Wanna know five ways to tear through the Fear Wall?

photo credit: anguila40 / Alejandro Groenewold Very busy . Sorry

Five Ways to Get Through the Fear Wall

So, here is what I don’t get.  You know when you see a group of those little birds, sparrows or whatever, flying in some sort of formation and all of a sudden, they all turn at the same time and then they are flowing in a totally different direction?  How do they do that?

Oh, well, that’s not what this is about today.  I was just curious.

Here is the real question.  How do bird’s start flying?  I don’t think they just all of a sudden know how. Do they?  My guess is that they learn like I learned to swim.   Someone dares them in some way – in their case probably the mother shoving them out of the nest, in mine a kid named Penman laughing at me because I couldn’t – and the wings (or arms) start flapping.  That’s fear flailing those arms in the water.  In a good way.

An overload of adrenalin escalates you to a point just short of panic.  And as they flap, you and the bird both learn you can do it and it feels great.

That’s your brain giving you a nice shot of dopamine.  Brains like dopamine; it’s the original feel good drug.  Great thing is we all have an abundance of it ready to be made and shot from the end of a neuron.

When we are kids, often fear spurs us on to do something we aren’t so sure we can do.  It seems that as we get older we learn to interpret fear differently, like something to avoid.

It doesn’t happen to everyone. But mostly.

For example, even the most avowed “adrenalin junkie,” if asked about public speaking, may begin to shiver in the proverbial boots.

Fear and flow are very close together, according to Stephen Kotler of Psychology Today Blogs and elite athletes seem to know how to get to that feeling of flow.

“Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. [This sounds like Satori] Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi

Time flies. And stands still at the same time.

What about us average schmoes?  As I see it, when succumb to fear, it may just be a misinterpretation.

Flow in overdose proportions.

What are we afraid of?  An old mentor of mine described it like this – it isn’t so much that we are afraid of failing; what we fear is that we might fail and we won’t be able to handle it.

Since fear is one of the factors that prevents people from reaching their absolute best and becoming iconoclasts in the process, I wanted to throw out a couple of ideas for overcoming it.

1. Scare Yourself — Of course, the worst thing you can do with fear is to let fear win.  The truth is there is nothing in fear to fear most of the time. In and of itself, it isn’t going to harm you.  It is pretty rare that anyone is actually scared to death. If they did, they’d probably quit making scary movies.

2. Embrace Fear — Don’t try so hard to avoid fear.  Embrace it. According to Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap, fear is one of the myriad palette of life that brings color to life, and avoiding it only makes it stronger.

3. Smaller Bites – Take smaller bites of the apple to begin with.  Leo Babauta, author of The Power of Less, you are able to attain more focus (part of flow) by taking single steps, and breaking challenges into smaller parts. Great book, by the way.

4. Practice.  I know this sounds simple, but practicing what you are afraid of, even in a small way, begins to rewire your brain.  That’s what neuroplasticity is all about. Doing what you are afraid to do actually changes your brain.

5. Red Light on the Dash Board — Fear, anger, and other strong emotions can be taken as simply information, like a red light on a dashboard.  It doesn’t hurt to look under the hood, but those red lights can mean different things.  If you look out of your shell, and don’t see a saber-toothed tiger anywhere, you may want to take your fear with you and go on and do what you were going to do in the first place.

Trust yourself; like those birds, you will know when to turn.

What would you add?  How have you learned to step up and make fear itself the biggest loser?