Fear and Introversion: Making your fears work for you
You will always be scared of something. That doesn't mean it has to cripple you
What is the biggest fear you have ever faced? Mine is the fear of regret. I’ve never really made a decision that I have regretted, and that is probably why I so scared about it happening. But if there’s one thing I know about fear, it’s that the universe always has a way of processing our deepest fears and bringing them up eventually to confront us. That’s why to begin with, you need to know what that fear is.
The feeling of fear is a very strong unpleasant emotion triggered by anxiety or the awareness of danger. Introverts are known to work more with mental stimulation, so we love to do our best work indoors and when alone, we think and make our decisions ourselves before seeking external validation. Most times, we prefer to make our decisions alone and in the process, face an enormous thinking block because our thoughts and fears may cripple us. We just generally love to be alone with our minds. But the thing is, that’s usually the first place where anxiety develops, and that sometimes leads to fear.
Just think about the last thing you were scared of. Was it an actual occurrence or just a scenario you thought up in your head? I’ll bet it’s the second. In a study by Huffpost, it was recorded that 85% of the participants were scared of things that never even occurred, and in my opinion, probably had a very low chance of occurrence. So many studies out there show similar results, some also stating the low likeliness of these fears to occur. This means that most of the time, we tend to get worried over nothing!
Well, enough about how scared we get and how unlikely our fears are to happen. The real issue is, how do we fix this? Here is my short and simple 6-step action plan to working on your fears and eliminating them.
1. Acknowledge your fears.
You can’t stand face to face with something that you don’t know. You need to be honest about what your fears are. It’s a not a sign of weakness, believe me. Knowing your fears absolutely will do one of these things: it will either make you more aware and afraid of them, or it will put you on the journey towards overcoming them. Our objective is the second.
2. Write them down.
If you’re more introverted than extroverted, you will agree that your mind has a way of exaggerating every single thought. Always remember this:
Your mind has a way of making things look much bigger than they truly are.
This is because there are no limits to where our imaginations can take us. The same way our dreams can be so big in our head, that’s how our fears can be as well. Take out a pen and paper and outline all the things you are afraid of, with as much detail as you can. You will realize that your fears are not as big as you used to imagine. You will also realize that some of your fears are even irrational, just by writing them down. Rational or not, the essence of the exercise is just to get all your fears out of your head and on to paper. Make sure you put down all of them and keep none back, no matter how small.
3. Write out possible solutions for the ones you can.
For all your fears, there are always two broad solutions. You can either do something about them, or you can’t. So when you are scared about global warming, you know that all you can do is to recycle and use environmental friendly products, but you alone can’t stop global warming from happening altogether. However, if you are scared that you will be broke when you are 40, then that is a fear that you can do something about. You can read about ways to increase your income and savings, and then work towards achieving it through practical and concrete actions.
And yes I know, conquering fears is not as easy as it sounds. For fears that seem so far beyond you, learn to break them down into bite-sized actions. You can’t have 5000 YouTube subscribers overnight. And your fear might be that you will never gather the traffic you want for your YouTube page, or that your content won’t be interesting enough to get subscribers. Still, you can never change this if you don’t act.
And you don’t have to do the whole world all in one day.
Take actions one day at a time. Practical, consistent, effective actions.
4. Remember to remain positive for better results.
It’s important that when you are taking action to alleviate your fear of something, you should never focus on the fear. Focus on what you love about the action you need to take. This is why people who work at jobs that they genuinely dislike are hardly ever as productive as those who do the jobs that they enjoy. When you embark on a project because of fear of failure, it’s going to be more daunting and you are less likely to get the best possible results. But focus on the positive aspects and you will thrive. Don’t open a savings account because you are scared everyday of getting broke. Open one because of the future benefits it could give you and all the objectives that that money can help you accomplish.
5. Create resolve for the fears you can’t fix
Like I said earlier, some fears cannot be concretely acted on. But thinking about them too often is not good for your mental health either, so you have to let them go. Be at ease with the fact that life is uncertain sometimes, and there are some situations that you can never know the outcome until the time comes. Focus on what you can do now to alleviate those fears that have practical solutions.
Personally, to accomplish this, I have imbibed the habit of meditation. Even if it’s just once a week, it helps to get a lot off your mind and makes you feel more at ease. My meditation helps me be at peace with myself and my fears. I tell myself its ok to have fears, as long as they don’t get me worked up and I have concrete plans to make sure that my fears don’t come to pass. And even if they do, I can be calm enough to start again with an open mind and with no regrets.
6. Create fear projects, and implement them.
Fear projects are unique accomplishments that you can create to directly tackle a fear that you have. And they are unique to every single individual. There will always be a fear project for any kind of fear you have, no matter how big or small. Since last year, I always thought of opening a YouTube channel. But I was afraid that I didn’t have the look for that direct face-to-camera appearance (I always thought my head was slightly bigger than it ought to be). To tackle this, I decided that I would leave the big fear aside and start with a small fear project. I decided to post one picture of my face only on my Instagram page as often as I could, and see how it would be.
And nothing bad happened.
So far, I have had the confidence to record 3 full videos, all direct to camera, and I look forward to doing more. For someone who is scared of listening to her own voice and seeing her face on camera, this is a huge achievement for me. And just because I was able to go through with my fear project, I have been able to get closer to my goal of being a successful online content creator.
Your head may be bustling with fears, I know. But reading this article will be of no use if you don’t follow the steps and break down your fears into smaller problems that you can take action on. And I hope you take that action immediately.
Thanks for reading!
