How to deal with fear and anxiety
First of all, if we speak about anxiety and fear, we must know – what are these? And it is quite simple: it is a product of our mind. Our mind, that keeps thinking, and talking, and making noise.
We need to understand, that our mind is whether bad nor good. It is just doing its job. And it’s job is to look for past events and project them, based on what is currently happening, into the future. Why does it do that? To protect us from future pain, from going through the same experiences again.
Unfortunately, when doing this, the mind works quite simple: it always creates the worst-case scenario, as maybe, in the ancient times of dinosaurs and saber-toothed tigers, this was what was relevant for survival. The problem is: in nowadays environment, the real-life danger is rarely happening. But the mind seems to not know that and keeps doing its job. If I lose my job… If I lose my partner… If I cannot lose weight… what if… and this goes on, and on, and on. And us? We do not even realize, that it is constantly keeping us in fear and negativity, mostly about things that are highly unlikely and will eventually never happen.
So what to do about it?
First of all, we should understand that we are not our minds. What often happens is that we are so identified with the chibber chabber going on in our mind, that we start to think that this is us. But it’s not. It is our mind, that is thinking, and even though we are not aware of it in every moment, we can even choose our thoughts.
So if we experience fear, this is most likely because we identify with our thoughts. As long as we experience our thoughts as being us, we identify with our mind and the mind has the power. As soon as we realize that our mind is not us, we start to detach from it and get aware, that it is not us, that is unhappy, but our mind has an unhappy thought.
So first of all, we should realize, that we are not our thoughts, but we think thoughts. Because only by the realization, that we do not need to identify with our thoughts, we start to have a choice: I am happy and sometimes, my thoughts are not. And then, I can go even further and say: I can continue to be happy, and accept, that my thoughts sometimes are not, without being unhappy about this. And from there on, promised, you will be having a way happier life…
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