When you are afraid, you start going into fight or flight mode. Your body starts prioritising what is needed for immediate survival - screw routine body functions, if you don't make it past the next few moments there won't be a routine to return to. You stop digesting food. Cell repair slows or stops. You stop producing saliva, which is why your mouth goes dry when you're nervous just before making a speech or going into a difficult conversation. Your heart rate and breathing increase to ensure better blood flow. A cocktail of hormones like epinephrine and oxytocin are cued up and produced, which amplifies your body's ability to act (and remarkably, in the case of oxytocin, reminds you to seek help).
Don't be mistaken about what happens when you feel fear. Your body is readying itself to help you face what you fear in the way it knows how.
What causes us to feel fear?
1) Fear occurs to us unconsciously. Do you pause to think, hey, very angry looking snake! Maybe I should be scared. Of course not, it would be too late! Fear becomes much clearer when we examine what happens inside your brain. When you are afraid, the fear/anger/aggression/anxiety centre of your brain - the amygdalas (get used to this name, it's gonna keep popping up) lights up. And we've covered all the changes that happen in your body: your blood pressure, your hormones, your heart-rate. But remember how amygdala is like a train interchange with direct routes to different parts of your brain? There is a direct neural link between our amygdala and your pre-frontal cortex, the rational thinking part of your brain. And if we look closely enough or we think things through, sometimes we realise, argh! it's not an angry snake, it's just a prank toy that your annoying friend had thrown at you. Or if you've handled angry snakes enough times, your amygdala does not light as much. Your blood pressure and your heart rate do not increase as much, you realise what you need to do is to stay calm and slowly back away.
Finally, notice how fear, anger, aggression, and anxiety are processed by the same part of the brain, the amygdala. This is no coincidence. These 4 emotions are closely tied to one another; aggression maybe triggered because one is nervous, angry, or fearful. Being fearful may cause one to react angrily, as a self-defense mechanism. Fear, like all our emotions, happens to us. Mostly, we can't control how it originates. But we can control how it develops by understanding what exactly is causing fear and by choosing the response that dispels it
2) We fear what we are unconfident or uncertain about. Think back on your ancestors doing something they weren't confident or certain off - hunting a massive animal without a weapon, or eating a berry they've never seen before. Doing so would mean a very high chance of seriously harming themselves. Today, after many cycles of evolution, we have been wired based on these experiences.
Think about it. Are you ever fearful of something you've done before, and are good? Brushing your teeth, putting on your clothes, indulging in your favourite hobby (whatever it is)? Of course not. You know you can perform these functions easily. You are confident.
But many of us would have felt fearful and anxious the first time we ventured into something new: using a pair of chopsticks, riding a bicycle, swimming, going on a first date. We were uncertain about these functions, and we were not confident about performing them. However, once we have demonstrated to ourselves that we are able to perform these tasks, we are no longer afraid. The same applies to more challenging tasks. Some of us struggle with: public speaking, starting a business, having a very difficult conversation with the CEO... You are uncertain and unconfident if you can succeed. But once you have proven to yourself you are able to do it, even for the more challenging tasks, you are no longer afraid. People might start off feeling scared about public speaking, but after speech 3797, you're pro The catch, of course, is that sometimes, we are too scared to start.
Even if we were certain of something OR confident about something, many of us will still feel some amount of fear. We might be theoretically certain how we should use a pair of chopsticks, but if we have never succeeded in using them properly, we remain unconfident and will still feel nervous if we had to use them, especially when others are observing. You might also be confident about
3) we fear what is painful. Boxer. climbing 100 flights of stairs or doing 100 burpees. But pain is not just physical but mental. Failure is painful. Being judged is painful.
This is why you procrastinate. You either fear what you have to do bevause you don't know how to do it (you don't fear brushing your teeth for example), or you fear doing something becaue you know it will be effortful
4) we fear what we cannot control
Learn more about your amygdala, the amygdala hijack, the thalamus, the pre-frontal cortex, and how your brain works here.
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Summary:
- Fear and anxiety (and anger + aggression) are always
Learning from the experiences of others
“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself" - Eleanor Roosevelt
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How can I find my purpose in life? How do I know my choice is right? These are questions we all want to find better answers to. Yet there are so many things to experience and learn, and our lives are too short to cover everything. This is where learning from others come in. In just a few hours, we can gain lessons that others took a lifetime to accumulate. We can find out how others' to the purpose of their life, and how they found it. We can learn what difficulties they faced, and how they pressed to overcome these.
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“Many people operate under the dysfunctional belief that they just need to find out what they are passionate about. Once they know their passion, everything else will somehow magically fall into place. We hate this idea for one very good reason: most people don’t know their passion." - Bill Burnett (Executive Director, Designing your Life program, Stanford University)
Beyond life lessons, writing a better life-story will require us to continually pick up skills and knowledge. Whatever we choose to do in our life, we need skills and we need to become a stronger person to achieve what we want. It is the best era for us to learn, so keep learning!
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“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time – none, zero. Those who keep learning will keep rising in life.”
Charlie Munger
8 lessons I've learnt
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Adopt a longer lens in life. We often feel pressured to find answers and results in life, but many of these pressures are self-created. In turn, these lead us to choices we don't really like but feel committed to.
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Keep searching. Some of us find what we want to commit to early on in life. Most of us don't. Keep searching, by continually learning about different fields and what people in these fields are doing. We overestimating what we are capable of in 1 year, and underestimating what we are capable of in 20 years.
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Develop mastery. What
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Our passion needs to be developed. We cannot determine after just 5 swimming lessons that swimming is our passion in life. We need to develop this interest. We can only tell if something is our passion after we have gained some mastery in it.
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Some people find their passion early in life. Most of us don't. We should keep searching.
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Our search can be improved by being curious and learning about other fields of work, especially if we have some interest in them.
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This is because, our passion/purpose is NOT something that we will always enjoy and find happiness doing. Instead, passion is something that we have a convincing answer(to ourselves) for WHY we are doing it.
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A passion/purpose is something we are willing to struggle for, because the struggle will come:
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Personal sacrifices: great athletes and musicians spend much time honing their skills
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Having to learn other skills: People dedicated to social causes would have to devote additional time to learn skills like finding resources and managing finances
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Managing both the mundane and the risks: Successful entrepreneurs have to deal with mundane tasks such as administration, while
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Dealing with negativity: Writing your own story means that there will always be negativity, even from people closest to you. Even if your desire is just to live a minimalist life and not affect anyone else, you'll still be judged; human brains are programmed to judge people based on our lenses, and this happens by default.
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Self-doubt and failure: We've heard countless examples not to fear failure, because it happens to everyone. The goal is not be fearless, which is neurologically impossible. Your fears could at times be right, and also lend humility to your being. Instead, a better strategy is to define your fears (learn about fear-setting here), and to recognise the costs of not taking action. And.. brace yourself for the many failures that will be coming.
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​But, as Viktor ​Frankl shares, "those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.” You'll be surprised how much you can accomplish once you're convinced it is what you should be doing.
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While outcomes are very important, what we really crave as humans is growth - that we are getting better in the areas important to us.
 Ray Dalio - PrinciplesWhy is the founder of the largest hedge fund in the world so obsessed with principles? |  Issac LidskySeeing life even without sight. |  Jadav PayengHow much difference can one person make? We constantly underestimate what we can do in the long run, if we just keep going.* |
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 What-Makes-a-Good-Life-Lessons-from-the-What can the longest study on happiness teach us? |  Christopher MccandlesWhat is it like to give up everything for a life Into the Wild? |  Diana NyadDiana Nyad, on her 5th attempt, became the first person to swim from Cuba to the United States in the open seas. She was 64 when she did it. Yes. 64. |
 Narayanan KrishnanNarayanan was a gifted chef chosen to work at a top restaurant. But he realised as he was feeding his customers that people in his city were starving. How far would you go to lend a hand? How much joy is there in giving? |  Viktor Frankl (Prisoner of War)Isn't happiness what we all want in life? But is it really? What kept a Jewish Prisoner-of-War going, in the harshest of conditions, when so many around him have died? And what did he learn from it? |  Seth GodinBecoming a Linchpin |
 KunimotoHe loves being a Ramen Stall owner. Even if it means 15 hour days. |  Marc ChingIs it possible to live life beyond what we want or don't want? How about someone willing to give up his life so that dogs can live? |  Khaled-HosseiniYou have no time? He wrote a bestseller while working as a doctor |
 Masafumi NagasakiLiving as a real life Robinson Crusoe, and enjoying it |  Bronnie WareWhat do people regret most when they run out of time to do something about it? |  David GogginsThe Hardest Man Alive. Really. |
 Eddie HallThe World's Strongest Man |  Ichiyo KannoGiving even when so much have been taken |  Tom Bilyeu - founder Impact TheoryHow do you "find" your passion? |