Have you ever had one of those moments in life where everything seems to crumble all at once, or your entire year has been full of mishaps? Over the last few years, we’ve all experienced some rocky days, weeks, or even months. And during those times, fear is alive and well, and faith takes a seat in the back. However, most people don’t realize that faith and fear are the same. Both require believing that what you don’t see will happen.
This quote is spoken in the movie Life of Pi. It is true, you cannot know the strength of your faith until it is tested. But how do you effectively handle your faith being tested and the feelings of fear accompanying it?
What is Fear Really?
When we unpack it, fear is an emotion we feel that is triggered by the perception of danger. And that danger can be real or imagined. But even if it is imagined, our minds and bodies respond the same way as we would to a real threat. We confuse danger and fear.
Fear is often experienced because we feel anxious about the future, or we have a lack of knowledge, experience or understanding about a situation.
Case in point. Early on in my corporate career, when I was an aspiring office drone, I worked for a major media company. We had an event where I had was tasked with giving a presentation to about 20 people. I had to speak about where we were in the process of deploying an initiative our client had and I was terrified. I am extremely introverted, shy and had avoided speaking publicly like the plague. But now I had to do this as part of my job.
I was so scared simply because I had never done it before. I knew everything I was supposed to know, so going over that didn’t ease my fear. So, trembling in my seat, wanting to run away (I actually thought about how it would play out) when it was my time to get up in front of everyone, I impulsively decided to just go for it. I presented myself as more laid back than I felt, made jokes and was more engaging than I thought I could be in that kind of environment. And you know what? Once it was over, I was like, “yeah, I can do this again, it wasn’t so bad.”
I had built up my fear about this event, that wasn’t nearly as disastrous as I feared. My fear was so big over nothing in the end. And afterwards my boss asked me why I was so afraid to do it. She said I was engaging and made the event more fun and productive.
The end result of this was that my faith in myself was strengthen because I overcame my fear. I needed to go through all the self-doubt I had about getting up in front of all those people and not dramatically failing to show myself that maybe I can do this after all. In the last minute of me sitting in that chair before I had to get up and talk, I impulsively decided to just throw myself into it and have faith that it would work out. And it did.
