When fear discovers there is nothing for it to gain at my house, it will move on and search out other sources of energy.
Fear has limitations. When I calmly and rationally identify these limitations, I not only see fear for what it really is, I can learn to overcome it. This isn’t to say that fear will leave me completely, or forever. I’m not so naive as to believe that, but I have learned that I can reduce fear to a point where nearly all the fear I have is constructive. This is where fear becomes a tool I can use.
Fear Is Just Part of the Process
Constructive fear is the fear that sets butterflies free in my stomach before I give a speech or puts me on the edge of my seat before a job interview. These kinds of fear help me perform by pushing me to do my best. They are still fears that fall into the above-mentioned categories, fear of failure and fear of not getting something I want. Yet I can use them to my advantage. It takes patience and practice to make it work for me, but I have found it to be a wonderful use of fear. I know it’s part of the process of giving a speech or interviewing for a job, so I can put it to good use.
When I say fear is just part of the process, I don’t mean to minimize it by using the word just. My intention is to put fear in its place. When used properly, fear is a tool. And everything is a process. Life is a process—we are born, we live, we die. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but it contains a grain of truth. We have no control over being born, and we have little or no control over when and how we die, unless it’s by suicide. We do have some control over how we live, and life itself is nothing more than a series of processes, choices, and consequences.
I owe this lesson to one of my first writing professors. She told me that I needed to learn to enjoy the process of writing. I have. While learning to write, which is a much larger process than I ever could have imagined, I learned that every action, every step, can be broken down into smaller processes. There are steps taken to accomplish any task. If I follow the steps laid out on the cake mix box, I’ll end up with a cake. If I want to become an electrician, there is a process I must go through. Everything in life is like this. It’s only a matter of finding, then following, the correct process in order to reach a specific goal. Fear is part of nearly every process, yet when I learn to see fear for what it is, I can overcome it and reach my goal. Most processes can be broken down into even smaller processes, which is a great way to manage things that only seem overwhelming when looked at in a larger context. Since fear usually makes things look overwhelming, I break down each process into smaller processes. When I do, I break down fear too.
I remember going back to school at the age of forty-five and thinking how scared I was of what might or might not happen. My fear ran amok. I asked myself, “Will I be accepted? Can I handle the classes, or am I too old to learn? Will my grades be good enough? How will I pay for everything?” My fear-generated list was nearly endless, so I broke it down. First, I decided to enroll. Then I took one class. That went well enough, so the following semester I took two classes. Soon I was a full-time student carrying a 4.0 grade point average. Eventually, I graduated with honors. It was a process, daunting when I looked at it in one big chunk, yet manageable when I broke it into smaller pieces. I actually broke each semester into weeks, because I found that at the beginning of each semester when I got a syllabus for every class, the amount of work seemed overwhelming. Fear appeared like a ghost and told me I would never get it all done. As I broke things down into weeks, I saw that I could easily do what needed to be done a week at a time. I eventually broke things down into a daily schedule, which made my workload even more manageable. The fear, which started out looking like Frankenstein’s monster, began to look more like a simple household chore when I began breaking it down into smaller tasks. The work of going back to school finally became enjoyable as I integrated it into my daily routine. I made learning a process—a set of steps to follow in order to achieve a goal—and it worked out very well. Since then I have found that everything is a process. Everything can be broken down into manageable chunks. Learning to do even this was a process; it wasn’t easy, but it is possible.
It took patience and practice, but life is like that. What I practice today, I become better at tomorrow. My goal now is to make every day a practice session for the future. I practice learning so it will become habit. I practice overcoming fear for the same reason. Habits are easy to follow, and dealing with fear can become a habit if I practice it often and if I break it down into a process. It too can be done, and more easily than I ever imagined.
Here are the steps I take nowadays to deal with fear: first, I recognize the fear at a conscious level; I acknowledge it and even mentally shake hands with it. Then I look fear in the eye and tell it I will not let it govern my life, that I plan to do exactly what needs to be done to attain my goal. Then I break the task down into smaller and smaller pieces, breaking fear down as I go, until I discover that the task is not only doable, but also enjoyable. When I reach this point, I almost always find that fear has left the building or is cowering in the corner.
Then I remind myself that fear will return, and I will need to deal with it again, because fear is like that—it’s just part of the process.
I have come to believe that fear only exists to be conquered. Sure, I know the fight-or-flight response to fear, the gut reaction to that nagging feeling that something isn’t quite right, that something is terribly wrong, or that I’m in a dangerous situation. By conquering fear I mean not simply taking the gut feeling and running with it. What I mean is taking the time to stand up to fear and thinking it through before I act. Often this means stopping and taking time to think, feel, and get to know myself in order to recognize that I am afraid. Then I take time to stop again to give myself an opportunity to think before I act.
Sometimes it is prudent to run. If my life is in immediate danger, running is the most likely option. Since that is rarely the case, I have found that more often it is better to stand and face my fears, to think things through, and then do what I decide is the right thing to do, no matter what fear tells me I should do. It may be the more difficult thing to do, but it gets easier every time I do it. Practice makes progress.
I have a fear of heights. My sister asked me if I wanted to go skydiving. My first reaction was “Are you crazy?” But after I thought about it, I went. We did a tandem jump where I was securely attached to a skilled skydiver, who had made thousands of jumps and wore a parachute attached to his back. It was hard to jump from an airplane 13,000 feet in the air, but I did it. And you know what? I still have my fear of heights. When I stand at the edge of a ten-story building, my gut still jumps into my throat. It doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. One skydiving attempt did not remove my fear of heights. It only shrank it a little.
I am sure it would subside with more work, but I have made a choice. I have decided, at least for the time being, that I will not be doing more work on this particular fear. Jumping out of airplanes isn’t something I care to do again anytime soon. But I’m not ruling it out, either. My sister loves it. She even got my mother to jump—it was my sister’s second jump—and she asked me to go again. I declined. But I didn’t decline due to fear. I declined because I had something else I wanted to spend my money on at the time.
The next time my sister asks me, I may just go. I know it would be fun. It was fun the first time I jumped, and I know it will help me deal with my fear of heights. In the meantime, I’ll keep working on things a bit closer to the ground.
02 | Anger and Depression
In my experience, anger and depression are two insidious ways the cunning entity known as fear disguises itself, and as we know, disguises are often intended to conceal the identity of someone or something that wishes us no good.
But anger and depression are two feelings I can easily recognize if I am paying attention. Therefore, I do my best to watch for these two emotions, and when they begin
