What Would You Do if You Were Brave?

By Amy Barr the Mostly Fearless

I am not afraid of too many things except squash bugs. There are probably several reasons why this is the case which I’ll discuss below. Some might say I’m lucky. Luck doesn’t have much to do with whether a person is typically fearful or not. Why not?

Being fearful (full of fear) is a choice. I’m not talking about the mundane sorts of worry that hit suddenly when one might have left a garden hose running or that zing of concern about missing a deadline. An all-consuming anxiety -- being full of fear -- means you’ve allowed your imagination to go on overdrive and then you have believed your own overactive imagination. Think of that! Few of us would have much faith in fortune tellers but many of us wholeheartedly believe our own imagined/fictional future without question.

Fear Farming

We aren’t always to blame for our ever-present dread. Two minutes watching or reading the “news” will have us intentionally tied in knots. If you are a student, you might have others help you feel fearful if you don’t take this class, earn that credit, or go to that college. If you are a parent, you might remain ever fearful about what your child might do or be, or not do (or be). All of us are supplied loads of fear fodder because humans respond to fear. We all do stuff, buy stuff, and think stuff we wouldn’t do, buy, or think if we weren’t so afraid. One of the reasons I am not afraid of too many things is that I turned off fear-farmers on T.V., newspapers, and social media. 

Aristotle once said, “Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”  What if we all could learn to fear no evil?

Fear Framing

One of the reasons I am not afraid of too many things is that my usual response to feeling fearful is research followed by problem solving. In the whole fight or flight scheme, I fight by looking at what I fear right in the eyes. I frame my fear. Framing means “inventing or contriving an idea or explanation and formulating it mentally.” If I become fearful about health, money, the future, or really anything, I start to read everything I can on the subject. I look for explanations. I formulate a plan of action. By framing my fears, I also shrink them to a more manageable size. I build a plan of attack to solve the problem. Others frame their fears by talking them over with sensible, calm, and wise people. What if we could all learn to enlist strong help as we go through dark valleys?  

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” —Rosa Parks

Fear Focus

Fear makes us fight or flee. In our fear we often blame others for things they didn’t do. As a teacher I have fearful students who will blame me because they missed an assignment or did poorly. Sometimes they’ll flee (“I don’t want to take this class anyway”). Fearful people might be enticed to fight the perceived enemy or do even stranger things rather than frame a resolution or think logically to resolve and dissolve their fears. Yoda wasn’t wrong when he said, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Even wiser was the philosopher emperor, Marcus Aurelius who said, “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Seneca said, “Where fear is, happiness is not.” Refocus your fear. Look where it is leading you and choose a better path.