Is fear stopping you?

Jon Neal writes a monthly article for Bury Free Press, here’s one exploring fear

Nothing to Fear Day

Do you know there’s an international Nothing to Fear Day?…no, me neither. It seems there’s a day/week/month for everything now. But it gives me a reason to write some words about the nature of fear, how it’s useful, and how it can become a barrier to good mental health.

The day was so named because on that date in May 1941, President Roosevelt said “we have nothing to fear but fear itself”. I think what he was getting at was that, while fear is a useful natural thing to feel to keep us safe, sometimes it can get in the way of things that are not really a danger to us.

We fear the unknown – in our language at Suffolk Mind, we fear things that are a challenge to our needs for security and control.

A story to overcome fear with knowledge

We tell a story of a solitary lion who sees his reflection in the water and, because he has never seen another lion before, runs away scared. A butterfly lands on his shoulder and tells him it’s his reflection – gives him information, which he learns from, enabling him to overcome his fear and have a drink of water.

Fear can push us out of our comfort zone

Fear helps us learn. When we are learning anything we need a balance between fear and positive expectations to guide us. 

For example, if we are learning to ride a bike, we need to see the potential rewards – being able to do what the older kids can do and have more independence – as well as the fear of falling off and scuffing our knees.

These motivate us to keep our balance and correct our movements so that we can learn how to ride the bike and get the rewards.

This is also how we learn resilience – we get over falling off so we can get to the reward of riding a bike without stabilisers.

Adults feel fear too

We can be afraid at work as well. New situations, like making a presentation we haven’t made before, meeting a new client, pitching an idea…anything that’s unknown.

The important things to keep in mind, as business leaders or managers, are firstly, there needs to be a purpose to overcoming the fear, and secondly too much fear will overwhelm our ability to expect a better outcome and to learn.

For us as individuals, it’s good to practice overcoming fears. If you’re afraid of public speaking, call a radio phone-in on a subject you care about to practice. You can just call as “Fred from Bury” and don’t need to say which organisation you represent…taking away the potential repercussions you might be afraid of.

Or pop along to Clip N Climb for the first time and see how you get on with the more difficult climbing walls. The great thing about this is you can do it with your family too. Kids are not born with a fear of heights – they either learn it or have an experience that causes it. So, they’ll soon encourage you up a climbing wall.

Whatever you’re afraid of, pick something smaller, but related, to overcome first and that’s one step towards getting over those bigger fears.