Fear is not Real

What if I go on the stage and forget everything?

What if the same thing happens to me too as it happened with my friend?

What if I m not able to perform in my exams as per expectations?

What if I fail in a given task?

What if my career goals are not met?

What if I fall behind in life?

What if I m not able to deliver?

Are these questions sound familiar? Have you encountered any of these or have seen anyone who is encountering these questions? I m sure, you have. I m also sure you have identified the common factors that grips and holds these questions together is, nothing but FEAR.

For the major part of our lives we are taught many things. Then after attaining a certain age the learning starts happening by our curiosity and excitement to gain knowledge. I m sure you’ll agree to it that more the curiosity and excitement, more the hunger towards knowledge is a common understanding. We are taught small daily activities and religious proceedings also. We are taught about societal norms and various faiths also. We are given the wisdom of good and bad and also the understanding of acceptance and rejection too. We are equipped with all the possible ways and means of survival and existence. But the major factor that leads us to all this learning and the gaining of knowledge is based on one simple feeling. Feeling of fear.

We are taught about beliefs and faiths with the inception of fear in mind, unfortunately. We are trained to be fearful rather than being a seeker of knowledge. Right from our childhood whatever we do fear is always attached to it. We start walking, running; riding a bike, or bicycle, fear of getting injured is sowed into our mind. When we start doing something new, the fear of failing is given to us. The list of such examples is endless and I m sure you either have witnessed it happening to you or around you or could also relate to it. And surprisingly and sadly too, this fear is carried with every activity unknowingly – knowingly throughout our lives. While we are growing up if this fear stays with us then it surely affects and impacts our overall performance, growth, and development too. I have seen many highly potential people failing in their lives just because of this fear. But today I m going to give you a thought which I think can surely change the way of looking at fear. And I m sure that you’ll never look at fear the same way you look at it now.

Let me tell you this, fear is perception, and perception is not real. Hence, fear is not real. Allow me to explain, and by the time I share the details of it, let the 4 words sink in our mind. The same way we allowed fear to sink in. Fear is never a part of our present. The worst thing that we do to our life is we spend it either thinking about the future or thinking about the past. And in reality, both the things are not in our hands. We always relate the experiences of our past to the curiosity of the future and in the process miss the most important part of the present moment. And we all know, life happens in the present. Let’s take the example of riding a bicycle. When we first do it, we fall and the falling is registered as an unpleasant experience in our mind. So next time when we want to ride a bicycle we remember the unpleasant experience and if the experience is stronger than the curiosity of learning, past wins and we never ride the bicycle. The same happens when we relate the future and anticipate the possible outcome, we feel fear. In an ideal situation when we learn anything new we should feel excited but unfortunately the way we are conditioned with the surrounding we get engulfed in fear and that result in failures. Many people get so much involved in anticipated results that they don’t even give it a try and the unsure and probable failure becomes permanent. Do you know the fun part of fear? It doesn’t exist at all. ;-)

We do all the activities in the present and fear has no existence in the present. As mentioned earlier, it either survives on our past or future. But in present fear has no existence at all. And as mentioned earlier, fear is perceived too. We see somebody failing at something and we think that this may happen to me also and we stop giving it an attempt. A common example of it is stage fear. I have seen many students don’t even attempt to go on stage and deliver 1 min talk even about them just because they have seen their friends failing miserably at it.

Fear is perceived as mentioned earlier but at the same time let me tell you this also that everybody feels fear at some point or other in their life. It’s only a matter of acceptance of the situation and allowing our present to be more powerful than our past and ensuring that the future is even more powerful. Even I have faced situations where I had a choice to be a failure as a person or to overpower my fear and come out as the victor. I chose later. Today, I deliver speeches across the country on the various topics of self-development and ensuring that people are accepting them as winners and rejecting fear from their life. I came across a beautiful quote that says; “not making a decision is also a decision”. We need to decide how we want to be; a person who got defeated by nonexistent fear or a person who defeated all odds and came out as winners. If we stick to be a person engulfed in fear then we have made a decision of staying the same. If we decide to overpower our fear then also we have taken the decision of choosing to be a different person altogether.

Keep Learning, Keep Growing.

(Note- This article is from my upcoming book.)