If there’s one characteristic that marks every crisis, it’s that there’s always a sense of instability and uncertainty. A fear of the unknown is one of the most primordial fears known to man, especially when we consider that much of the reason why we are the dominant species on this planet is because we are able to search for, collect, and share information with others to create solutions.
However, in order to discover solutions, whether it’s a major technological breakthrough or a personal epiphany, we first need to overcome the paralyzing fear of the unknown. If you’re planning to embark on a quest for knowledge, innovation, and self-discovery, then you’re going to want to heed the following ways to overcome your fear:
Understand Your Fear
Much like any problem, it’s important to understand and define our fear. Our brains are programmed to prefer negative circumstances over unknown outcomes. Thus, it’s completely normal to experience this type of fear. And because it’s normal, it should grant you a bit of comfort to know that you aren’t alone in experiencing it.
Find the Source
It’s important to be able to analyze your fear as you would do with a case study. Define the particular details. If there’s one way to reduce your fear of the unknown, it’s to identify as many factors as you can. This way, you can piece together a picture of possible outcomes from your actions. The very first step to achieve this is to find the source of your doubts, and to build certainty around the facts that you have.
You’d be surprised at how people are able to create careers out of the ability to piece together pieces of information and overcome indecision. You’d be even more surprised at how so many people go as far as to hiring professionals like the ones from the Diligence International Group to discover this information for them. This is an effective representation of both the ability of people to master their fear of the unknown by taking the time to piece strings of certainty together, as well as the intensity of truth and illumination.
Question or Confront Your Fear
Now that you understand the nature and the source of your fear, it’s time to question whether these fears have any merit to the truth. We have to learn to be comfortable with the fact that there is rarely a situation where all the “unknowns” have been identified. For this reason, we need to be comfortable with the possibility of failure.
Far too many people allow themselves to become paralyzed with fear because of the unknown variables of a situation. The truth is that in order to be able to face these fears, we need to learn to change what we can, and to accept what we can’t. Most of our struggles are really a matter of maximizing our chance of success.