Stamping Out Your Personal Fears In A Fearful World

Fear is something very personal; we all have our own fears, and that is normal.up to the point where they begin to create hindrances in our lives. But whether they hinder our lives or not, fears are not fun, and they are frankly a pain in the neck. So overcoming fears has become a priority for many people who want to take charge of their lives.

What is a fear? It is an irrational belief about an object, event, or circumstance, that gives us a negative, upsetting, unsettling, and frequently disturbing feeling. Depending on the extremity of the fear, they can be quite disabling, and prevent you from leading the productive, healthy, and rewarding life that you deserve.

Fears can take many forms, including:

•  Places

•  Animals and insects

•  Objects

•  People

•  Events

•  Atmosphere

•  Harm to family members

•  Disaster

•  Embarrassment

•  Results of risk taking

•  Public speaking

•  Self-opinion

•  The unknown

•  Authority figures

To be able to overcome your fears, there are many things that you can do in order to overcome your fears, no matter what they are. These include:

•  Refuting your irrational beliefs

•  Affirming yourself

•  "letting go" of your fears

•  Identifying your fear, defining it, labeling it, visualizing it, and eliminating it as though it were an object that you could simply toss in the trash

•  Making an honest assessment and judgment of your fear, and creating a systematic strategy by which it can be defeated

•  Learning how to relax both physically and mentally, through different methods, such as massage, bubble bath, music, and other very effective methods

•  Becoming confident in your ability to overcome your fears

•  Try to gradually desensitize yourself to the fear.

•  Let go of insecurities and learn to trust yourself and others

•  Be persistent in your efforts

•  Stop obsessing about the feared object or circumstance

•  Put your fear into realistic perspective, so that it does not receive any more attention than it should

•  Accept the fact that you are human, and you are imperfect, and that is just fine.

•  Maintain the motivation to grow and change

These techniques will help you to recognize your fear and put it into perspective so that you can regain control over your life, and live the way you should be living.

By Julie Campbell

JBC Online E-Publishing