This adage has led me to do many things that normally I would have never done - Bungee Jumping, Sky Diving, Everest Base Camp Trek, Scary rides etc - and I am always on a lookout for the next big adventure to push the limit and overcome the fear.
All the above activities and my bravado are all limited to (what I now call) Physical Fear. A fear associated with bodily harm - I will get hurt if this adventure fails and goes the wrong way. I've learnt that this Physical Fear can be controlled by calming the mind, facing the fear and living the moment. A simple mental image of the fun and rush that you will feel during the experience and the pride that you will feel when you finish the adventure helps you to enjoy the adventure and overcome the fear. I've learnt that the key is to have an image of the completed adventure and aim towards that.
Over the last few days, however, I have come to realise that there is another kind of fear that is much stronger and much more difficult to overcome.
Events across the last few weeks have made me realise the power of Emotional Fear. The fear in your mind that is associated with the fear of loss. Emotional Fear is the fear that is completely in your mind pertaining to events and issues that are completely out of your control and have no physical connotations. You cannot associate it with a physical way of overcoming it. A fear so deep seated that you don't want to imagine the end image or a fear associated with an end image so frightening that you don't want to face it. An image that you don't want to accept and a fear that it might come true.
I'm struggling with this Emotional Fear over the last few weeks with a few major events that made me face the prospect of loss of a loved one. The emotional fear was also associated with the fear of inaction - if we didn't take any concrete action, then we could loose the loved one and not be remembered. An intense need to take action continuously while the reality might be to let things play itself out. We struggled with the 'inaction fear' recently and things worked out well for us. But the fear was always around the corner of what if it would not work out. I'm struggling with another one in that realm.
While I've come to realise that I have the ability to easily understand and overcome Physical Fear, the dragon of Emotional Fear scares me and I have yet to find a way to tame that dragon. Physical Fear is temporary and can be overcome in minutes. Emotional Fear needs a lot of time to overcome but giving it time only seems to make the dragon more powerful and all consuming.
How do you overcome Emotional Fear?
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