4 Steps To Overcoming Irrational Fear

If your desire is to be emotional healthy, happy and fulfilled, you will need to face your fears – looking at it right in the face courageously and choose to get on with your life in spite of it. I’ve got a few effective tips for you here to help you do just that.

Fear is known to be one of the deadly menaces underneath every emotional disorders. Also, it is the number one enemy of self-expression and success. It paralyses self-confidence, beclouds our hope for the future and shatters our ability to enjoy life to the full and maximise our potential.

Those who overcame their adversities, emotional disorders, failures, weaknesses and other unpleasant life circumstances did so because they felt the fear, but still confronted it anyway. Here are two principles you should bear in mind about fear:

* First, your fear is only as strong to the degree to which you focus on it. Focus is a magnifier. Whatever you continue to focus on will also continue to get bigger.
 * Second, your fear is whatever your mind thinks it is. In order words, if you think your fear can not be conquered, then it remains unconquerable. If you feel it’s going to control your life until you die, then it’s going to do exactly that.

Whether it is fear of “something bad is going to happen” or fear of contracting a disease, or of dying, or of socialising, or that of flying, or that of public speaking, regardless of the nature of your fear, what you think about it and how you see your fear plays a vital role concerning whether or not you will walk free from it. Man designs his experiences and destination by his way of thinking and imagining…

Now, are you ready to look your fear in the face and salvage your precious future from its tyranny? If yes, try these simple but powerful 4 tips to overcoming fear: They come from the acronym of the word “FEAR” itself:

F — flip, E — envision, A —- advance and R —- relax.

Now let’s check them out briefly individually:

1. Flip: The first thing you should do is to flip your fearful thought upside down – and turn it to positive. Why? Because, up until now, your thought pattern about your fear has been negative and dis-empowering and therefore feeding and fueling your fear even the more. But now you need to regain control in the arena of the mind and start flipping those negative thinking about your fear into positive. For example, if you start to think and panic about contracting an incurable disease, change that thought to positive and say something like this “I am perfectly healthy and refuse to be enslaved by irrational fear – I stay calm and in control and never allow irrational fear to cripple me.” Mental defiance towards your fear is the the first step to overcoming it.
2. Envision: The second step is to get your imagination involved. You see, your fear is currently having the upper hand because of two things: How you see yourself in your imagination ( your self image), and what you see coming towards you in life (your self-expectations). Now it’s time you changed these two mental images, otherwise , your fear will continue to cripple you. How do you do this? Close your eyes right now, and visualise yourself as fearless, courageous and secure. Also visualise that everything that life is bringing towards you from now on is positive. In other words, you see yourself  as fear-free and with positive expectations about your life and future. Your job is now to replace the old fear mental pictures of yourself with these new positive ones. You do this by always choosing to visualise the new positives, instead of the old negatives. If you do this long enough, you will acquire a new empowering paradigm for courage, confidence and self-expression.
3. Advance: The third step is probably what you’ve heard many times over – “Face your fear.” and I am still recommending to you – because it works really well. If you dare to advance courageously towards the direction of your fear, and your fear will give way. What does that mean? It means that instead of avoiding your fear, you move towards it with courage. And since your fear itself is very fearful of confrontation, it has no choice but to eventually flee. It’s simply been thriving on your inability to confront it in the first place. So, think about all the ways you’ve been avoiding your fears and decide to start doing something to advance towards them. Do it slowly and one step at a time, while you maintain your “flipping” of the negative thoughts and your “envisioning” of your new positive mental pictures. The eventual results will wow you.
4. Relax: This is the last step and should also be a continuous one – because of its importance. If you’ve had your irrational fear for a long time, chances are you now have some kind of anxiety-related issues. And for that reason, it is important that you start engaging in constant relaxation exercises in order to diffuse the ingrained tensions and lower your level of stress and anxiety.

I recommend that you take a few minutes every day to relax your entire muscles while in a comfortable position. Just visualise all your muscles relaxing and tension flushing out while you are breathing in and out slowly and deeply. Start from your head region and walk your way down to your toes. And when you are really in a state of perfect relaxation, start again to visualise yourself as fearless, courageous and bold towards your objects of fear. Basically, strengthen and establish your new positive mental pictures in your subconscious mind while in the middle of relaxation. This is powerful. And if done well and regularly, It’ll begin to transform your whole life experience positively. Irrational fear will finally loose its grip on you.

Hope this is helpful to you…
Best regards,
Wale
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