The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Don’t sweat the small stuff — it’s all small stuff.

Unfortunately, many of us have built a large part of our lives around how to avoid fear. Humans like all animals have an embedded fight-or-flight reaction to threat. For most of human history, we were constantly exposed to physical threats. However, now that our physical space is substantially safer, the threats have moved from external and physical to internal and emotional. Rather than being worried about being mauled by a bear, our worry gets expressed in very maladaptive ways — we worry about not being good enough, the opinions others have of use… Fear manifest itself in many ways: negativity, self-doubt, criticism of ourselves or others, rigid thinking, complaining and control over others just name a few. When placed in the future we view this as anxiety. When placed in the past we find regret, which can lead to hopelessness. Take for example, our bodies. When we are healthy, we don’t think that much about it, and when a problem does arise we fix it rather than ignore or bury it. We get over it and get well. Emotionally, though we can’t seem to ignore it. We become hooked by the emotion unable to turn our attention away from it. We become slaves to our fears and emotions, which clouds our judgement and greatly interferes with clarity and perspective. Furthermore, the more you try to supress fear, by ignoring or burying it or by displacing it with doing somthing else, the more you will actually experience it. The wise say everything one wants is on the other side of fear. When our emotions are healthy, the little things don’t distract from the big picture, and we are in control conducting proper action, rather than being driven by poor reaction. Ultimately, we want to simply identify the fear or negativity but not identifying with it, being part of it or becoming it. When we are working with others, similarly we don’t want to react to their fear, making their fear our fear. By being present fear is reduced. We are never going to eliminate fear and the other privileges of being human — that’s just life — but when we can see them we can minimize the power anger and fear have over us.

Related: Perspective, Action, Stress

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