Fear is an emotion that we all have experienced at some time in our lives and in some form or the other, different people are afraid of different things, it could be real or imaginary such as fear of dark places, ghosts, exams, violence, going to school, being in the workplace and finding it difficult to interact with others, the list is endless.

What we do not realise is that fear works both ways, like most things in life, it can improve your life or you can suffer without knowing what is going wrong.

The question is why do we live in fear, when we can make it work for us, here are some ways we can turn fear to our advantage:

A) Most people are afraid of trying out something new, this is a problem that I have faced too, there was a time in my life when I was afraid to travel, I was self conscious and was anxious and worried about accidents and crowds, I refused to travel alone unless I was accompanied by my parents or friends.

As I grew older, I realised that I was allowing fear to control my life and started traveling on my own, I remember reading somewhere that everytime you step out of your house, you never know what is going to happen, I motivated myself to face my fear and found that it was the wrong way of thinking that was holding me back.

B) Fear is a psychological effect on the mind, think about the common things that we are afraid of such as fear of closed spaces, fear of animals, insects, fear of flying etc., all these fears are an instinctive response, we do this because of a bad experience or something that may have happened in our life.

We need to make a conscious effort to overcome these fears, because in the end you are the loser, consider the alternatives, can you live in open spaces, completely avoid animals or insects and travel only by road which is not possible if you traveling to another country, we need to make the right choice and get over our fears to get ahead in life.

C) There are some fears that are the result of the society that we live in, it is a universal problem, examples of such thoughts are the fear of failure, fear of being scolded, fear of ageing, fear of getting sick etc. 

All these fears are a result of social pressure, we can avoid these circumstances by acknowledging that nobody is perfect, failure is a part of life, being scolded helps us to know where we are going wrong, ageing is a natural process, getting sick is good because it makes us stronger.

At the end of the day, we have to know ourselves, keep an open mind and control our behaviour in a way that it prevents fear from controlling our actions.

I know that being afraid of something and getting over it is a challenge but it is the best thing to do in order to live a healthy and happy life.