What would you do - whether it concerns life or work - if you were not afraid of anything? Such a simple question awakens countless fantasies, desires and regrets.
If the fear of failure or seeming like a complete idiot has ever held you back from doing what your heart called for, you will need some very important advice from business consultant Sandya Bruegmann. There is no need to fight fear. Just accept it and don’t let your worries slow you down on the path to your dream.
Usually we consider fear as an unpleasant emotion, which we try to avoid with all our might. Fear literally paralyzes, so instincts willy-nilly switch to survival mode. Unfortunately, such behavior can lead to actions that have nothing to do with moving towards our goals.
Sandya Brugmann
business consultant
In other words, if you let fear control you, you may forget about success.
This is especially dangerous for entrepreneurs. Running a business can be a scary and exciting experience in itself: it involves taking on financial responsibilities, dealing with frustrated clients or employees, and realizing that the decisions you make affect not only your well-being, but also the lives of other people.
On the other hand, Brugmann notes, fear is an emotion inherent in humans by nature. You won’t be able to get rid of it once and for all, and you don’t need to.
We are not faced with the task of curbing fear and preventing its occurrence in the future. Our goal is to understand what it is and learn to act based on willpower and without burying our heads in the sand.
Richard Branson phrased the same idea a little differently.
Fear sometimes makes you wet yourself, but courage makes you act even in wet pants.
Richard Branson
entrepreneur, founder of Virgin Group
The metaphor is not the most elegant, but it conveys the essence absolutely correctly: do not give up on your dreams because of fears, just accept them as part of life. Here are some tips to help you stop being afraid and start doing something.
Don't let unnecessary thoughts take over
You will never be able to control everything that happens, but you are free to choose how to react to it. When something bad happens, we tend to look to ourselves for the cause.
For example, you worked for a long time to launch a large-scale project or negotiated with an intractable client, but in the end everything went to pieces. Does this mean that the project or idea was so-so? No. This doesn’t say anything at all about you as a person, so don’t bother yourself with reflection in vain. Think better about what the next step towards achieving your goal will be. And remember: your path to success is never tied to just one specific person or opportunity.
Everything I fear is coming true. How to live?
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes.
Reader question:
Hello! Please help me cope with fears and despondency!
I am 33 years old, I live with my daughter for 13 years and I have not been married to a man for 4 years. For many years I have been living in anticipation of something terrible, and all my life I have been afraid of something, for example, the death of loved ones. As a result, seven years ago, this is what happened - within a few years, all my relatives died: sister, dad, mother-in-law, husband and mother. True, the parents drank increasingly, and the sister died during pregnancy.
At one point, for some reason, I began to be afraid that my husband would die and prayed that he would find someone else, but would be alive and well. But after a couple of years of fear, he actually died. From that moment on, I also began to fear my thoughts, or rather, their materialization.
We live well with the man, he is a kind and good person, he accepted his daughter and she accepted him. But I started having problems with fears again. Almost as soon as the relationship with him began, there was jealousy and anger for nothing, I turned into complete negativity, thereby ruining the relationship between everyone at home.
My daughter suffers the most from me, I swear at her a lot, I started swearing and screaming every time that I’m tired of this life, that I’m going to die, and so on. I swear at her because I give up and think that I can’t cope with her adolescence, although my girl is smart and good, but it always seems to me that she is cold.
I’m upset with my health, I’m afraid to go to the hospital, in case they find something terrible. And then she got pregnant. We want a baby, but I started to think that I wouldn’t be able to bear him or that something would be wrong with him or with me... As a result, I had a miscarriage in the fifth week. Now I’m just going crazy that this is all because of my thoughts, that God will continue to punish me for my words! Today I feel very guilty before God for saying all my sins.
What to do?
Galina
Archpriest Andrei Efanov answers:
God's blessing be upon you! Dear Galina, the fear of death is inherent in man, as is the fear of losing loved ones, but sometimes the evil one so intensifies natural fear (which actually helps us live and survive) that a person begins to perceive his fear as what determines his life, life is built around fear, and then fear completely replaces life. This is an illusion, and we need to understand it and get rid of it.
First of all, pray to God that he will help you, and start regularly, once a month or two weeks, to confess and confess your fears, including in detail. Write them down on paper, and you will see that even purely logically your fears are false. Firstly, all people die, and there is not a single person who would not survive death, perhaps except for the prophet Elijah, who ascended to heaven on a chariot of fire (the Lord ascended him), but even then we do not know how exactly this happened what happened and what the prophet experienced. So, everyone will die, this is the norm of our life after the Fall. And one hope is that Christ, who came to earth and brought life to life, opened the way to eternal life for people. And this gives us hope for a meeting. Life does not end with the separation of the soul from the body: there comes the expectation of a meeting there, then, in another world.
The fact that drinking parents died is, alas, a pattern, and you yourself understand what went into this. Unfortunately, even today some pregnancies end in death, and doctors cannot do anything. You just need to accept that the life and death of you and other people do not depend on you, and there is no point in being afraid of it. Children are afraid of the death of their parents because children cannot live on their own. But you are an adult, you stand on your own two feet and, in order to confront the fear of death, establish yourself better and better in this life! No matter what happens to others, you have a place to live, you can feed yourself and your daughter, you know how to live and what to do. The more confident you feel in life, the less room there is for fear. Besides, we all walk under God. Trust God and know that He does not send tests beyond your strength, and that what you need to do in life is completely within your capabilities.
If you cannot accept these thoughts yourself, urgently contact a psychologist and tell him all the fears you have, he will give more specific recommendations on what to do with them. If he refers you to a psychiatrist or prescribes sedatives, don’t be afraid. If it has gotten to the point where fear is ruling your life, you need to take serious action. They are limited in time, so don't worry. In principle, in everyday life there is only one recipe - pray, ask God, confess and receive communion (as I already said, once or twice a month) and do everyday things right on the list. Firstly, establish a strict daily routine - early rise, prayer and then work, go to bed no later than midnight, preferably around 11 pm. Urgently go to a therapist and get examined. If you are sick, start treatment, if not, close off the medical reasons for your fears, otherwise you live as if you are only looking for an opportunity not to live, but to be afraid. Don't, don't close yourself off from life. If the doctor doesn’t find anything, start doing exercises, walking or walking, you can gradually start running (find an initial training program on the Internet). So you need to go to the doctor one of these days, without delaying it. In addition to the daily routine, good nutrition and sports, do household chores, and pray during sports, cleaning and cooking. For example, read “Lord, have mercy.” When fear comes, start immediately asking God for help so that he can remove the fear. To distract yourself from fear, you can try squatting 10-15 times or doing push-ups at least five times.
At home, communicate calmly, to the point, don’t discuss any fears, because you’ve probably already discussed them at home many times and won’t say anything new. Move conversations into a constructive direction: who did what around the house, what are your plans, what exactly did you do and learn at the clinic, where are you planning to go alone or with your family for the weekend, and so on. Your life should be filled not with fears, but with deeds. By the way, are you working? If it turns out that you are not working, you urgently need to find something useful to do with yourself - take a part-time job, go for at least half a day as an assistant (in your specialty), complete any courses that interest you and immediately get a practice or internship. The activity should not be empty, but either by profession, or, which is useful, be associated with some very simple and real, tangible and visible result. This will also greatly distract you; idleness, alas, can lead to idleness.
As for your daughter, you don’t need to demand anything from her! She’s alive, healthy, studying well, has normal friends, does simple things around the house and minimally communicates with you – and that’s fine. You will first restore your condition, then think about the rest. For now, I’ll recommend simple texts about raising teenagers:
Teenager: user manual in 10 non-standard theses
5 things your teenager needs from you
These are fairly simple instructions and will suffice. As for your life partner, of course, cohabitation is a sin and if you both think about being in a union, this union must be officially registered. But this is difficult to do when you are in such a shattered state, so take care of yourself, restore your strength and health, and then calmly and soberly look at the prospect of life together.
God bless you!
Learn to hear your fear
Try to recognize the signs of fear as early as possible and understand how it affects you. Yes, it's not that simple. Sandya Brugmann believes that clarifying who we really are is one of the most difficult tasks. The biggest lie, the truth of which we ourselves believe and force others to believe, is the idea of ourselves as a whole and unchanging person.
In fact, we consist of many subpersonalities. Our task is to thoroughly study each of them, finding positive features and those that are worth adjusting. There is no place for judgment here. This is just the path to growth, change, the ability to curb fear and make informed choices based on your inner strength.
What should true dentophobes do?
An ordinary person, experiencing fear of the dentist, understands the need for dental treatment, overcomes anxiety and successfully completes all procedures. With dental phobes, everything is much more complicated; these are the most difficult patients for dentists. Psychologists divide dentophobia into three types:
- congenital – unfounded; patients have been afraid of various medical procedures since childhood;
- acquired – appears on the basis of one’s own negative experience;
- fictional - develops under the influence of scary stories about dentists heard from friends or seen in movies.
People suffering from dental phobia put off visiting a doctor until the last minute. They take pills, use dubious traditional methods, suffer from pain, but still do not go to the hospital. In extreme cases, when the condition of the tooth is deplorable, dentophobes agree to have it removed.
Before visiting the dental office, such patients experience the following symptoms:
- increased blood pressure;
- pain in the heart area;
- noise in ears;
- increased breathing and heart rate;
- dizziness, up to loss of consciousness;
- feeling of a lump in the throat;
- sticky sweat appears;
- abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting;
- trembling of the limbs and head;
- tears;
- hysterical fits.
Patients may be excessively talkative; some grab the doctor’s hands when they see a syringe or instrument.
Such patients need the help of a psychotherapist before visiting the dentist. The specialist will find out the cause of panic fear and, if necessary, prescribe medication, hypnotherapy or acupuncture.
Dental treatment for patients suffering from dental phobia must be carried out using sedation. Additionally, some clinics use calming methods such as relaxation music and video glasses.
If everything is together and at once
If you have accumulated all the listed “debuffs,” then it’s so sad that it’s funny. Treat it that way. Seriously, humor and cheerfulness will lead you out of any dead end, from the darkest basement. If a person is poor, stupid, doesn’t know how to do anything and doesn’t have a girlfriend, it turns out that nothing holds him back at all. This also means that a person is initially in the wrong place, born in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Pack up your things (there are not many of them, most likely, if you are poor) and go to hell, wherever your heart tells you. There, perhaps, a new life will begin with a clean slate. Not a fact, of course, but it’s unlikely to be worse - it’s worth the risk. Anything is better than sinking into depression every evening, feeling sorry for yourself, whining and waiting for a miracle.
If at 25, or even by 30, a person has accumulated such baggage, it means that he has done absolutely everything wrong all his life. There, behind, there is nothing worth holding onto, crossing out with a bold cross, tearing out the page, burning it and trying to replay it.
I'm worse than those I look up to
This is the most “fair” fear of all. He talks about our adequate self-criticism: we really may not be at the level of people we consider experts, especially if we have recently started the journey.
To get rid of fear, we need to understand in what ways we are superior to teachers: we know more modern methods, we have experience in another area that can be applied here.
In the end, our positioning in front of the client should correspond to our experience, skills and knowledge - this is always more comfortable.
Why do I have so little? – Do you need to know how much your colleague gets?
Help from a psychologist
Let's start with the fact that in situations like yours, you need to use collective support, because it is very difficult to cope alone. Nowadays, going to a psychologist is the norm. Psychotherapy has made a huge leap in development over the past ten years, and not using it now is a crime. Yes, in Russia many people do not consider psychology a science, and then they wonder why their wives leave them and their children stop communicating in every possible way. And if their prejudices are alien to you, then take the help of a specialist.
Nowadays, there are many psychological support groups that are created for a variety of purposes - from helping to cope with the loss of a loved one to helping with communication difficulties. But if for some reason such support is not available to you, you will have to resort to other methods.
Useful books
If you want to approach the problem thoroughly and study it thoroughly, here is a list of books that will help with this:
- “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living,” Dale Carnegie;
- “Taming Fear”, Vladimir Levi;
- “Happy life without panic attacks and fears”, Pavel Fedorenko;
- “The wisdom of fear. How to understand and overcome your fear?”, Vitaly Pichugin.
Finally, watch this funny cartoon - it will make you look at your fears from a different angle.
Communication with people
One of the easiest ways to implement, but takes a long time to achieve results, is to solve the problem through forced acquaintances with different people. As we said before, experience is all you need. To get it, start communicating with other people through force. For example, try just asking a passer-by the time or directions to some place. Such a small dialogue with a stranger is great for getting you out of your comfort zone, but don’t think it’s that easy.
Firstly, you need to do this constantly, literally setting aside time for “How to get to the library?”, asking five to ten times a day. Secondly, when this does not cause discomfort, you need to move on to more complex options, such as dialogue with a girl or a group of friends. Approaching a girl and talking to her can be a more difficult ordeal than rescuing a baby from a burning house. And plucking up the courage to speak to a person surrounded by his company is quite a feat, so be prepared. And yes, this is not a one-time event. If you really need to learn how to talk to people, you may have months of work ahead of you.
We have several useful articles on this topic:
- 7 mental attitudes that prevent you from communicating
- 9 working ways to develop your communication skills and easily make new acquaintances
- 9 Communication Truths You Should Remember
See a psychotherapist
Try to see a good psychotherapist. Believe me, this is a common practice that helps improve the quality of life: many successful people resort to it. Although, of course, turning to a specialist is another fear that some also need to overcome. But we hope you will succeed if you really need competent and competent therapy.
Some of us may indeed have mental problems that we cannot cope with on our own. In this case, only an expert can help.
- FAQs Online psychotherapy is better than offline: 5 secrets that will help you get the most out of video calling. It may be unusual, but it’s worth a try.
- Author: Dmitry Petrosyants
Try to relax more often
Of course, you shouldn’t overexert yourself and work until you lose your pulse. The human body needs to recharge both mentally and physically.
Therefore, learn to relax when your mind and body ask for it. For this, meditation, massage sessions, computer games, going to the movies and museums, and classic hangouts with friends will be effective.
Just find for yourself those activities that most accurately meet your needs and do not allow yourself to overheat in the fight against fears.
If you are poor
If a person is poor, the first thing he needs to do is rethink his spending. Most likely, it will turn out that almost half of the money literally goes nowhere, is spent on nothing. For example, food: you can easily save on it, and you don’t need to immediately imagine buckwheat on sale. Some shawarma or other fast food costs 150–200 rubles - this is a one-time snack. But for the same money you can cook a whole pan of budget soup, which will not only taste better, but it will also last for a long time. You just need to learn how to cook simple dishes and devote a couple of hours every three to four days to this task.
Other unnecessary expenses, such as cigarettes, booze, and especially loans, need to be rethought in the same way. This may surprise you, but loans are just entertainment for the rich; the poor cannot afford them. Add mobile communications and home Internet to this - often people pay for “options” that they do not use at all. The amounts seem to be small (one hundred here, one and a half here), but in the end everything together adds up to half of your monthly budget. If you give up such things, the standard of living will not decrease at all, and may even increase slightly in some aspects. At the same time, at least some (albeit small) money will be freed up. It's still better than wasting it.
Causes
Without experiencing fear, any person would lose the boundary between comfort and health risks. Therefore, it is not surprising that everyone is afraid. But it is important to think not about this feeling, but about how to make the destructive influence minimal. It is not fear that should take control over you, but you over it. It is this approach that allows you to maintain sanity in any situation.
But let's talk about the reasons. There may be several of them:
- psychological trauma inflicted in childhood;
- loss of a loved one or loved one;
- conflicts at work and in the family, frequent quarrels;
- an unexpected event that is difficult to relate to reality;
- severe and prolonged stress.
In any case, the best way to win is to analyze the original source of the sensation and get rid of it yourself. If nothing comes of this, then sign up for my personal consultation, where I will tell you and tell you what to do.
Start dedicating yourself completely to what you love
Sometimes, in order to overcome fears and apprehensions, you need to be so passionate about the goal that obstacles in the form of mental barriers seem like light bumps on the long road of achievement.
To take this road, you need to find your favorite thing and completely immerse yourself in it. This kind of obsession (in a positive sense) will help you deal with your fears and concerns more easily.
The main thing is to fully believe in what you are doing and at least approximately see the final goal.
Dating girls
After it is not a problem for you to approach the girl and start talking, you need to proceed to the next stage. First, you will have to visit many places where there are crowds of people. Bars, clubs, concerts and other events will help you feel like part of a certain group. And even if you don’t know these people, they will become your company for a short time, which will help you in future communication. And after such events cease to be something strange and unpleasant for you, you can move on to the next point - meeting and developing relationships with girls, and not only with them.
Of course, it’s far from a fact that the girl you meet at such events will become your life partner, but it will be the necessary experience in communication and sex that you need. And after receiving it, you can calmly choose the one for yourself. And of course, proactive girls are the norm, and no one sane would judge your couple if she wanted to meet first
But somehow it seems to us that you asked this with the hope that it would be easier for you to wait until one of the girls pays attention to you, and you will not have to do anything to get a relationship. Although you probably didn’t think so, because it’s unreasonable to hope for such a miracle, since we’re not in a romantic comedy where everyone loves each other just like that.
Read our articles on this topic:
- How to meet a girl when she is in the company of friends
- 6 quick tips for dating online
- How to avoid looking like an idiot when talking to a girl
- 9 misconceptions that prevent you from dating
