How Do You Know If Fear Dominates Your Life?
Fear is a natural sensation that alerts us to the presence of danger or appears when we are faced with the unknown. The problem is that many times that natural sensation overflows and takes over our life. This can make you insecure. It practically nullifies and paralyzes you.
The ideal is to learn to recognize the validity of fears and prevent fear from dominating your life. None are safe from its destructive power, but it is possible to detect it and lessen the negative impact of its presence. It must be done in time before it is too late.
A society like ours forces us to be in competition all the time. The ideal of success is always in front of us and we have to reach it or else we will be failures and we will not be part of the glorious group of people who go where they want.
In those circumstances, the fear of failure does not allow you to take a single step. It blocks you to the point of not even encouraging you to try. And when you hear phrases like “success is for those who take risks”, you suffer a lot because fear conditions your life and prevents you from taking risks. And in those moments you forget that we all have the capacities to fulfill our goals.
Not being recognized: a fear that dominates your life
You try to do things to gain recognition and to be taken into account. And the fear of rejection is what makes you regress again and again until your self-esteem is at the lowest level. Social approval is like a ghost that haunts you, a nightmare that visits you night after night.
It’s like nothing is working in your favor. You convince yourself that you were not born with a lucky star and that you seem destined to suffer until you die. You feel that others point their fingers at you, question you, criticize you and even walk away. As much as you want, you can’t build relationships of true trust either. You do not realize that it is you who drives others away.
On social media, you compare yourself. You don’t understand how they can be happy and you can’t. They look smiling in the photos, you read their statements in which they talk about their countless triumphs, their conquests, how wonderful their life is. You never wonder if everything you see is real.
Comparing ourselves to others makes us not focus on our own challenges. As human beings we all have the same possibilities and although each one of us is a particular universe, we live in community and the ideal would be to accept ourselves as we are.
Fear of leaving our comfort zone
The comfort zone is a state of mind that prevents us from seeing beyond. It means that we get so used to what we do and have, that we are afraid of losing what we have achieved. Change is not seen as an opportunity; on the contrary, for someone invaded by fear, it is equivalent to leaving a state of well-being. But, in the long run, it is that supposed well-being that limits us.
You may not be happy with your job, but you hear unemployment rising and you can’t afford to be adrift. Even if it is not well paid, as you wish, you feel exploited and, furthermore, with no possibility of progress, at least it gives you the illusion of stability. You don’t even realize that you see it that way because fear dominates your life.
The decision making that you know is necessary is postponed indefinitely and you dedicate yourself to your routine for fear of uncertainty. You deny yourself the possibility of a change that will surely benefit you, just because you are terrified of stepping out of your comfort zone. And you deny yourself, in addition, the opportunity to improve. Absolute resistance to change is a sign that fear is dominating your life.
We have been told that dreaming is an act reserved for idealists. Many proclaim that giving up hopes and dreams is an act of maturity. In reality, that philosophy of conformity is promoted only by people who fear error or failure. They do not realize that perhaps one of the greatest failures may be that of not trying to live better, just out of fear.
