Have no fear, have a beer

Fear hurts more than swords

Fear stops us from trying to do different and new things to succeed. Of course, when you risk, you are more exposed to fail... but you are closer to get your goal. We can feel fear without having panic, but can be enough not to do what we excited us. How difficult it is to be excited and how easy to be dissapointed; but the alternative to be excited is boredom (I would rather be dissapointed than being the fifth sofa leg). It is extremely hard to die when you are in a coach watching TV and eating some snacks... but is really boring...

Fear is the limit between what we are and what we can be, the main reason why we don't fulfill our desires.

"Borders are not geographic, but mental; so open your mind and don't think about what we are, but what we can be with our ambitions. Instead of borders, think of new horizons."
José María Álvarez Pallete, President of Telefónica

" The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."

Fear could be defined as a standardized biological reaction, an anxious feeling caused by our anticipation of some imagined event or experience, a nature's way of stopping us from doing things that may hurt us, such as trying to fight someone bigger than us. There are two types of fear, deluded or unhealthy and non-deluded or healthy. These can also be divided into fear of the inevitable and fear of the evitable. The key is to check which type of fear we have, to transform our unhealthy fears into healthy, turning fear into motivation to succeed, to develop refuge and to overcome what is really dangerous and what seems inevitable (sickness, old age and death).

Fear is an emotion that protects us from the threats in our surroundings, and which has evolved to become more complex; we cannot control whether things will go, but we can learn to control our own minds, our responses and our own conduct.

So, wich are the most common fears?

Losing freedom

Most of the time people tend to control the situation to know what is waiting for us, because if we don’t know it, we are not in control. We tend to avoid what we can't understand just because we don't know what is coming next. This fear has been with us for thousands of years, and it is a great part of what has helped us survive as a species. However, this often stops our progress and makes it harder for us to discover and understand new things.

Physical pain can be described as an unpleasant sensation, generally caused by damage to a certain part of the body wich intensity is a subjective feeling, sensed differently by each individual, so it is quite hard to make generalizations of what causes people pain. We used to associate physical pain with illness and bad health, and it can be linked with the fear of losing your freedom, such as in the case of people that suffer from chronic pain. It is not a good sensation, so we tend to keep it away. It is one of the key elements in survival instinct, when our brain suggests us not to do something in order to avoid the pain.

Disappointment

There are two different fears: disappointing others and disappointing yourself. Sometimes disappointing others can hurt more than any other punishment, specially when is unexpected, when you hear the sentence: “I am disappointed in you”. This fear is part of the reason we avoid the unknown, it is that feeling of dissatisfaction when our expectations do not match what actually happened. Disappointment is a negative feeling that sometimes is followed by regret, in which a person wonders if their choices contributed to the outcome. “What if...?".

Misery

Loneliness

The fear of being alone is that dreadful feeling of emptiness caused by the absence of interaction with another human being. It has also evolved from one of our early survival instincts: we fear loneliness because it is more likely that we would survive if we live in group. It is related to doing something and no one noticing.

Rejection

This social fear is one of the main reasons people act the way they do. We tend to follow the actions of others, because it helps us avoid dealing with rejection from the society. We fear rejection because most of us can only justify our existence through the acceptance of others. There are people who argue that acceptance from society is a mere illusion, and that there is no such thing as “normal” behavior from an individual within a society.

Death

We tend to avoid the thought of death as a near future occurrence in our lives. It is tightly tied to the fear of the unknown; we don’t know for sure what will happen to us. In fact, we are so interested in death that we have developed cultures and religious beliefs that have tried to give an explanation since the beginning of time. Extinction —the fear of ceasing to exist - it is another way to express it. The idea of no longer being arouses a primary existential anxiety in all normal humans. 

Failure

This fear could be really dangerous in the way it rules over all our actions and decisions. We all do, and don’t do, things in order to avoid failure. Failure can be a lot of things; realizing you don’t live your life the way you wanted to, not succeeding in your plans, finding yourself helpless, or in the worst cases even commit suicide.

It is a very ambiguous and subjective term because failure is not on the same level and perspective to everyone. Failure is actually a way to learn lessons and try again, so it is not really an end, but a tool for future reference. The main fear of failing comes with the disappointment that follows, that feeling that despite your effort, nothing seemed to go as you wished it did, and it causes a feeling such that you might not even want to try again. That is why this is the worst fear of all, the fear or failure is very often used as an excuse to procrastinate, or not do anything to make situations better.

The difference between fear and phobia

Fear is an emotion. It is generally induced when the subject perceives a threat. Phobia is the Greek word for ‘fear’ and can be defined as the “excessive or unreasonable fear of an object, place or situation. The main difference lies in the intensity and severity of the emotions experienced in fear and phobia. In short: Phobia is the heightened form of fear. The Phobic person often tries to fight his phobia leading to greater form of anxiety and also experiences extreme fatigue in the process.

Comfort killed the cat

Routine is not only safety, but is also boring.

Get out of your comfort zone! Do something different to learn new ways of having fun and succeed. Break the mold is a requirement to be disruptive and innovative. Curiosity killed the cat? I disagree, comfort is the reason of its death. It is shown that sedentarism causes more and more premature deaths every year. Everyone feels safety being a "coach potato"... but safety is equivalent to boredom. Why do most of us prefer lazy plans than moving our body? When did humainity stop using their brains to make the world a better place to leave in? Technology makes us lazier? It is surprisingly paradoxical: the more opportunities we get to improve, the less we try to do it.

So, wich one is you fear? Is that fear the reason why you don't fulfill your desires or procrastinate? Think about it, it could be helpfull for you and people around you. If you feel fear, remember: "have no fear, have a beer".