Fear is useful for oneself
Fear can be used to making one's performance better:
FEAR
Fear is a reaction to danger. It concentrates your forces into avoiding the danger. It increases your ability to concentrate into fulfilling the immediate needs of the situation. Your habits get a smaller emphasis and the demands of the situation a bigger one.
So let yourself concentrate relaxedly into fulfilling the needs of the situation. Do not grasp things, instead give them enough emphasis by taking them properly into account the usual way that you use your attention in things, which demand reactivity. By this factual attitude you can make your achievements better relaxedly without more worries.
This is what your fear advices you to do if you just listen to its slight sensations about how to change your attention, concentration, ways of action and even your mood.
If the fear has almost paralysed you, preventing you from doing anything, it is a mark that you cannot in this situation act in your usual way according to your habits which you have memorised but have to instead shift to a reactive acutely awarely acting and lively (like an animal, not keenly which is intellectual and theory-based and so too slow and unreactive and unaccurate - use a natural holistic view of the world instead) observing mood. (This is similiar to the situation of pain preventing one from doing anything else than concentrating on the cure.)
Shifting your weight to rest on the things that you need in order to meet the immediate needs of the situation.
* Feelings are rational.
* An emergency demands a better performance.
* Follow your feelings!
SAMURAIS AND FEAR
Samurais had to be very much afraid in order to avoid being wounded. There are at least two ways around the muscular rigidness and inability to action caused by fear. The oldest one is to follow the advice of the fear like I have described in my book in the chapter about fear. Another traditional Japanese one is to use the Buddhist meditative awareness (= natural non-forcing non-grasping attention and natural non-forcing non-grasping ways of doing things) in a way, which greatly enlarges one's capacity of action via detachment and freely flowing motion. These two used at the same time should bring the best capacity: so wise is the human nature.
MAKING BIG CHANGES IN LIFE
Pay attention to what stays constant and place your balance upon that. Get to know the new ground and slowly move your balance so that you rest on that instead of on the old ground.
CAPABLE IN EMERGENCIES
How to stay calm in emergencies: Pay attention to what stays constant, reliable in the situation, like the ground that you stand upon for example. Pay attention to the changes only in short glances, as long as you can bear, so that you can learn the main features of the situation. Then return your attention to what stays constant, a reliable ground to build upon, to rest on: "here is the ground, ground, ground,..." until you have recovered enough. The recovery should take from half a second to a minute or two, depending on the pace that you live.
Use your fear and possible pain to make your achievements better suited to the situation, like I have advised in my texts about fear and pain.
NOTICING FEAR AND PAIN IN OTHERS
So how would one make the difference between an animal, which feels fear in the right way, and a safe animal. First of all, if the animal succeeds in reacting to the needs of the situation, it is safe. But on the other hand, it is concentrated into meeting the needs of the situation, so its normal life is on a less emphasis - that's what you can notice: its concentration and the leanness of its normal life compared to the usual.
What about suffering: shouldn't we notice clearly when an animal or a human suffers? How can we do that if the reaction to pain and suffering is more positive than what we are used to? There is the same thing as with fear: a successful reaction to pain means successfully concentrating to curing the hurt part, so that the situation isn't as dangerous to the individual. As time passes, the hurt part will be cured. But for the mean while, there is no more need to feel the pain because the reaction has been correct, a healthy one: there is the concentration needed for curing, at the expense of normal life which has become lean and not so much well enough for the long run. The hurt one may appear weak and concentrated to curing, and that is just what has happened and what we can notice and feel compassion for.
REACTING TO FEAR
As you feel fear, notice which parts of your attention are foggy (typically that is your habits which you need to follow less in this situation): emphasise those things less in what you do at the moment. And notice which parts of your attention feel lively (typically the demands of the situation, the needed reactivity): base your action now on them. This way the fogginess and liveliness of your attention which fear causes, guides you toward a better performance.
The same advice applies to a fear of giving a speech in public or the like.
My Favorite Web sites
Enlightenment - capable in emergencies
Reacting to pain
Avoid confused thinking this way
Staying rational in emrgencies
A natural holistic view of the world
Email: Hannele.Tervola@gmail.com