This paralysis leaves us vulnerable to being swept away by the negative forces that seek to exploit our fear. Though the outcomes may not be extreme, unless dealt with, our fears will always have the power to take us off course.

Think of that moment when you discover there’s a spider in the room and you become obsessed with watching out for it. Suddenly your mind is unable to focus on anything else. Sadly, unlike the spider that can be swiftly dealt with, we often allow our fears to breed in the rooms of our mind and torture us.

For some memories of life’s tough experiences take hold of us and hinder us. The more we become aware of the world, the more we live in fear. Knowing there’s no way of returning to the precious oblivion of our youth, where we were untainted by fear-inducing experiences, we spend our entire adult lives trying to avoid “the spider in the room”.

When we focus so much time avoiding our fears; we forget that we have a choice. We can live a life overshadowed by our fears or we can learn to face them. Part of facing fear is accepting it is impossible to live a life completely void of fear. Fear is a natural human emotion. What is possible is to resist being controlled by it.

False.Evidence.Appearing.Real - This is a hyperbolized, yet valid model of what fear is. Once you realise this, you will see changes in your life. There is no one on earth (of sound mind) who is not scared of something. But the most successful people have learnt to acknowledge their fears and overcome them.

In my personal journey of resisting fear, I’ve discovered courage isn’t the absence of fear, but the resolution to push on in spite of it.  And that’s what we must strive to do. Alice M. Swaim sums it up perfectly, "Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.” We mislead ourselves by believing that bravery is a virtue for heroes, and that heroes possess superior qualities that we do not.  In fact, courage is no more than a silent acknowledgement of adversity, and a humble resolution to walk (and sometimes stumble!) through it.

In my road towards overcoming my fears, I have found the following helpful:

Accept the inevitable
Humiliation. Failure. Loss. Three experiences universal to the human condition, irrespective of race, class or gender. If you love you will lose.  If you try you will fail. If you put yourself out there you’ll experience humiliation.  Once we accept that some negative results are unavoidable, and necessary to informing our appreciation of better times, it alleviates the fear of experiencing them. 

Express it
Fear destroys all perspective.  If we feed our boogie-monsters by constantly thinking about them, they tend to grow and we lose the ability to decipher imagined threats from those that are real.  Speaking to someone who’s invested in your happiness about what’s keeping you up at night is always helpful.

Someone who doesn’t have the same fears will usually help you realise how benign your situation is.  Sometimes we get so twisted up in the sheer horror of our lives that we lose perspective. Speak to someone that will help you gain some.


Think Long Term
The things we fear, will they matter this time next year?  Asking myself this simple question has rescued me from the throes of fear on more than one occasion.  People tend to balk at the thought of even the slightest possibility of a negative outcome, without consideration of its actual impact.  Think of things we fear like an overdue bikini wax. The eye-watering pain the procedure entails does not stop you from dragging yourself to the beautician (eventually) because you know that when the stinging dies down, smooth skin and summer times lie ahead.

Zanele Mji is a 22 year old Politics and Gender Studies graduate from the University of Cape Town. Though born in the USA she grew up in Durban, South Africa. She’s a columnist and blogger for Marie Claire South Africa.