English projectFears in modern life

Name : VAIBHAV KUMARBatch : B02Roll number : 0311Registration number : DTU/2k13/B02/0311

INTRODUCTION“Fear is the quintessential human emotion. Some people live lives devoid of joy, happiness, and pleasure, but no one escapes the experience of fear. We are born in fear and pain. Our lives are profoundly shaped by them, as well as our efforts to avoid them.” Fear, experienced by every being of the human species, is an utterly unavoidable emotion. The extent and range of fears varies from person to person, but the emotion is the same.

So, in this research I have tried to bring up the fears in our lives today which have even been prevalent since the beginning of mankind and somehow are incorporated in how we live and face life.

The ones that would be discussed are:-

SocietyFailureDisappointmentThe UnknownDeath

SocietyIt may also be described as being afraid of ridiculed. The fear of ridicule is related to the fear of getting bad criticism, and is also caused by our

social fear of not projecting a good enough image of ourselves to others. This fear is most often experienced in what is called “stage fright”. We all have felt it at least once in our lives, having to speak or perform in

front of an audience. We fear that we might mess up and cause the audience to respond negatively. Even though some people practice hard enough to not feel stage fright, or have a well built self-confidence that helps deal with the effects of being laughed at or criticized, the fear of

ridicule never really leaves us because we don’t like the feeling of being in the spotlight for a negative reason, and being at the mercy of the

opinions of others.

FailureThis fear affects our lives the most because it rules over all our actions and decisions. We all do, and don’t do, things in order to avoid failure. Failure can be a lot of things like realizing you don’t live your life the

way you wanted to, not succeeding in your plans, finding yourself helpless, or in the worst cases even hitting rock-bottom.

Failure is a very ambiguous and subjective term because failure is not on the same level and perspective to everyone, what counts as failure to one might not be even halfway there to another. To some, failure is actually a way to learn lessons and try again, so it is not really an end, but a tool

for future reference. The main fear of failing comes with the disappointment that follows, that feeling that despite your effort, nothing seemed to go as you wished it did, and it causes a feeling such that you

might not even want to try again. That is why this is the worst fear of all, the fear of failure is very often used as an excuse to procrastinate, or not do anything to make situations better –“why bother?” and “I’m just not

good enough”

DISAPPOINTMENT

This fear is somewhat hard to explain, since there are two different fears that are related to disappointment – one of disappointing others and one

of suffering disappointment yourself.

We all, as kids, lived that awful experience in which we did something wrong or misbehaved, and were expecting a punishment or at least some screaming from our parents. But, instead we got the unpleasant sight of our parents just staring at us with sadness in their eyes, and saying “I am disappointed in you”. That single sentence hurt a lot more than any other

punishment would have.

The fear of disappointment is part of the reason we avoid the unknown, disappointment is that feeling of dissatisfaction when our expectations do not match what actually happened. It is obvious that we make our best effort to avoid that, and, like pain, disappointment is a negative

feeling that sometimes is followed by regret, in which a person wonders if their choices contributed to the outcome. “If I had done things

differently, would it have made a difference?”

THE UNKNOWN

The fear of the unknown is easily explained like this: the mind tells us that in order to move forward, we must know what is waiting for us

there, because “if I know, then I can control the situation, and if I don’t know, then I am not in control”. This second part is what scares us the

most, because control is what establishes a measurement that we can use to manipulate the result of our actions. And when we don’t like what is different, this is simply because we can neither understand it, nor have a

plan to control it beforehand.

This fear has been with us for thousands of years, and it is a great part of what has helped us survive as a species. Many of us, when we were kids, were afraid of the dark, mainly because we didn’t know what might be

hiding in there, and similarly when we didn’t know what might be at the end of the hallway we felt the need to pull ourselves away from it.

However, this fear of the unknown often stops our progress and makes it harder for us to discover and understand new things, encouraging rejection and closed mindedness. Moreover, it drives us to hate or

discriminate particularly people simply because they are different and not known to us.

Death

It is a fear that unarguably haunts everyone of us.It is the main reason our instincts tell us to act the way we do, but it is a well known truth that

we all in the end will kick the bucket. But that doesn’t mean we have death as our worst everyday worry, because we avoid the thought of it as a near future occurrence in our lives. We are not only scared of our death

but of any of our loved ones, it scares us equally.

The fear of death is tightly tied to the fear of the unknown; we don’t know for sure what will happen to us when we leave this world. In fact,

we are so interested in death that we have even developed whole cultures and religious beliefs that have tried to give an explanation to it

since the beginning of time. Almost all ancient civilizations have a godly form or a method of worshiping death in some way, and we’ve all

learned to respect it and eventually accept it.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.

Overcoming Fears“Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

Discussion of fears is of no use if overcoming it is not discussed. It is a very important process in our lives because it draws the fine line between success and failure, surviving or perishing! If not overcome them, these fears will continue to be strong in the depths of our consciousness and continue to shape our behavior.

So, to overcome them, we need to touch and embrace them. Each time, people touch these fears; it will lose some of its strength. Eventually, such fears dissipate, and happiness manifests.

So, in a straightforward way “To escape fear, you have to go through it, not around.”

There can be numerous techniques to conquer it like

1. Make your fear a source of fascination. The same things we fear also incite feelings of exhilaration and even passion. That's why people enjoy extreme sports, horror movies and swimming with sharks on vacation.

Try to re-frame your fear in a positive light and acknowledge the thrill it can offer. When you start seeing fear as a source of energy, you might even embrace its role in your life.

2. Start seeing fear as an opportunity. Fear can be used as a tool to help us identify problems and solve them effectively. It's a guidepost, a red flag that warns us when something needs attention. Once the discomfort of the initial wave of fear passes, examine it more closely to see what you can learn.

Towards the end I would like to say that, fear like any other emotion or panic response has been in the human nature and it is with us even before we knew that we embraced it.Fear doesn’t mean that we bring our lives come to a standstill. Life has to go on whether we want it or not.So, one way is to avoid it as long as possible and at the end let it control our lives or we can face it and live the way we want to. The choice is yours to make!

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.The brave man is not he who does

not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

NELSON MANDELA