Does fear invade your life daily to some degree? Does fear overtake your ability to perform, function or complete even ordinary chores? Do you feel the cartoonish “dark cloud” suspended over your head? Are there intrusive thoughts that hover, waiting for the right moment to enter your thought pattern and cloud your best decision? Do these thoughts darken your day and cause you to simply waste great swaths of time and opportunity? Quite simply, you are not alone. These thoughts are not positive ideas but fear laden ideas trying to overtake your positivity and destroy your joy. And they are not uncommon to most of us. But they are defeaters of joy, plans, optimism, and fulfillment. Let’s look at 6 helpful ways to remove fear from your mind and heart. For more on this subject read about the Top 10 Fears Holding You Back From Your Purpose in Life.
Obviously, there is a healthy fear implanted within us: the awareness of danger in many forms that protects us from harm. However, today we are talking about fears that can paralyze us from attempting many things and prevent us from becoming the productive and fulfilled person that we have the capability of being. It is important that we identify with which of these we are dealing.
Common Symptoms of Fear
These common symptoms of fear may include:
- an increase of heart palpitations
- an increased pulse rate
- a rise in blood pressure
- tenseness
- shortness of breath
- sweaty palms – and the list goes on.
We may be able to compartmentalize our fear and shove it aside. But do you really feel it has disappeared? Are you sometimes fearful of fear? I am talking about average people living normal daily lives, and yet allowing their lives to be controlled and thwarted by fear. Below you will find 6 helpful ways to remove fear from your mind and heart.
Let’s look at Six Helpful Ways to Face Fear
1. Face Fear
As with any challenge or foe, we need to learn to face fear, face the intruder, identify the accuser, and gather our forces in order to avoid being completely overwhelmed and impotent by the threat of fear.
Identify the actual fear – not the feeling. What exactly is causing this unwelcome visitor? Is it a reality, or a possibility, or perhaps an unnamed, unidentified, ominous, negative feeling that enters your realm?
We must know our enemy. List all things that cause you fear. Where did the fear originate? Was it planted into your mind by a fearful parent or friend? Is it real? Make it real. Observe it. Evaluate it. Give it a name. Is it really a truth or is it a feeling that you have unconsciously let come into your life, reside, and control you? Read on for #2 6 helpful ways to remove fear from your mind and heart.
2. Get Truths
Face each thing that allows fear to empower you. Is it actually a deterrent of your happiness or can we deal with it, understand it, and thereby chase it from our lives by staring the fear in the face and choosing to defeat the control it seems to hold over us? Get truths.
Get information, analyze, address that fear. You are strong; you are gifted; you are a conqueror. Living isn’t for wimps. The truth shall set you free.
3. Look at Statistics
Does the fear that so easily reduces you to weakness statistically warrant that much power? What are the chances of that meteor hitting in your backyard – that kind of thinking. Look at statistics. If something is 99.4% safe, can you enjoy it with that slight risk? Pray for a clear mind that allows you to see the folly. Nothing is without some risk. Nothing is absent of some chance of failure.
There is no guarantee about anything on this earth. We seek to be the best person that we can be: to love our family and others; and to follow our Lord Jesus Christ. We must learn to live with the uncertainty of each day, or it is like chasing the air – never finding peace or accomplishing that for which we have been made. Read on for #4 of 6 helpful ways to remove fear from your mind and heart.
4. Decide Who You Will Believe
There will always be the enablers of fear who spread doubt about your ability or your choices. Decide who you want to believe. Check it out, weigh the odds, and step forward. Put on the armor that will chase away unfounded fears in your life and give you power to live life to the fullest, using the abilities you have been given.
There are bridges to be built, music to be written, needy and sick people to be cared for, and a world of beauty and joy to be embraced. The fearful shudder and withdraw; those who examine truths act accordingly.
Pray for boldness to conquer an unreasonable fear, for the strength to give it a try, for the faith to believe that all things are possible through Christ. It is not how much faith you have, but rather in whom your faith rests that makes the difference.
5. Visualize that Fear
You may need to visualize that fear that has been more of a feeling than an actuality. The fear that you can’t speak up in a group, that you can not be a leader, that your accomplishments do not qualify you, or that your background, although you have been transformed, will emerge and negate the new you – that fear must be faced.
Put a name on the fear so you can defeat it. God’s promise says, “Do not be afraid, I am with you always.” Believing rather than doubting puts fear into all fears. With God, all things are possible.
6. Talk About Your Fears
Find someone to listen to you as you name your fears. Someone you trust. Talk about it. Often, I have found that when I put words to a fear that is hovering, the fear loses its power. I cannot seem to verbalize it well enough in order for the listener to hear just how powerful that fear is. It has lost its power by being exposed.
Sharing our fears and sorrows, as well as our joys and accomplishments, gives balance to our lives. We are able to release fears, and the feelings of unworthiness, and even the doubt of our ability to seek a better job. People need people. We grow together, we fight fear together, we pray together, and we accomplish great things together. Great things are the things for which you are fitted and empowered to accomplish. Let us not miss out on running a good race and, with it, the knowledge that we have given our best in the endeavor.
Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my righteous right hand.
Isaiah 41:10
I encourage you to listen to the GREAT NEWS FOR YOU VIDEO on this page to find out how you can have a relationship with this living God. He will enrich our lives as He permeates your being.
