The Fear Of The Unknown Often Hides An Opportunity To Grow
Sometimes your fear disguises itself as logic. It doesn’t show you the real reason why you’re avoiding challenging situations: the fear of the unknown.
That sense of uncertainty and the burden of expectations can paralyze you. It can even make you avoid situations that you need to grow.
But the only way you can bring out the possibilities behind your fear is to put yourself in those very situations.
And knowing how to manage your anxiety feels really good. It helps you keep the anxiety and other disorders at bay. Nobody likes to be scared. But you will feel much better if you understand it and can control it.
You will feel your tension melt away and no longer threaten your health. It can also help you discover a new way to grow as a person.
You easily forget that you can now handle situations with ease that used to paralyze you. You will be able to handle exams, public speaking, social contact and all that sort of thing. Because behind each of these situations was an opportunity.
The opportunity for personal growth made you do these new or stressful things despite your sense of paralysis and fear of the unknown. Let’s take a closer look at this…
Only one thing makes your dream impossible: the fear of failure
Why do you have mixed feelings when faced with a new situation? The reason is that your body is trying to defend itself. It responds to feelings of uncertainty and fear. The automatic response is to prepare to flee immediately and save yourself.
So on a physical level, the blood flow in the upper part of your body will slow down so that the blood flows to the lower body ends. That way a faster, easier escape is possible. That is why your first reaction in these situations is avoidance or flight.
Your first natural reaction is to avoid these situations. But you are in control of yourself and your thoughts. This makes it possible to make more rational and less intuitive decisions. That power is where you will find the opportunities hidden behind your fear of the unknown and behind new situations.
So fear of failing at new things is intuitive. You have it as a result of a phylogenetic inheritance from your ancestors.
But the desire to achieve your goals is a little more personal. It hides in your thoughts and feelings. That is why this battle between our genes and our thoughts determines success or failure. So it determines whether or not you make your dreams come true.
The things that scare you make you the happiest
This is what people say: if you really want something, you have to go for it. Then why are you so afraid of the things you really want?
Sometimes it’s just because you prefer to stay in your fantasy world. Because it’s easier to have impossible expectations and just imagine what would happen if you got what you really wanted.
At other times, the uncertainty and effort required to follow your desires outweigh your dreams. You then choose not to move and to avoid major changes.
The key is knowing that the more you do, the more you can handle. You must be in this circle if you want to overcome your fears over and over again. Because that way you will get what you really want.
Understand your fear of the unknown
Fear is just an emotion. Once you understand it, you realize that it can only be really useful in a limited number of situations. And actually, those situations in life don’t happen that often.
Most feelings of fear consist of irrational worries and thoughts. So learn how to recognize and control them. The sooner you do this, the sooner you will be able to enjoy things that really deserve your time.
Because what scares you is actually an opportunity for victory and growth.
