Nature has put some amount of fear in all living beings. This fear makes life defend and protect itself by being careful. Like salt in the food, a little bit of fear is essential for people to be righteous. There is a quantitative difference between carefulness and fear. If it is less, you call it being careful; if it is too much, it amounts to fear.
When you are busy doing something meaningful, when you meditate, when you are in knowledge, fear reduces, and only carefulness remains.
Observe, when fear comes up in you, it brings along some sensation in the body. When you observe with awareness, first the emotion gets transformed into sensation, secondly the sensation gets released and the mind becomes free. This observation itself is a meditation technique. Meditation is not concentration but relaxation; and concentration is simply the byproduct of the practice. When you meditate, allow all kinds of thoughts to come and go. As you relax more and more, you reach a deeper space within. When the mind is free from its shackles, intuition, intelligence, and creativity arise. Then you feel a connection with the whole cosmos, like a drop realizing it belongs to the ocean. When the drop feels it is part of the ocean, it has no fear of extinction.
One more thing that can help is the practice of Ujjayi breath for a few minutes every day, where you breathe from the back of your throat. There are different energy centers in our body that are associated to different emotions. And anxiety, fear, love, and hate are all connected to the heart region. Breathing from the back of the throat helps open up the knots in the heart region, uplifts one’s energy and allows the fear to dissolve.
Third is to look back at your own life from a bigger perspective. Didn’t you have a difficult time in the past? Yes, and you survived it. You will survive this, too. Confidence is born by remembering your own experiences in life, and invoking the valor within. Wake up and tell yourself, “Come what may, I will see through it. I have the energy, the strength, the power within me. The Higher power is with me.”
If someone believes they lack confidence, you cannot transform such a person. You cannot instil confidence in a person who does not believe they have it already. You should stop even trying to develop it. Only then will you see that it exists somewhere within, you already have confidence.
Anxiety is when the valor in you has gone to sleep. War is not fought outside on a battleground; the biggest battles are fought within the mind. And the toughest of these battles is self-doubt. Spirituality awakens the valor within you. Maharishi Patanjali says we can attain the ultimate bliss by invoking valour from within.
The fourth thing is, know that everything changes. Good times come, bad times come. Who did not have both? See the impermanence of everything. Everything is changing around you so fast. Even if you want, you can’t hold on to anything. Things come and go. People come and go. Their moods, emotions, and behavior change. This awareness brings enormous strength from within, and then you can laugh through life.
Fifth is to just be a witness to your own life and its events. Whether it is success or failure, the curtain will come down on the play one day. Tragedy or comedy, it will end. When you see life as a play, you keep your smile and your life force intact.
And lastly, know that you are not alone. There is a higher power that is kind and compassionate and is holding your hand. It has done it in the past and will do it in the future too. Call it God, higher self, or consciousness, whatever you like, there is a greater power at work. What you cannot achieve by effort, you can achieve by prayer. With this sense of belonging, fear goes away. You belong to something bigger. You are taken care of.
Fear, love, and hatred form a triangle. When there is love, there is no fear. When there is fear, there is no love. When there is hatred, there is neither love nor fear. Be filled with love and gratitude; fear drops by itself.
