Fear is at the root of much of our suffering. Fear prevents us from growing as human beings; it prevents us from actually living our lives to their fullest potential. We need to learn how to deal with our fears and be willing to allow ourselves to take risks—to allow ourselves to be vulnerable so that we can grow and realize our own true potential. Fear can be crippling. It causes inaction. When fear takes a restrictive hold on us, it’s because we’re lost in the story we’ve told ourselves about the fear. Understanding fear is the key to growing with it. In this article, we’ll define fear along the 3 levels of fear. Then, we’ll explore 5 truths about fear to learn how to accept fear and take it along with you on your path. 

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In her landmark book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers writes: 

“We fear beginnings. We fear endings, we fear change, we fear ‘staying stuck’, we fear success, we fear failure, we fear living and we fear dying. You may be surprised and encouraged to learn that while inability to deal with fear may look and feel like a psychological problem, in most cases it isn’t. I believe that it is primarily an educational problem, and that by re-educating the mind, you can accept fear as simply a fact of life rather than a barrier to success.”

Understanding fear

Some years ago, I recall a young girl that I had befriended in recovery who kept relapsing. She was in my apartment doing what her sponsor had told her: listing her fears. Page after page she wrote down all of her fears. I recall saying to her, “I bet if you look closely at all those fears you’re writing down, you’ll find only one underlying cause.” She didn’t know what I meant and kept writing.

The key to learning how to accept fear is understanding it. Let’s examine the 3 levels of fear to help us with this. 

The three levels of fear

The first level is the surface story. This level of fear can be divided into two types: those that ‘happen’ and those that ‘require action’.

Looking at this first level of fear teaches us three important insights about fear. First, the things we fear that ‘just happen’ are almost entirely out of our control. This requires some degree of acceptance. The Stoics taught that we should be intimately aware of the many things that can go wrong. They taught this not to foster anxiety, but to promote mental preparedness. Let’s at least not be caught off guard when things go wrong, because things inevitably will go wrong. 

The second insight is that we fuel fear of things that ‘happen’ by thinking that they are happening to us. A pandemic or natural disaster has absolutely nothing to do with you. To feel that it is somehow happening to you or at you is a mistake the ego leads you to make. When we view hardship from a higher perspective, above the narrow view of our own subjective experience, the fear associated with that hardship is easier to bear. 

The third insight, and one we’ll explore in more depth in this article, is that many fears require action. In this case, the fear is actually a call to action. Fear is an important signal, and it’s often pretty precise in telling us what needs to be done. 

Level 2 fears

Level 2 fears have to do with states of mind rather than external situations. They reflect your sense of self and your ability to handle this world. Also, Level 2 fears are not situation orientated; they involve the ego. If you are afraid of rejection, this fear will permeate all aspects of your life. Rejection is rejection wherever it is found. So you begin to protect yourself and, as a result, greatly limit yourself. You begin to shut down and close out the world around you. 

These fears are formed largely because we have a rigid idea about ourselves and we resist anything that runs counter to it. This manifests itself into fear of judgment and caring too much about what others think of you. The most practical way, albeit a difficult one that requires much reflection and practice, is to recognize that your sense of self is impermanent and, in many ways, not real. Who you are is constantly changing, therefore you need not react in fear to anything that threatens the ego. 

It’s like the Zen story of the man who shouts angrily when a boat collides with his boat on a foggy lake. When he realizes that the other boat is empty, his anger immediately dissipates. This teaches us to empty our own boat. When our boat advances effortlessly, without being captained by an inflated and emotional ego, then others are much less likely to harm us. This way, we have much less to fear.

Level 3 fears

The root of all fear: I can’t handle it. I can’t handle it.

At the root of all fear is simply the fear that you can’t handle whatever life may bring you. We tell ourselves: ‘I can’t handle illness’, ‘I can’t handle making a wrong decision’, ‘I can’t handle rejection’, etc. So, if you knew you could handle anything that came your way, what would you possibly have to fear? Nothing! 

This means that you can handle all your fears without having to control anything in the outside world. You no longer have to control what your partner does, what your children do, or what your boss does. 

Money is a big one for a lot of people. However, ironically, the majority of people who have a lot of it worry incessantly about losing it or not having enough of it. Freedom is not about having enough money. Freedom is knowing that you can do without it; of course, to a reasonable degree. To learn how to accept fear, you have to develop more trust in your ability to handle whatever comes your way.

How to accept fear: Trusting yourself is key

Every time you feel afraid just remind yourself that it is simply because you are not feeling good enough about yourself. It’s often impossible to figure out what the actual causes of negative patterns of self-doubt are, and even if we did know, it doesn’t necessarily change them. If something is troubling you, start from where you are and take the necessary action to change it.

You already know that lack of trust in yourself is preventing you from leading a fulfilling life. Turn this knowledge into a laser-like focus on what needs to be changed. You don’t have to scatter your energy wondering what caused this self-doubt in the first place. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you begin to develop a trust in yourself, until you reach the point where you can say: ‘Whatever happens to me, given any situation, I can handle it.’ Every day, the three most important words you can tell yourself are ‘I’ll handle it.’

The 5 truths about fear

To deepen our understanding of fear, let’s explore the 5 truths about fear. I first discovered the following fear truths in Susan Jeffers’ book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. This is my interpretation of the 5 truths about fear:  

1 – We cannot wait for the fear to go away

Most of us play the waiting game. When my fear of this or that goes away, then I will do this or that. Most of us grow up waiting for the fear to go away before we push through the fear and take the kind of risks necessary for us to grow.

The When/Then game simply doesn’t work. As long as we continue to push out into the world, as long as we continue to stretch our capabilities and take new risks, we will experience fear. ‘That’s a small consolation’, we might say on learning of this first truth. However, look at it this way: You can now save yourself the pain of trying to make the fear go away. This is actually quite liberating, because so much of our energy is spent hoping, wishing, and waiting for our fear to magically leave us. Understanding that the fear is here to stay, at least in the short to medium term, is already half the battle. 

“We can’t forget that all the energy we spend fearing that we’ll make it worse is energy not spent making it better.”

– Ryan Holiday, author of Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave

2 – The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it

Undeniably, it will be difficult, but if we keep advancing despite fear, it gets easier and easier. What’s more, our self-esteem and confidence in ourselves is strengthened immeasurably. Part of the When/Then game I used to play is ‘When I feel better about myself, then I’ll do it,’ and ‘When the fear goes away, then I will do it.’ It’s obvious why this strategy doesn’t work. It certainly didn’t for me. This leads to our third truth about fear. 

3 – The action comes before feeling better about it

Confidence is only born from doing the thing. Therefore, the action comes first. Then, with repetition and familiarity, we can begin to feel less afraid. We act despite our fears and then we begin to have more confidence in our own abilities and our self-esteem is enhanced.

Every time we push through our fears and expand our own comfort zones, we must give ourselves a pat on the back. Conquering our own fears, or at least acting despite our fears is much like motivation. You don’t really get motivated until you actually do something that you find difficult or uncomfortable. Then the motivation will come. A goal without a plan is simply wishful thinking. The same principle applies to fear. The fear subsides only after we actually do something that we are afraid to do. 

This implies the need for acceptance. Mindfulness teacher and Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, has described the notion of inviting our fear to sit with us for a cup of tea. This is striking, because the imagery here is welcoming, friendly, and loving. Knowing that the action must come before feeling less afraid about it means that the fear is coming along for the ride. You might as well have a friendly relationship with your travel companion. 

4 – Not only are we going to experience fear whenever we venture into unfamiliar territory, but so is everyone else

We may think that we are the only ones who experience fear, but we are not. We have the whole world to keep us company. But what about all those ‘successful’ people out there? We tend to think that they are the lucky ones—that they are not afraid. Wrong! They had to push through the fear to get where they are today, and most likely are still doing so.

Those who have successfully dealt with fear all their lives knew, either consciously or unconsciously, that in life we must feel the fear and do it anyway. In the past, unaware of these fear truths, we interpreted fear as a signal to withdraw instead of pushing forward. We played the When/Then game. All we have to do to escape our self-imposed prison is retrain our thinking. Knowing these truths about fear is just the first step. 

To learn how to accept fear, we must first identify exactly where fear manifests itself in our lives. Write them down. Next to each item on your list of fears, write an action item and a date by which you will take the action. Start with small steps that are realistic for you to complete. Then, transfer your list of action items to your calendar and allow yourself to feel empowered that you’re taking positive action to slowly get accustomed to acting despite fear. Your fear is probably telling you not to do something. It wants you to play it safe. Defying this fear is often a clear path towards growth. 

“They say not to take counsel of your fears, but perhaps that’s exactly what we should do. We should listen closely and then do the opposite.”

– Ryan Holiday, author of Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave

5 – Pushing through fear is less frightening than living with the underlying fear that comes from a feeling of helplessness

No matter how ‘secure’ any of us feel in the little cocoon we have built for ourselves, we live with the fear that the day of reckoning will eventually come. The more helpless we feel, the more severe is the undercurrent of dread that comes with knowing there are situations in life over which we have no control. We find ourselves becoming obsessed about possible catastrophes. People who refuse to take risks live with a feeling of dread that is far more severe than what they would feel if they took the risks necessary to make them less helpless, only they don’t know it.

So as we have seen above, we have touched upon a critical insight: if everybody feels fear when approaching something totally new in life, yet so many people are out there ‘doing it’ despite the fear, then we must conclude that fear is not the problem. Obviously, the real issue has nothing to do with the fear itself, but how we hold the fear. This article is not titled ‘how to overcome fear’, because ‘how to accept fear’ is a more realistic approach to moving forward despite fear. For some, the fear is totally irrelevant. For others, it creates a state of paralysis. The former hold their fear from a position of power: choice, energy, and action, while the latter hold it from a position of pain: helplessness, depression, and paralysis. The secret in handling fear is to move yourself from a position of pain to a position of power.