the fear, but if it does not pass, there is nothing terrible about it. No need to panic, no need to look for a new way out of the situation, leave everything as it is, accept your fear. You don't "should" get rid of it right now. The word "should" does not apply here at all. Because you are feeling the way you are right now. What happens, happens. Accept it and stop resisting.

Method 10 - Don't get attached to things

The following methods will allow you to remove fears from your life.

As the Buddha said: “the basis of human suffering (dissatisfaction, the inability to come to final satisfaction) is attachment (desire).” Attachment, in my opinion, is understood more as dependence than love.

If we are strongly attached to something, for example, we strongly need to produce an effect on the opposite sex, to achieve permanent victories on the love front, then this will lead us into a state of eternal dissatisfaction, and not happiness and pleasure, as it seems to us. . Sexual feeling, conceit cannot be fully satiated. After each new victory, these feelings will demand more and more. New successes on the love front will bring you less and less pleasure over time (“inflation of pleasure”), while failures will make us suffer. We will live in constant fear that we will lose our charm and attractiveness (and sooner or later this will happen anyway with the advent of old age) and again we will suffer. At a time when there will be no love adventures, we will not feel the joy of life.

Perhaps it will be easier for some people to understand attachment using the example of money. As long as we strive for money, it seems to us that by earning some amount of money, we will achieve happiness. But when we achieve this goal, happiness does not come and we want more! Complete satisfaction is unattainable! We're chasing carrots on a stick.

But it would be much easier for you if you were not so attached to it and rejoiced at what we have (it is not necessary to stop striving for the best). This is what the Buddha meant when he said that the cause of dissatisfaction is attachment. But attachments not only give rise to dissatisfaction and suffering, they form fear.

After all, we are afraid to lose exactly what we are so strongly attached to!

I am not saying that you need to go to the mountains, give up your personal life and destroy all attachments. Total disengagement is an extreme teaching, suitable for extreme situations. But, despite this, modern man can derive some benefit from this principle for himself without going to extremes.

To experience less fear, you do not need to get hung up on some things and put them at the basis of your existence. If you think: “I live for work”, “I only live for my children”, then you may have a strong fear of losing these things. After all, your whole life comes down to them.

That's why try to diversify your life as much as possible, let in a lot of new things, enjoy many things, and not just one thing. Be happy because you breathe and live, and not just because you have a lot of money and you are attractive to the opposite sex. Although, as I said above, the last things will not bring you happiness.

(In this sense, attachments are not only the cause of suffering, but its effect! People who are deeply unhappy inside begin to desperately cling to external things in search of satisfaction: sex, entertainment, alcohol, new experiences. But happy people tend to be more They are self-sufficient. The basis of their happiness is life itself, not things. Therefore, they are not so afraid of losing them.)

Attachment does not mean lack of love. As I wrote above, this is more understood as an addiction than love. For example, I have very high hopes for this site. I love developing it. If something bad happens to him, it will be a blow to me, but not the end of my life! After all, I have many other interesting things to do in my life. But my happiness is formed not only by them, but by the very fact that I live.

Method 11 - Nurture your ego

Remember, you are not alone in this world. The whole existence is not limited to your fears and problems. Stop focusing on yourself. There are other people in the world with their own fears and worries.

Understand that there is an immense world around you with its laws. Everything in nature is subject to birth, death, decay, disease. Everything in this world, of course. And you yourself are part of this universal order, and not the center of it!

If you feel yourself in harmony with this world, not opposing yourself to it, realize your existence as an integral part of the natural order, you will understand that you are not alone, that you, together with all living beings, are moving in the same direction. And so it has always been, forever and ever.

With this consciousness your fears will disappear. How to achieve such consciousness? It must have come along with the development of personality. One way to achieve this state is to practice meditation.

Method 12 - Meditate

In this article, I talked about the fact that you cannot identify yourself with your fear, that it is just a feeling, that you need to be ready for anything, that you cannot put your own ego at the center of all existence.

This is easy to understand on a theoretical level, but not always easy to apply in practice. It is not enough just to read about it, it needs to be practiced, day by day, applying in real life. Not all things in this world are available for "intellectual" knowledge.

That attitude to fears, which I spoke about at the beginning, needs to be brought up in oneself. The way to come to these conclusions in practice, to realize that fear is just an illusion, is meditation.

Meditation gives you the opportunity to "reprogram" yourself to be happier and freer. Nature is a wonderful "constructor", but her creations are not perfect, biological mechanisms (the mechanism of fear), which worked in the Stone Age, do not always work in the modern world.

Meditation will allow you to partially correct the imperfection of nature, change your standard emotional reactions to many things, move away from fear to calmness, come to a clearer understanding of the illusory nature of fear, understand that fear is not part of your personality and free yourself from it!

With practice, you can find the source of happiness in yourself and not become strongly attached to different things. You will learn to accept your emotions and fears rather than resist them. Meditation will teach you to observe your fear from the outside, without getting involved in it.

Meditation will not only help you come to some important understanding of yourself and life. The practice has been scientifically proven to calm the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for feelings of stress. It will make you calmer and less stressed. It will teach you to relax deeply and get rid of fatigue and tension. And this is very important for people who are afraid.

You can listen to my short lecture about that, at the link.

Method 13 - Don't let fear be imposed on you

Many of us are used to the fact that everyone around them only talks about how terrible it is to live, what terrible diseases exist, gasp and groan. And this perception is transferred to us. We begin to think that there are really scary things that we "should" be afraid of, since everyone is afraid of them!

Fear, surprisingly, may be the result of stereotypes. It is natural to fear death, and almost all people are afraid of it. But when we see the constant lamentations of other people about the death of loved ones, when we observe how our elderly friend cannot come to terms with the death of her son, who died 30 years ago, then we begin to think that this is not just scary, but terrible! That there is no chance to perceive it any other way.

In fact, these things become so terrible only in our perception. And there is always the possibility of treating them differently. When Einstein died, he accepted death quite calmly, he treated it as an unchanging order of things. If you ask any spiritually developed person, maybe a religious ascetic, a convinced Christian or Buddhist, how he feels about death, he will certainly be calm about this. And this is not necessarily connected only with the fact that the first one believes in an immortal soul, an afterlife existence, and the second, although he does not believe in the soul, believes in reincarnation. This is due to the fact that they are spiritually developed and have tamed their ego. No, I'm not saying that you need to seek salvation in religion, I'm trying to prove that a different attitude to those things that we consider terrible is possible, and it can be achieved along with spiritual development!

Do not listen to those who say how scary everything is, These people are wrong. In fact, there are almost no things in this world that are worth fearing. Or not at all.

And watch less TV.

Method 14 - Do not avoid situations in which fear arises (!!!)

I highlighted this point with three exclamation marks because it is one of the most important tips in this article. I briefly touched on this issue in the first paragraphs, but here I will dwell on it in more detail.

I have already said that the instinctive tactics of behavior during fear (running away, being afraid, avoiding some situations) are the wrong tactics in the context of the task of getting rid of fear. If you are afraid to leave the house, then you will never cope with this fear if you stay at home like this.

But what to do? Get outside! Forget about your fear! Let him appear, don't be afraid of him, let him in and don't resist. Don't take it seriously though, it's just a feeling. You can get rid of your fear only when you start to ignore the very fact of its occurrence and live as if there is no fear!

• To overcome the fear of flying on airplanes, you need to fly on airplanes as often as possible.
• To overcome the fear of the need for self-defense, you need to enroll in the section of martial arts.
• To overcome the fear of meeting girls, you need to meet girls!

You must do what you are afraid to do! There is no easy way. Forget about the "must" as soon as possible to get rid of fear. Just act.

Method 15 - Strengthen the Nervous System

The extent to which you are prone to fear depends very much on the state of your health in general and on the health of your nervous system in particular. Therefore, improve your work, learn to cope with stress, do yoga, quit. I covered these points in my other articles, so I will not write about it here. Strengthening your body is a very important thing in the fight against depression, fears and bad mood. Please do not neglect this and do not limit yourself to "emotional work" alone. In a healthy body healthy mind.

Conclusion

This article does not call for immersing yourself in the world of sweet dreams and hiding from fear. In this article, I tried to tell you how important it is to learn to face your fears, accept them, live with them, and not hide from them.

Let this path not be the easiest, but it is the right one. All your fears will disappear only when you stop being afraid of the very feeling of fear. When you're done trust him. When you won't let him tell you how to get to the place of rest, how often to go out, what kind of people you communicate with. When you start living as if there is no fear.

Only then will he leave. Or won't leave. But this will no longer be of great importance to you, since fear will become only a small obstacle for you. Why give importance to the little things?

What do you call people who are not afraid of anything? Maybe daredevils? Or extremely self-confident? And do such individuals really exist? It is human nature to experience fear, there is nothing strange and reprehensible in this. When people around say the common phrase that there is nothing to be afraid of, they really do not understand what they are talking about. Our relatives and friends are often cunning, because they themselves do not always have only a rosy mood. It is impossible to completely protect oneself from negative impressions, even if they really interfere with a full existence, in some way destroy a person.

Otherwise, we would become robots who react to everything that happens with the same forced smile. But in such a gesture there will be no life, no joy, because the very position to feel only satisfaction is insincere! You can get rid of the all-consuming fear only through fruitful work on yourself. This will be discussed in this article.

The nature of fear

Why is a person afraid of something? Most often, this feeling arises when we are faced with something unknown. The psyche habitually reacts with fear, because it does not have a suitable behavior model in its arsenal. This emotion often causes them to aggravate the situation even more, to look for someone to blame. Fear is felt as a binding tension in the body, general mental discomfort and anxiety. Every human emotion has its own individual purpose. Fear has a protective function: it protects us from the invasion of a traumatic event or feeling.

Otherwise, the boundaries between comfort and life-threatening dangers would be blurred. There are no people who do not experience a sense of fear at all. We must think not about how not to be afraid of anything, but about learning how to independently minimize the destructive effect of an unpleasant emotion. Not to let fear take over your soul means to acquire the ability to remain free in any situation.

Overcoming fear

Anything can happen in life: the loss of a job, a quarrel with a loved one, an unexpected event that will turn any idea about the world upside down. All this cannot but injure our inner being. The emotional state begins to suffer in the first place: there are obsessive thoughts about a possible unfavorable development of events, trembling in the body, distrust of others. How to overcome fear? Quite simple, but effective methods will help.

Event analysis

Reflections on life contribute to the answer to the question: how not to be afraid of anything? It is necessary not only to think about what happened, but to analyze the situation in detail. Why did this happen to you? Have similar events happened before? What did you feel about it? With a little research, you will most likely find that the fears are far-fetched.

Your fear is the result of negative experiences in childhood and adolescence. Conversations with spiritually developed people, confidential conversations have a positive effect. Indeed, in most cases, a person simply needs the attention and support of others. Misunderstanding and loneliness only undermine strength, hinder personal growth.

meditation

Today, no one is probably surprised by spiritual practices aimed at strengthening emotional balance. Through meditation, even the physical condition improves. In addition, consciousness opens up, an understanding comes of how to behave with people in order to live in harmony with everything that happens. Meditation helps to strengthen faith in yourself and your abilities. How not to be afraid of anything? Just start doing spiritual practice - and soon you will see a satisfactory result that will surely please you.

Meditation leads to the disclosure of all chakras, the inner nature of a person. Such an activity not only helps to cope with fear, but also neutralizes the destructive effect of all negative emotions. You will feel like a different person: cheerful, optimistic, worthy of all victories.

Intimate talk

following a dream

Setting achievable goals and enjoying their achievement is the best cure for any fear. How to learn not to be afraid of anything? Direct all efforts to the sphere of your dreams. This is the only way to overcome the all-consuming fear of not being up to par or unsuccessful. Personal victories incredibly motivate, lead forward, liberate, temper character. This is the main secret of successful people. “Fear nothing” - this phrase becomes their internal motto, thanks to which they achieve everything they want.

Why does following your dreams help you overcome fear? The fact is that any internal doubts limit our ability to think and reason sensibly. When we conquer them in ourselves, fear also rapidly recedes. The sphere of dreams always inspires a person to new achievements, teaches him to act quickly, and does not give him time to get hung up on existing problems.

Harmony with yourself

A person who is constantly afraid of something is highly susceptible to stress. A nervous emotional state can eventually lead to psychophysical disorders, significant malfunctions in the work of the whole organism. In order to get rid of constant experiences, it is necessary to carefully work through the existing limiting beliefs. What does it mean? Allow yourself to gain freedom, those very inner wings that will help you strive for great achievements. No matter how incredible your goals may seem right now, you can achieve them if you believe that they are really achievable. Dealing with fear is not easy, but we must continue to fight. One day you will realize that you have become so confident in yourself that you will overcome any obstacles.

Thus, overcoming any fear begins with systematic work with your character. Then you will feel that you can hold the whole universe in your palms.

Internal fears sometimes do not allow a person to develop and move on. But without courage, you will never achieve success and your goals. How to stop being afraid and start moving towards your dream?

Often a person is afraid of something. This may be the fear of the dark, airplanes, girls, the public, illness, work and life in general. Fear signals us about danger, but what if it prevents us from acting and paralyzes our whole life?

How to stop being afraid

Comfort zone

From childhood, a person was taught that life is dangerous. Parents took care of him for a long time, and he almost never faced the difficulties of real life. When a person grows up, he begins to fear and be afraid of everything. Man tries to protect himself from everything. He fearfully sits in his comfort zone and is not going to leave it.

What to do and how to stop being afraid? The most interesting and promising is outside the comfort zone. There are interesting acquaintances, travel, work, success, the opposite sex and a new life. It is impossible to achieve something different by doing the old things. It's time to make an attempt to see what is beyond the horizon and study it.

Fear of mistakes

People think that making a mistake is shameful and their self-respect will suffer. Failure is not defeat, as some people think. Mistake is normal. Only those who do nothing do not commit them.

How to stop being afraid? Stop protecting yourself and your self-esteem. A person is not a crystal vase, and one cannot run away from abrasions and bumps. It's like riding a bike. At first, you will fall many times until you learn to ride.

How success works

Sometimes people have no idea how life and success work. People who succeed immediately on one try are rare. Many successful people have failed several times. Big failures did not stop them, but taught them how to deal with problems and look for solutions.

How to stop being afraid? Luck loves the brave and stubborn, not the cowardly and giving up after a couple of attempts. Go ahead, don't expect a miracle. Create opportunities and seize them. Try again and again. Time runs very fast, and you will not have a second life.