How to Stop Being Afraid of Doing What you Want

Have you ever wondered how would your life be if you weren’t afraid of any possible outcomes?

Let’s say you want to sing, and you are good at it. How can you stop being afraid of making a fool of yourself in front of a crowd? We can apply these questions to different situations. How to stop being afraid of getting a horrible job if you leave your current one? How to end the fear of getting lost and overwhelmed after moving to a different city?

There is always a fear factor inside of us that often limits us from living our best lives. And we can’t shut it down.

I wish I could promise you that fear will go away by reading this post, or even by reading a few self-help books, but it’s not possible. Fear only disappears by the repetition of certain habits and activities. However, like everything related to human behaviour, is a lot easier to control it after you understand how it works.

As human creatures with hundreds of thousands of years of history and evolution, our bodies and minds have changed together with our lifestyle and values. Yet, there is a part of us that remains. That part of us has been there for the longest time, and it’s the reason we are here today: The Survival Instinct.

The Survival Instinct made sure that the Australopithecus was able to survive dangerous predators in the wild. It made sure the Homo Sapiens tribes moved and found warmer places during the Ace Age. It is what stops us from going into certain suburbs at night or suspect from dodgy looking people.

The reason why we are afraid of making a fool of ourselves or being criticised comes from the same Survival Instinct. Your Homo Sapiens ancestor is telling you to be careful. If society rejects you, you will have a painful, lonely death in the snowy mountains.

At the end of the day, without the support of a tribe, there was no tomorrow.

Times have changed. Now we feel great when we tell our friends to “stop caring about what other people think”, but we often fail to follow our advice. Yet, if you remember that time you sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard in front of your college choir, you have proof that you will not end up dying. It was pretty annoying to hear jokes about it for days, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

You can even use it now as a funny anecdote.

But it’s not that easy. We are talking about thousands of years living in fight or flight mode, desperately looking for the safest place to live and the optimum conditions to be able to reproduce.

Yet, if it was as easy as that, we would be incredibly happy settling down in a small village, having the same routine every day. We would be euphoric during our commute to our 9-5 job, thinking about the warm dinner we’ll have that day. And that is not the case for most people.

The truth is, the side of us that was looking for safety is the same making us move, change routines, change areas to live and adapt to new habits. We are naturally active, instinctively thirsty for “the new, the change, the novelty”.

We are unconsciously looking for growth and improvement. It’s not news that human anatomy is made to be physically and mentally active.

Now, if you are afraid of recording a song and send it to a music label, at least you understand (if you didn’t before) where is that fear coming from. You will be fine if they reject you. It’s ok if they don’t call you back. The more you send songs to discographies and get rejected, the easier it will feel to accept those rejections. Your anxiety will ease because you are repeatedly reminding your body and mind you are safe whether they like it or not.

The more we do what scares us, the less afraid we feel. It’s a biological process where, by being proactive, we remind our minds that there is no danger in doing activities that, while being new to us, are under our control. Those are very often the activities that make us improve and live experiences that help us grow.

This may sound like a silly practice, but having conversations with yourself can help a lot. One of the best ways of doing it is writing down this conversation and ask yourself:

What would I do if I wasn’t scared?

Which are the possible outcomes?

Is there a real, life-threatening danger?

Why am I scared and how can I change that?