There’s a thin line between fear and anxiety. Our response to fear can cause anxiety. Imagine if everyday you wake up in the morning and fear losing the people around you. At the end of the day you will witness people going away from you and not talking to you, even if that’s not the reality, because you’ve made your mind believe it will happen, and now your body physically and emotionally is experiencing it.

Do you remember how gracefully many of us would deliver our favourite poems in front of relatives at family gatherings when we were younger? But if asked to do the same now, we may not be comfortable and confident enough to deliver the poem with that grace. Have you ever imagined why? Same poem, same function, same people, but now we are shy!? Our minds now and our minds then are the only difference. Earlier, at the age of eight or nine, our brains were free from any sort of burden, but now they have accumulated thoughts like, “What will people say? How am I looking? How am I speaking?” All these weights have made our minds heavy, and hence we prevent ourselves from doing things just because of all the fear gathered and captured in our minds. When a particular activity scares us twice or thrice, we convince ourselves that we fear it. Consider the example of a fish: Just because a man who loves fishing often came to a pond and took five to six fish every time does not mean that any other boy who comes would do the same. Maybe he came just to enjoy cricket near the pond or enjoy the scenes of nature. But the fear and anxiety of “what if he sees us and takes us away and we lose our lives?” will be stuck in the minds of fish living in the pond, and hence they’ll restrict themselves from coming out.

As we grow, it’s not just the body that evolves but also our minds. And with this evolving, there comes lots of factors in the form of fear and anxiety. The truth is, fear limits our abilities. A fear of flying would limit my ability to travel and explore. Thus it’s really important to fool our minds and convince them, “NO . . . I don’t fear of this.” Because once the mind is afraid, our body reacts accordingly to certain situations.

Also, along with this positive convincing, it’s important to face our fears, because running away from them can make them worse. Make your fear turn into excitement. Tell your brain that the thing you are about to do is not something you fear but something you are really excited for. Once your brain senses this, your reactions to situations will change accordingly. Your nervousness will change into calmness; instead of panicking, you’ll be relaxed, and that’s how you can deal with your fear and anxiety. What we really need to know is that fear and excitement are the same feelings, but our brains label them differently.

Fear and anxiety are not physical states but just beliefs within us that need to be changed.