How Do You Respond to Your Fears?

Life is all about moving out of the rough patch. How many of us have the skills to face s Recently, we have witnessed unprecedented turbulence, which we had never experienced in the history of mankind before. Yes, I'm referring to COVID. The pandemic affecting human lives across the globe. Not sure of its nature, when it will be over. A deadly disease, which caused misery to mankind --and touched everyone's life in one way or the other.

I, along with my entire family, tested positive for COVID and when for the first time the report was shared with me, it was difficult to accept. This put me in one of the most trying and challenging situations of my life. I responded endlessly searching for answers on the internet, which only made me more uncomfortable, anxious, and overwhelmed.

The news, the snippets on social media, the information on WhatsApp;

was very grim, adding fuel to fire.

This worsened the situation and naturally, the fear gripped me. However, I being a sportsperson and having led special projects several times, do not give up easily. I realized it is not an ordinary challenge, but a war with a powerful invisible enemy. Therefore, it requires war-like strategies to bounce back and move out of the situation. Now, once I had accepted that I was fighting a war, I needed a strategy. But since I was gripped with fear, I could not think clearly. So, my first call was to face the fear of the deadly disease. What if I lose and fall prey to it? Like millions of people, failure was not an option for me.

So, how could I challenge the fear of Corona; fear of losing the battle increased my heartbeats and the breathing was already irregular. My entire focus was on the deadly enemy. I was gripped to an extent that I was stuck.

Storms are a part of any journey: if you do not confront them, the strong winds will carry you along. So, face and do not fear. It does not matter if you fail as long as you learn and move on.

In any war, fear is bigger than the F-A-C-T-S.

Therefore, I decided to do some research on how to face the fear of the enemy.

The research has listed 500 types of fears and phobias. However, we are born with only two types of fears, -- fear of heights and fear of falling.

The rest of the fears are acquired along the journey of life—for example, if someone has experienced disaster due to an earthquake, he is scared of earthquakes or someone has experienced disaster due to floods. he or she acquires the fear of water. All acquired fears are learned behaviour. Therefore, the good news is that what is learned can be unlearned. And the best way to do this is to challenge your fears. The more you avoid them, the more they grow on you. So, Face your fears, and they run away.

At this juncture, I am reminded of famous lines from the poem “Fear” written by KHALIL GIBRAN and here it goes---

“It is said that before entering

The sea a river trembles with Fear” ……

Further—

“…The river Needs to take the risk of entering the ocean,

Because only then will fear Disappear,

Because that’s how the river will know,

It is not about disappearing,

Into the Ocean, But of

Becoming the ocean”.

So, the best defence for fear is-- offence. Since many a time the truth you see in your mind is only the truth as you believe it to be; therefore, it may not be always real. The best thing to do is to challenge your fear, this could be the fear of trying new experiments or anything that you fear. You're scared of water; learn swimming from a seasoned coach.

Challenge the way you think, and you change the way you act. Therefore, to move out of the fear and anxiety, I decided to change my thinking. Here I adopted a two-fold strategy: -

Strategy No. 1--I decided to focus on what I could control. I decided to shift my focus to areas that I can control. For example, I had no control over the pandemic but I could control my thoughts and my actions. I could control my responses.

I and my son vividly recalled the earlier challenges in life, which we had successfully met and sailed through. So, we asked ourselves, “if we could do it earlier, why not now”?

We have already walked through fire once and burnt our feet; So, why not once more? We even framed a song on the Corona. Our fear was replaced with confidence and we were vibrating at a high frequency.

Strategy No2--War is not won only by powerful weapons, but also by superior mindsets. Besides, strictly following the regimen as advised by the doctors, we strategized as followed- we regularly engaged with our friends, well-wishers, and relatives. This gave us a lot of energy and inspiration to fight it out. Although, the entire family was affected, we did not allow the pandemic to dominate our conversation; we shared jokes; laughter; deep breathing exercises. Since this was an extraordinary, stressful situation, we tried all stress management techniques, right from eating healthy food to meditation.

We focused on happy experiences in life which gave us fuel and inspiration to face and fight to the finish.

Storms in Life. Which institute/Curriculum teaches us to face crises in life.