Ride the Rollercoaster of Fear

Fear can make you feel like you’re losing parts of yourself but you’re more resilient than you think. Painting & photo by Everestt

According to nature, fear is the greatest motivator. Animals survive simply because of the fear of not surviving.

Evolution is a never ending arms race between species; when one develops a skill to outcompete the other, the other responds with a new skill as well, or just improving the skill that originally worked. A real time example is in the mechanism of diseases, and the childish stock piling of weapons of mass destruction:

Is there a way out of these cycles? Yes, but that’s for a different article. Doodle and photo by Everestt

Although humans are a part of nature, we are separated by the fact that we don’t live just to survive. While a plant or animal’s main goal is to reproduce viable offspring or obtain food to eat, most humans’ main goal is different. Not better, just different. Seeing our lives as more valuable than the plants and animals around us develops an unhealthy ego; we’re all here for important but different reasons. This is depicted in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs:

Most other organisms only reach the physiological needs, but humans try to reach self-actualization. Image by Saul Mcleod, at https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

For these reasons, our fears are similar but usually different from the fears found in nature depending on your specific life situation. Regardless of what you fear, you can view it uselessly or usefully. You can see fear as a burden and refuse to tackle it head on, or you can choose to see it as great tool for achieving success and do your best to surmount it like any other obstacle.

Your Fears Indicate What You Need To Work On

Before you go out and start grabbing snakes and spiders to tackle your fears, you have to analyze your fears first. Not all fears fall into the same category of reasons for motivation. Perhaps we should rename Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Fears. Here’s some examples of how your fears might be categorized appropriately:

~Physiological fears: This is the fear of survival similar to fears found in nature. These could be fears of snakes, spiders, murderers, being homeless, a zombie apocalypse, etc.