Facing Your Fears Head On

I feel one of the ways to apply innovateology to your life is to face your fears. In a way, whether you know it or not, your fears are always in the background of your life even though you may not feel them day to day. If you identify them and face them you will be like a blank canvas for new opportunities in your life rather than the old messy canvas of past fears. Take a risk and face your fears head on. You need to push yourself. You need to ask what is the worst thing that can happen?

Each year I identify a few physical and emotional fears that I still have. Like never really learning how to swim or not asking for that raise or fear of heights. Yours could be the physical fear of spiders or snakes, talking in front of a group, or an emotional fear like abandonment, rejection, or loss of connectedness. Write them down for your own list (at the end of the blog are examples of fears you can reference).

Here are two examples of fears I have faced:

Problem: facing fears #1

Here is my first story: Recently I just found out I now have three aliments which have some genetic component: Hashimoto’s disease (an autoimmune disease in which the thyroid gland is gradually destroyed by your own body), prediabetes and some muscle atrophy.  And coming to terms with that I tried to read as much as I could and gain knowledge about these ailments.

I previously worked in healthcare and I put two ideas together: I had read that bariatric patients who are getting ready for the weight surgery and even though they’re 600 pounds they have a lot of nutrient deficiencies which surprised me because they were eating a lot of food yet still would have some very significant nutritional deficiencies. And so I thought, well, maybe every disease has some nutritional deficiencies in your diet or that your body can’t absorb.

So I looked up the three ailments in the scientific literature and I found out what the nutritional deficiencies were for each. To my surprise, there were specific nutritional deficiencies for each ailment. And I wrote them on one piece of paper and to my further surprise I saw that the three aliments shared 3 clear deficiencies which were Vitamin D, Zinc and Selenium. So I went back and looked up what the medical authors were recommending and now I make sure those three nutrients are in my diet every single day whether as food or a supplement.

So I just innovated by taking 2 ideas and combining into one and say I’m going to face my fear about these ailments and make sure I’m protected and my body’s getting what its needs every day. Plus it is probably something even your doctor doesn’t know.

InnovateOLOGY Solution: Knowledge is power. Read up on your health issues. Face your fear of sickness; just put it out there and just go ahead straight on into it. One way to start is to find out what nutritional deficiencies you may have related to your health issue.

 As an action item for the reader: I can go quickly through how I did this: Google “PubMed”. Click on first entry. Click on advance. Put [your disease] on first line and [“nutritional deficiencies”] on the second line.  Then read through the article titles that would have the information. Do that for each aliment and then see if there is a commonality.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/advanced

Results: I am on track to getting healthier!!!

Take a risk and face your fears head on. You need to push yourself. You need to ask what is the worst thing that can happen?

Problem: facing fears #2

Here is my second story: I always had a fear of handling guns; either being in the same room with a gun or anything to do with a gun. I just decided I have to get rid of that fear and I’m going learn gun safety and take a lessons. I looked online; picked out a store that had NRA safety training class; signed up and started to take the class. We went first through the learning stage of reading about the safety of handling guns then we started practicing holding a gun and then target shooting.

The class met once a week and one night I had studying for the next day’s test and I was really tired because I had worked really late but I forced myself to stay up till one in the morning reading my homework. The next day after work I went in to the shooting range and I started the lesson. I’m shooting the gun successfully and then later on I shot and no sound came out and I thought I remember reading that in my homework. I realized that the gun had misfired and so I put the gun down. If I had tried to shoot again it would have blown up in my face. The instructor who was the owner came over and said that was so rare he never had that happen in the 12 years of owning the store.

My example showed the worst thing that could happen actually almost happened yet I learned from it and I got over my fear.  I have no fear of guns now. I know how to pick one up and how to use it safely.  This experience has made me more confident to just go straight for other fears.

InnovateOLOGY Solution: My Innovateology take-away for you is to think about what are your fears, write them down and see if you can face them head on proactively.

If it’s too much to handle there are psychology books and psychologists that offer help; they use therapies like Systematic desensitization, also known as graduated exposure therapy…which is being exposed to the fear or a symbol of your fear a little at a time. Say with spiders you start with a small cute kid’s stuffed animal and work up to being in the same room with small baby spider in a glass cage.

Credit: http://joyfulpublicspeaking.blogspot.com/2012/07/bogus-list-of-top-ten-phobias.html

Credit: https://blogs.chapman.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2015/09/DomainsOfFear.jpg

Leave us a comment. Have you faced any fears head on lately? What has worked and not worked?

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