Most Of Your Fears Are Stupid

We all feel afraid sometimes.  Or, if you’re like me, you can replace “sometimes” with:

“when confronted by anyone about anything.”
“in loud places.”
“nearly constantly.”
“when forced to think about my future.”
“in quiet places.”

Fear is very natural and normal, but that doesn’t mean it’s good, or logical.  Most of the time, fear is a completely unnecessary hindrance on your life.  It’s one of our most outdated guttural instincts, like the urge to procreate, or to consume cake.  Whether it’s about talking to a group of strangers, or going up an elevator, we feel fear to some degree every day even though in the first world, we should mostly only feel it like ten times a lifetime, tops.

There are times when fear makes sense, but doesn’t help you.  Being afraid of random cancer, or a natural disaster, or an anvil falling on your head makes sense in that sure, all of those would be bad.  But what are you going to do?  Wear an anvil-protecting helmet?  Move to a place where natural disasters magically disappear?  Buy a shirt that says, “Cancer go away please,” and wear it every day?  Those fears don’t lead anywhere productive.

Even being afraid of flying makes sense on a guttural level.  It’s an insane, unnatural thing that is completely contrary to what is built into us instinctively.  But since flying isn’t actually dangerous, it’s not particularly useful.  Fearing it just makes your life more boring and your ears pop less.

There are also times when a fear would be helpful, but it doesn’t come naturally to us. You could probably use a fear of wasting your life in front of electric rectangles as your brain disintegrates, but you can’t make yourself feel it, so it’s a useless thing to hope for.

This isn’t to say that none of our fears are justified.  We do have some fears that make a lot of sense and are useful to us, but there are so, so few of them, that I could count them on one hand…or right here for you.  Here they are:

1) Someone Literally Trying to Murder You Right Now

Here’s an example of a fear that both comes naturally to us, and is useful!

It’s reasonable to be afraid if a psycho is coming at you with a knife, and the adrenaline that comes from that situational fear has been shown to give people extra strength.  So your fear could give you an extra boost needed to leap into a tree for safety, or to physically overpower the psychopath, which could save your life.

Basically, you’re like The Hulk if The Hulk was also constantly crying and shitting his pants.

2) Preventable Diseases/Infections

Random cancer is a waste of your fear, but it is worth fearing cigarettes entering your mouth, or asbestos, or lumps in your boobies, because your action is useful here.  It’s worth letting fear motivate you to put on sunblock or to not stand in your cargo shorts around a team of people in HAZMAT suits.  

Similarly it’s good to avoid very obvious infections.  You can use the natural fear you have to avoid jumping into a pile of needles, or to avoid eating fuzzy blue cream cheese.

It’s also good to be afraid of obesity.  Getting really fat increases your risk of all of the major things that can kill you–heart disease, cancer, and struggling to reach the steering wheel properly.

So yes, use the fear you naturally have of dying to help yourself prevent things like diseases, eating sticks of butter, and contracting malignant cooties where you can.

3) Clearly Preventable Accidents

It’s also good to use your fear of death to avoid potentially dangerous situations and accidents.

So it’s good to use your fear of death to stop yourself from driving like an asshole, from playing with guns, and from “testing the strength” of the windows in a skyscraper.

So yes, step away from the building’s edge.  Yes, avoid jaywalking across the 101. Yes, practice your knife-juggling with toy knives first, you idiot.

And well…that’s it.  Those are the three things you’re allowed to be afraid of.  Every other fear is dumb, and you’d be best off if you got over it.  Here are just some examples.

Of course not.  You’re not that terrible.  You’re going to survive it and come out the other side alive regardless because that’s your only option.

Now you may be thinking, “But fearing failure makes you do better work.”  Sometimes, sure.  More often it makes you sit on your couch and watch Coach reruns instead of going for anything you want, because that’s more palatable than life’s greatest horror: trying, failing, and feeling inadequate.

We desperately need to get past this fear because failure is a great thing.  It makes you stronger, and it educates you on what to do next time.  Every time you let your fear of failure lead to inaction, you’re depriving yourself of these things, and ensuring even more failure in the future.

It’s almost nothing but good to fail.  We shouldn’t fear failure.  We should look forward to it.

So chill out.  You’ll survive.  You’ll move on and find things other than your dream that make you happy.  This isn’t the end of the world.  The end of the world is…like…nukes or a volcano or something.

2) Romantic Rejection

All rejection is really just somebody telling you that you failed, and of all forms of it, romantic rejection rears its ugly head the most.. We fear this because if someone rejects us for a date (for instance), we feel alone, or inadequate, and we’re hardwired to not want that.

Here’s where that fear would be rational.  If you were a straight dude, and there was literally one woman on the entire planet, and she rejected you, then yeah, fear the shit out of that.  Man, she was your only shot at seeing a human vagina, and now you have to turn to God-knows-what other kind of vagina.  That’s pretty scary.

Otherwise, you’re being dumb.  Stop it.  You’re fine.  Rejection comes from one of a billion sources, so try another one.  This is the end of absolutely nothing.  Don’t be an idiot. You don’t need to start Googling baboon vaginas (unless you’re into that sort of thing, in which case, uh, carry on I guess).

3) Terrorism 
It’s easy to look at stories about terrorists and to be afraid of them.  But after you do that, look at how many people in the western world have actually died of terrorist attacks in the last fifteen years, and then look at how many people are killed by armed toddlers, and hopefully you’ll spend a little less time worrying about terrorism, and a little more time at least about putting the glock on the grownup shelf.

Seriously, look at the numbers, compare them to other dangers in the world, and chill.  In America, rogue vending machines are a bigger threat to you than ISIS.

4) Embarrassment
Avoiding embarrassment always comes at the cost of progress in life, learning, and fun.  It’s nothing but terrible.

Every time you ever feel embarrassed, you should stop and think, “No wait, this is totally dumb.”

Nothing about being embarrassed matters.  It doesn’t matter if you’re embarrassed singing in front of others, or telling a joke, or dancing.  None of this is a threat to anything or anybody anywhere.  You will live through literally all of it, and it will have zero fucking impact on any long-term prospects.  If you let this control you, you should be absolutely fucking…well, you know.

5) Basically Everything Else

You get the idea.  Pretty much anything that is unlikely to cause your death is not worth being afraid of.  Shark attacks, parties, brown people, etc.  All of it is either fine or extremely rare, and in any case, overwhelmingly unlikely to result in your death.

We’re almost certainly going to remain afraid of stupid things like talking to pretty girls and being woefully insufficient, but we have to at least try to fight this.  Fear has way too much of a handle on us right now.  It makes us its bitch at least ten times a day, and fuck that.

Fear is more often than not the thing holding us back from everything.  It either causes us to run from every possible step forward, or beats us into an indifferent submission, forcing us to tell ourselves that we don’t care about everything.

Here’s the good news: conquering fear is the simplest thing in the world.  It’s not easy, but it is simple.  You simply confront it.  Everybody knows this.  You already knew that.

So take some time to identify your dumbest fears (that’s nearly all of them), and actively seek to confront them every day (except terrorists.  Maybe don’t look to actively confront terrorists.).  Not only will you get past these dumb fears, but you’ll feel incredible.

So get out there tomorrow, and do something you’re afraid to do.  Sing in front of a live audience.  Pursue your ambitions.  Talk to another human being (that one’s mine).

Still thinking you won’t?  Maybe this will make it easier: If you try to overcome a fear tomorrow, I guarantee you that you will be successful.

Now that sounds really fucking stupid, but let me explain.

You may stumble over your words trying to talk to someone and they make look at you like you’re a serial killer. You may fall short of your dream in a couple years. You may in fact be a dogshit singer and get booed off the stage while some gay dude in the back yells, “You’re butchering Streisand!”

But regardless of how you actually do, you will succeed in accomplishing something you couldn’t before, you will succeed in making actual progress as a human, and you will succeed in becoming a stronger, better, more capable person who now has reason to believe that they can try just about anything.

And that’s the most important success you can ever, ever hope for.