How to Deal with Your Fears and come out Stronger!

We all have things we fear in life. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of success, fear of death etc. But how do you actually deal with your fears? and more importantly, how can you come out the other side STRONGER?

Personally, I’ve had quite a journey when it comes to my fears. The two biggest fears I’ve resolved have been the ‘fear of saying no’, and the ‘fear of being myself’. In this post, I have summarized the few tips that have helped manage a lot of my fears, including the two above!

I want to give you a guide that can possibly help you get over your fears. I’m talking about the big existential type fears here, not the I’m afraid of spiders fears. I still have that.

There are a few things you need to do to get YOUR POWER BACK.

Remember fear is just your brain signalling to you that you’re afraid, so there’s a logical reason behind it and that’s what you need to figure out.

When you have logic or an understanding of why you fear something it becomes a whole lot easier to resolve. BUT ALSO IT’S OKAY TO HAVE FEARS! You just have to learn to tackle them so that they don’t control your life.

Here are the 5 Tips that can help you Deal with Your Fears

Non negotiable : Acknowledge your Fears and thank them!

When you acknowledge that you’re afraid of something that’s step 1 towards tackling that fear. There’s immense power in acknowledging your fear, you’ll realize it almost becomes easier to deal with it.

It’s because acknowledging it makes it TANGIBLE which means you can work on it.

Also, thank your fears because overcoming these fears is going to make you who you are! Without fear, there’s no growth.

And growth is good, thus fear is the necessary evil! But don’t worry, it becomes relatively easy to deal with fears when you make some small shifts in the way you think about them.

I suggest you WRITE down what you’re afraid of and cross out fears as you deal with them.

1. You’re not your past

If you know me, you know this is my motto (well a small variation of this) “Your past doesn’t define you, your choices do!”

This statement has really helped me deal with my fears and become a stronger person, here’s how :

You need to remember, fear has power over you if you choose to give it that power. It’s easy to give it your power because that’s what you’ve probably done in the PAST! But you’re not your past, so you can CHOOSE to take back that power at any point in time when you’re ready to make this choice.

You can CHOOSE to not be fearful about a particular thing in the future.

If your fear is coming from past trauma, then it’s even more important to work towards acknowledging the trauma and then letting go of the fear.

When you start thinking about your fears in the PAST TENSE your brain automatically works towards making it a fear of the past. Which makes it easier for you to deal with that fear.

Even if you feel like you’ve dealt with a fear and its come back, you can always choose to deal with it again.

The key here is to know that YOU have the CHOICE. You can decide to think about yourself as a culmination of your past and your fears, or you can think of yourself as someone who is working towards being BETTER every day!

So consciously decide to work on yourself and your fears and make changes in your life that make you proud of your past in the future. Because after 1 or 2 years of making conscious choices, you’ll look back at your past and be proud!

2. You have choices

I know I mentioned this in the last point, but I want to elaborate on it a little further.

When I say you have choices, I mean you have a set of decisions you need to make and you get to CHOOSE what you want to do.

So when it comes to fear, you have choices:

1. Sweep it under the rug and pretend like it’s not there
2. Acknowledge that its there and then let it control your life/do nothing about it
3. Acknowledge its there BUT consciously work towards overcoming that fear

Think about which choice you’re making right now? And what choice you want to make in the future?

If you want to make choice 3 you’re on the right track.

I’m going to give you a personal example here – I had a fear of saying NO.

I’m a people pleaser and helping people makes me happy but sometimes it’s at the cost of my own happiness. I realized that I had a hard time saying NO to people because I didn’t want to upset them.

For a long time, I went with choice 1 and pretended like it wasn’t there. But after I started meditating I realized how much of a toll this fear was taking on my life.

I CHOSE to deal with this fear. I acknowledged that it was a fear of my past, and that it doesn’t have to be a part of my life in the future.

I started making decisions for myself, I started saying NO! And it felt SO GOOD. I learnt so much about myself through this process, and channeled my energy to help people in a way that’s healthy for ME!

I am now a proud owner of this blog, which is focused on HELPING PEOPLE bring self care into their lives.

So, make a choice and stick to it! Don’t be hard on yourself if you can’t, just TRY again. You will get there. It’s possible to have fears but not let them control you or your life!

You can do this, you just have to START SOMEWHERE!

If you’re feeling resistance I suggest you read this book – The war of art by Steven Pressfield

It’s going to help you take action

3. You’re in charge! It’s your responsibility to take control

Continuing on from the last point. YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF YOUR LIFE!

It’s 100% your responsibility to take control over your life.

Hiring a fitness trainer doesn’t automatically help you lose 10 lbs, the same way hiring a therapist or a life coach doesn’t help you fix your life overnight.

You have to put in the work, and you owe it to yourself to put in the work.

I was someone who was extremely overwhelmed by my own problems, but I took it 1 day at a time and look where I am now. I have so much mental clarity its a little alarming. I don’t overthink or stress as much as I used to, I’m not fearful of being exactly who I am.

You can get there to, you just need to get into the driver’s seat and start forging your OWN life path.

Each person is different, so no second person can help you deal with something as intimate as your fears.

You need to make choices, and this is going to be hard, but once you start wiring your mindset to work towards dealing with your fears you’ll find that it’s extremely motivating.

My fears motivate me to be better.

So take responsibility, be kind to yourself, and take steps every day to become a stronger person.

When you take responsibility you know that it’s YOU who can take control over your fears. This makes it easier because you’re not relying on anyone else to be there with you to do the work. It has to come from within.

Take control of your life, because it’s YOUR life.

4. Be patient and be kind to yourself

For some people it takes days to deal with their biggest fears, other’s will take years.

You have to be patient and be kind to yourself. Give yourself time to process the changes you’re making.

You’re rewiring your thought process, this is bound to take some time.

Being patient will only help you. Rushing through this process won’t make it easier. There are no short cuts.

It’s going to take as long as it takes, so wrap your head around this now.

Fears are deep rooted, you want to be patient with yourself when you’re dealing with your fears. Take some time to understand the in’s and out’s of why you’re afraid of something. Journal about it, meditate on it, then work on it every day.

You’ll get there, I promise, it’s just going to take some time.

But each day will be better than the day before as long as you’re working on yourself and keeping yourself accountable.

5. Learn from you fears and move forward

As you deal with your fears, you learn a lot about yourself and the people around you. So take the time to really LEARN from your fears and then move forward.

You need to be able to look at the positive in everything, and here’s the positive for having fears – LEARNING!

You’ll learn some epic life lessons. So, be thankful that you’re fearful because you’re going to be learning a lot.

When you think like this – you come out the other side stronger because you understand yourself better.

I know this isn’t like a formula you can plug into your life to get answers. But these are small tips that can help give you a little perspective when it comes to dealing with your fears.

Take these tips and apply them to see if they can help you deal with your biggest fears.

Remember, be kind, be thankful and be patient. You’re always growing, you can always change, you can always be better.

I truly believe this is the true essence of mindful living. You need to reflect and learn from everything in your life and be positive and hopeful while you do it.

Sound of in the comments if this post has helped you shift your perspective! I’m excited to hear from you.

If you enjoyed this, you may enjoy my post on How to manage negative thoughts and build self confidence !

Here’s to the start of your self care journey,

Cheers,

Disha