Some fear is concrete and saves your life. Other fear is a phantom: it warns you about nothing and only paralyzes your will. How to tell them apart.
Phantom fear paralyzes our will.
I’ve already written about the 7 different things that can affect our energy levels. Fear deserves a post of its own.
There are 2 kinds of fear: concrete and phantom.
When we see a car racing toward us and swerve out of the way, that fear and adrenaline are what save us from a crash.
We spot a viper in the forest and walk the other way.
We hear an incoming missile and take cover.
Those are examples of concrete fear. We need it and it serves us. God placed it in us so that in extreme situations we would stay alive.
But there is also phantom fear, and it paralyzes our will.
It’s when a person is afraid of coming down with some serious illness. Or when it seems that of everyone at work, they are the one who will be let go. That they are the one who will run out of money and be left by the person they love. That their child is the one who will get a difficult diagnosis.
When we’re afraid of things like that, it isn’t clear what exactly we’re supposed to do. There’s no place to apply any effort, no way to fight the danger, because the danger is a phantom.
When there is no concrete subject or object of danger — a criminal in a dark alley, a drunk driver on the road, a brick or a missile falling on your head — the fear is mostly theoretical, and it is exactly that kind that “freezes” a person and paralyzes their will.
So that we don’t burn enormous amounts of energy and nerves on useless fear, we should stop feeding our imagination cartoons of a tragic future and instead solve problems as they actually arrive.
We decide for ourselves what to think about and how. That is within our power.
When there is no concrete subject or object of danger, our worrying leads nowhere anyway.
If you feel attacks of fear with no cause, and your mind starts handing you tragic scenarios of the future, try to focus on what you can actually change in the next 24 hours.
For some people that will simply mean getting on with the work in front of them; someone else will start cleaning the apartment, or you’ll open your phone and schedule a new meeting. The moment you start dealing with the real questions of your life, phantom fear begins to retreat.
So if we want to live a happier life, it’s worth remembering Mark Twain’s words:
I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.
Do you feel phantom fear in your own life?
How do you deal with the negative cartoons in your head?
Want to go deeper?
Reading helps, but what changes a life is specific steps, not reading. Fifty minutes of conversation is usually enough to see which steps are yours.
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