Dismantling the Illusion of Fear
- Emil Nazaryan
- Jul 1, 2023
- 4 min read

Have you ever stopped for a moment to take a birds eye view of how much fear there is in your life? I bet you might be astonished when you do. From the smallest things to the biggest, fear affects our daily lives in multiple ways.
What if the traffic is heavy and I’m late? What if my boss is not happy with my work? What if I get fired? What if there is a shooting in my neighborhood? What if I can’t make my rent payment this month? What if we get a strong hurricane this season? What if I run out of money? What if the war spreads to America? What if I die? What if… What if…
Can you now get an idea of how all these simple examples illustrate the amount of fear running our lives? None of us are entirely immune to it, but the level of how much we are affected by fear is different in each person. The difference is in the understanding of it.
Are you up for the task of taking a deep dive into the origins and the nature of fear?
What is it? How does it arise? How can we handle it?
The first and most important thing to remember is that fear is an illusion that exists always and only in your head. In itself it has no existence. Think about it. Where do you experience it? Is it ever outside of your mind? Isn’t it always a thought that triggers a negative reaction? But how can something that is nothing, affect you or hurt you when you know it’s not real?
Here is an example. Imagine you are walking by the Zoo. All of a sudden you see people start screaming and running in every direction. You know something is wrong. Then you see a humongous Siberian tiger that escaped, running straight at you with its razor sharp fangs exposed. It’s so close to you now that you feel the tiger’s heavy breathing and see its fiery eyes. You know it’s about to jump at you. What do you feel? Afraid? Now, stop and realize that you imagined this whole scene and it was never real. How do you feel now? Relieved? Maybe even a little laughter comes out of the thought that you just got so scared from a scenario you entirely made up in your head. Thought provoking, isn’t it?
Here is a revelation that may be life changing for you. All the examples in the beginning of this article are no different from the imaginary tiger charging at you. Same exact process creates it, only this time without you being conscious of it. See it as an imagination, and it disappears like the tiger that never existed! Does that mean that the topics of your fears will never happen? Who knows? They may or may not. But the point is that there is no point in being afraid of something that is entirely imaginary and may or may not happen.
For the sake of safety and release of liability, I do want to make a disclaimer: if a real tiger is charging at you, disregard everything you just read and run!!!
Now let’s look at some strategies for handling fear. Through the above example, you already got familiarized with the most effective strategy of annihilating fear, which is to simply become aware of it.
Another method is to counter it with its opposite, positive thought. For example, if you just got in an airplane and you are scared that it may fall, replace that thought with seeing yourself sipping down a margarita at the airport bar after you land. Or, if you are afraid that you may die soon, why don’t you imagine that you lived for 100 years? Do you see the idea? No one really knows what is going to happen next, but it’s far better to live with positive expectations than with fear.
And last, but not least, there exists yet another super effective strategy. It is the surrender of fear. Think of fear as heavy luggage that you are carrying on your shoulders while you are on a train. Why not put it down? The train is going to carry it anyway. The same way, release your fears to the universe, to higher power, to God or to whatever name you’d like to choose for that, which runs this entire show. Let the all-powerful deal with your fears while you enjoy your life.
Yes, start enjoying your life! Start living your life! Think about how much those poisonous thoughts were taking you away from enjoying the current moment. With the fears gone, you will start appreciating your life for what it is. You will get satisfaction from the smallest things. You will feel peaceful. Will there be no pain? Of course not. Pain is a part of the package of life and is unavoidable. The big difference is that you won’t be afraid of pain, and when it comes you will handle it courageously, enduring the pain but not suffering mentally.
There is one more important disclosure to make. As you were reading this article, your level of fear presumably went down, at least temporarily. Because of that, you will notice a little candle that starts burning deep inside your heart. As gentle and fragile as it may be in the beginning, it turns into a flame in proportion to the reduction of the fear. As time goes on and the flame gets stronger, there is no extinguishing it any more. It’s going to be shining bright in the world, giving light and igniting candles in so many other hearts. Go shine bright!!!
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