Fear is your hands in your pockets and your head looking at the ground.

Fear is the blinds you cover your windows with.

Fear is the friends you put between yourself and others.

Fear is the glass prison holding everything you want to say but cant.

Fear is what stops you from living the life you want to live.

Fear not only hides you from others but also hides you from yourself. Fear is the ultimate obstacle to discovering who you are and what you are all about. Really it is the obstacle that stops you from achieving the constant happiness that is possible when you come to embrace yourself.

Fear Stops You from Expanding Yourself

At any moment we have a certain set of things that we are capable of doing. The only restriction on what you are capable of doing is fear.

It is like the ball and chain strapped to your ankle only allowing you to move a certain amount.

Someone free of fear is essentially free to fly wherever and however they want. Imagine you had no fear, imagine all the things you would do. Does it feel like you can fly through life?

To change your life you have to take into account your fears. Without recognising your fears you will keep running into the glass walls of your prison.

Know what Fear Feels Like

Fear is most recognisable in how it effects your body, emotions and thoughts.

When fear is present your body feels like it wants to close up. Your posture deteriorates and your voice trembles as you want to hide away. Your heart (emotions) quivers in your chest and your mind either races or freezes. Watch yourself next time you start to get afraid and take note of what happens to your body, emotions and thoughts. It is important to develop the ability to recognise fear occurring.

So let me show you some examples of fear.

Fear of Mistakes

• ‘What if I muck up?’
• ‘I’m not a professional, I shouldn’t try’
• ‘I haven’t practiced enough to do it yet’
• ‘What if I’m just wasting my time choosing to work on this’
• ‘I’m not talented’

A definition of mistake is:

1. An error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness.
2. A misconception or misunderstanding.

A mistake is not a negative thing, it is simply an indication of areas in which you can increase your ability.

No one has perfect knowledge or ability, masters of any quality will be the first to admit this. The only way to increase your knowledge and ability is to first find the areas in which you are deficient and work on them. This is the exact purpose that mistakes serve.

Remember this whenever you are afraid of making a mistake.

Fear of Embarrassment

• ‘I feel ashamed’
• ‘I don’t want them to know’
• ‘I have to hide them so people won’t see them’

Being embarrassed and consequently hiding is caused by not accepting yourself for everything you are and want to be.

Everything you have done in the past (including the mistakes you have made) are just actions that are used to propel you along the path of life. Every action is simply a step you use to either grow as a person or shrink (if you let fear come about from it).

You are you and everything you have done is done. These are facts and it is unnecessary to deny them. Accept that they exist and that there is nothing wrong with that. Then move on not worrying about your past. It can only haunt the old fearful you. Not the new one that has grown beyond it.

Fear of Failure

• ‘It is unacceptable to fail’
• ‘I always succeed, I can’t take a risk’
• ‘It could be a scar on my great trail’

Failing at something is like making a mistake. If you fail then you have failed, no big deal. What is important is to learn and grow from it. It’s all the failures along the way that build up to make the big success.

If you never attempt something because you are afraid to fail then you can look at it two ways. One is that you will never succeed at that, two is that you have failed by default because you wouldn’t even attempt to go for what you wanted.

Failure is a part of life and there is no avoiding it. You will fail at something somewhere along the way and that is all right. Just because you failed this time doesn’t mean you will fail next time. In fact the more times you have failed at something the likelihood of the next attempt succeeding is greater because you can learn from your failures.

So don’t let the prospect of failures stop you from succeeding.

Fear of Disappointing Others

• ‘That’s not how my friends think I am’
• ‘My parents wouldn’t want me doing that’
• ‘If I did that they wouldn’t think I was very cool’
• ‘That’s not what they would do’
• ‘They would think I don’t match up with the groups standards’

In our mind we have a massive list of standards that define how we should act and what we should do. If we fail on a standard we feel we have let others down. This is because these aren’t your own standards.

They way we think other people think we should act is generally not what the other people actually think. But that doesn’t matter because you shouldn’t base what you do on what others might think. Often we don’t do what we think is right because we think others might disagree. We are paralysed by what others might think.

No matter what you do you will disappoint someone, simply because humans are very bad at being objective. Being disappointed is their problem not yours.

Real friends and parents want you to be yourself.

How to Eliminate Fear

This article is about realising how big a role fear plays in the life of a human and consequently understanding that you have to face fear.

The practical useful advice you want about overcoming fear I will write about it in the future.