Fear Is Learned Behavior

We've been discussing courage all month and today we'll take a moment to talk about where a lot of courage comes from... fear.

Whether you believe fear started the moment Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, or that it started the moment a caveman saw a saber tooth tiger coming toward him, fear has been around for a while, and isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Fear is an interesting concept. It's not a tangible thing. It's not something that you can see, hear, taste, smell, or touch. But we know it's real because we've all felt it before.

Not only have we all experienced fear but we've also, whether we acknowledge it or not, have allowed our fears to shape who we are.

Fear is Learned Behavior

We developed fears as a way to protect ourselves from what we perceive as danger. Oftentimes our perceptions cause us develop fears far before we even determine if our situation is actually dangerous.

In other words, we don't start off afraid, we become afraid.

Have you ever seen a small child at play?

You may notice, they don't worry about falling, hurting themselves, of having someone else potentially harm them. They just play, completely uninhibited. As that child grows and learns about the world around them and the responses they witness from parents and other children, that child will develop their own feelings, fears and responses. Essentially learning what things to be afraid of and what not. These feelings, thoughts become a part of that child over time.

Once you learn your fears, you develop regular responses to those fears. We make choices. We decide to either remain afraid or to challenge the concepts we created to protect ourselves from the unknown.

When we decide to be afraid of something, we practice our responses in our minds and every time we run into those fears. For that reason people who are afraid of spiders scream when they see one close by. That is one of the responses that person has practiced over and

If you reason that it might be, it's likely you will develop some sort of fear for that situation and will do your best to avoid it.

This is often masked as intuition or those moments when you think to yourself "I have a bad feeling about this."

These feelings and responses are very healthy and natural. They work in harmony with your senses to keep you safe. They only become problematic when they start to work overtime.

Another benefit of fear is that it can often be a signal to take action.

Many of our fears are ones that we've created in our mind because we don't know how things will turn out. Our fears of failure and embarrassment are rooted in the fear of the unknown. These fears aren't necessarily dangerous or harmful to us physically, but they scare us because they may hurt us emotionally.

Personally, this is where the bulk of my fear and anxiety lives.

For example, I have a serious fear of public speaking. It makes me extremely uncomfortable.

No matter how much I prepare, practice, recite positive affirmations, and practice power poses, my voice still shakes with fear, my heart still beats out of my chest, my hands get extremely sweaty and I easily become distracted by racing