Fear robs you of the present moment
Don't let a specter steal your thunder
Fear feels all powerful when it has your life by the belt loops. But, fear is just a feeling.
In the FEAR section of You Are Not Going To Die, we whittle down fear instead of it whittling us.
Fear comes in a variety pack. Did you know?
You’ve probably felt the hot electric fear that floods your body in response to a sudden threat. A car swerving in your bike lane or a bear cutting across your hiking path. Even a coworker sneaking up on you when you are in flow mode can make you jump.
That’s natural fear.
Natural fear is your innate reaction to a threat happening in the N-O-W. It has a clean story arc: get spooked, take action, move on. It’s fast. All that’s left to do afterwards is shake off the adrenaline driblets and tell someone about how you almost died.
Natural fear is not the kind of fear that wears you down.
The fear that saps you to dregs is artificial fear.
Artificial fear is a fear that’s created from thought. It exists outside the present moment, without a real stimulus, and can go on indefinitely.
It’s manufactured — by you (instead of by a bear).
It’s almost always about the future — if it was in the present moment, you could actually deal with it!
It is impossible to reason with because it is unreasonable — you will come up with 100 reasons why you shouldn’t be scared, and then your fear will come up with 101 reasons why you should.
For me, artificial fear feels like constantly anticipating something horrible that’s coming. And believing I won’t be able to handle the horribleness when it arrives.Â
Artificial fear is a life sapper because it triggers your natural fear response but then it doesn’t stick to the story arc. You stay high-alert on adrenaline, looping indefinitely, and bracing for a future that may never come.
In so many ways, fear robs you of the present moment.Â
The problem with living in the future is that it’s not actually living.Â
In real life, you can’t control every outcome. You can’t prevent catastrophe. You can only respond to what happens in the moment.
In a way though, this is freeing! Unlike the yoke of anticipatory vigilance that artificial fear demands of you, real life just asks you to be here now.
You can respond in real time.
You can decide in the moment what needs done.
You can survive with what you have instead of conjuring a perfect solution to have on hand.
And what’s important to also note is that you’ve already done this. You have responded to natural fear successfully throughout your life. If you didn’t… the bear, the bike, the whatever-it-was would have gotten you, my friend.
Fear tricks you into thinking you can control it by focusing on it all the time. But control isn’t real.
All that’s real, all we ever have, is the one moment happening right now.
Don’t let fear take you away from the one thing that’s real.
The evidence/reminder that you are here and have survived everything to date is so powerful!
Personally, I find another potent technique is just indulging them for a bit, letting them air out. Some people don’t like to imagine the worst-case scenario, but I’m the kind who needs to confront it - giving voice to the fear and then playing it out logically to see what it would mean and what I would actually do - Plan B, C and beyond. Once out in the light, this tends to lose its strength.