Everyone has to deal with fear, and the way fear is responded to can determine how we live the rest of our life. If we spend all of our time avoiding fear, we probably won’t get any better at handling fear when it is unavoidable. Jeff Wise’s new book explores the neurological underpinning of our fear response to better understand how fear can be mastered. In this article, he shares nine things that he found helps to increase courage. Studies show that physical fitness can curb the effects of fear, as exercise can ease depression. Thus skydivers with a lower body fat percentage take less time to recover from elevated stress levels.
- Anxiety is a normal reaction to stressful situations.
- But in some cases, it becomes excessive and can cause sufferers to dread everyday situations.
- This type of steady, all-over anxiety is called Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
- Fear is a vital response to physical and emotional danger—if we didn’t feel it, we couldn’t protect ourselves from legitimate threats. But often we bristle with anxiety about situations that are far from life-or-death, and thus hang back and avoid the vital life with mindless oblivion.
- When we get clear about the nature of fear, we recognize this as a vital response to physical and emotional danger—if we didn’t feel it — register this in some way . . . we couldn’t protect ourselves from legitimate or ominous threats. Yet it is clear that we often fear situations that are far from life-or-death, and thus hang back for no good reason.
Read the full article here: Nine Secrets of Courage from ‘Extreme Fear’