Today’s post was inspired by my friend and founder of Bloggers For Peace, Kozo! He posted about overcoming our fears by eradicating, or minimizing our cravings and desires or dispelling lies. According to Buddhism as well as Stoic and Socratic philosophy our suffering and disturbance comes from believing in lies (ignorance) and desiring things that are outside of our power to control. Every irrational fear comes with a corresponding untruth or unrealistic desire. Dispel the lie or cease desiring and you will lose the fear. Let’s look at a couple of examples:
* Fear: That my partner will leave me. Lie/Desire: That my partner should never leave me. Solution: I do not control my partners actions. Why would I be the only person in history that can’t be dumped?
That seems perfectly rational to me!
* Fear: That I will fail my tests. Lie/Desire: If I don’t pass I’ll be a failure and my parents will hate me. Solution: Sure I would fail the test, but not as a human being. If my parents would hate me over such a trivial matter, why am I looking for their approval in the first place?
The Logic dispels the Lie which dissolves the Fear. Fear is important, it has it’s purpose, to keep us alive and to keep us vigilant against real danger to ourselves and others. But the vast majority of the fear we feel in the modern, western world is quite useless and can be harmful as it can lead to more serious anxiety and depression.
So in the spirit of sharing I’ll go through a few of my past and present fears with you today, the lie/desire behind it and the thoughts/logic that releases the desire and thus dispels the fear!
Fear Lie/Desire Logic/Solution
Poverty I’ll never have enough money to be happy.
What if I lose all my money.
I need to become wealthy!
You are alive, therefore you’ve always had enough money.Did you not have happy moments even at times when money was tight?
Wealth is not measured in money but in your level of contentment with what you have.
Work on being content and the amount of cash you have becomes irrelevant.
Loneliness No one will ever love me.
I’ll be alone for ever.
Everyone will think I’m a loser.
Can you read the future? I’m sorry but there’s no way for you to know that.So? Many monks, asexuals and celibates still live fulfilled and even quite sexual lives!
Even if it’s not what you want you can’t say it’s inherently wrong to be alone, there are plenty of happy single people.
Well that would be their problem for believing a lie. Being single doesn’t mean you are a loser for many people choose to be single!
What others think of me Everyone must think I look so ugly/weird/fat.
They must think I’m really stupid after what I said.
He/she is probably laughing about me with his/her friends right now!
So? You can’t control what others think. Why are you worried about something you can’t control?Was it stupid? If so then there’s no problem. And if it wasn’t stupid then they are the fools for believing something that isn’t true.
And can you not find something to laugh at about them? Everyone can be laughed at, you are not immune, and it does not harm you.
So those are just a few quick examples. You see at the root of every irrational fear is a lie, you’ve missed out some crucial piece of information and it’s causing you distress. When you honestly scrutinize and question the beliefs behind the irrational fear, they simply don’t hold up.The problem we have is that we are conditioned to act out our fears in the world. When we fear poverty we work harder, cut corners, steal, cheat and lie to get ahead. When we fear loneliness we seek out any partner and settle for those who might not be very suitable just to be with someone! When we worry what others think we ruminate and stress out, we eavesdrop and gossip in order to find out what others are saying about us. None of these “solutions” actually dissolve the original fear! A healthier and more effective manner of overcoming the fear is to deal with the motivations by challenging the underlying beliefs, instead of acting on the motivations themselves.
Awwwwwww
Step 1: Identify your fear
Step 2: Identify the beliefs that are causing the fear
Step 3: Challenge the beliefs and show them up to be the lies that they are
Step 4: When you feel the fear simply swap out the irrational belief for the new, true, logical belief. Eventually it will become the prevailing thought process!
Good luck everyone! How do you deal with your irrational fears?
Thanks for reading, all the best.
Rohan.
Related Articles:
- You Do Not Need To Fulfill Your Desires, Your Desires Must Fulfill You!
- How To Have Everything You Want, Today!
- How To Silence Self Critical Inner Voices!
- How To Overcome Loneliness and A Fear Of Being Single!
Rohan Healy is the author of “Greeks to Geeks: Practical Stoicism in the 21st Century” and “The 7 Things That Made Me Genuinely & Irreversibly Happy: And How They Can Do The Same For You”
Click the book titles to visit their Amazon pages, read the reviews, and sample or purchase the books.