What can we do about fears that are not useful?
Answer Podcast
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Are all fears useful or if there are some fears which are actually not useful, what can we do with them? Yeah, see for example, some people have phobias. Now, they just say biological, neurological, whatever it is. Some people have hydrophobia.
Just seeing the water body causes them fear. There is no rational basis to that. Then they just have to live with it.
Sometimes some psychologists may give some specific counseling or they may themselves find out mechanisms by which they can minimize the fear that they have at that time. you can consider a mind to be like an inherited house. Suppose you inherit a house, there can be treasures in it, but there can be junk in it also.
It’s not that every piece of junk that is there, I have to find some use for it. I understand it is there, it is occupying space. I will do some of it, I may just discard.
Some of it may be just it’s too much labor to discard all. I just keep it there, but I focus on the other parts and use the other parts. So, like that, some aspects of what we are are just too much labor to change.
So, if somebody has hydrophobia and they don’t have a profession which makes them work on water, then trying to work, worry too much about the hydrophobia may not be required. So, I think those fears which are not really very productive, they have to find out whether they are impeding us. If they are impeding us, then we may have to take specific measures to deal with those fears.
Otherwise, we just understand that all of us have certain limitations. So, we are limited beings. We are parts.
We are not the whole. So, we just acknowledge those limitations. This is what I am not good at.
This is what I get too worried when I start doing it. So, let me avoid it. Let me do other things in my life.
So, it’s very important to recognize the strengths of what we are and also recognize the limitations of what we are. Because in the limitations also, when you talk about limitation, limitation restricts, but limitation also focuses. That means, if I am having a window, the window doesn’t allow me to see everything.
The window allows me to see something which is there. We all have to go through a process of internal analysis by which we acknowledge our limitations and we focus on our strengths. So, our fears, especially fears which are not so easily changeable, we can just see them as certain limitations I have and then we direct our energy appropriately.
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