How to Fear Less
By Mark Hedges, ACE Teacher
About the Lectureship Series
The Lectureship Series provides a platform for formal lectures by professionals on a wide variety of subjects relevant to contemporary, local and international issues. The audience is typically ACE Pre-Departure Training (PDT) Program students, other ACE students and alumni, and study abroad alumni, among other interested parties.
Lectureship Series presentations benefit the audience by being in English with a format to share information, think critically, have open discussions and ask questions. This enables the audience to engage, learn, and develop personally and professionally.
About the Lecture
On 29 January 2019, Joey Ra gave a presentation on How to Fear Less.
He began his talk by providing some personal information about fears he had faced himself and then elicited a range of fears from the audience. The distinction was drawn between three manifestations of this emotion: fight, flight and freeze. He also identified three components of the fear reaction and the roles that each of these plays: 1. perception of danger (normal and automatic); 2. physiological changes (keep us safe); 3. behaviours (hold us back).
The speaker pointed out that fear can be harmful, inconvenient, helpful or desirable. He also identified three truths about fear: first, that “fear is an indicator of growth”, second, that “the only way to get rid of fear is by doing it”, and third, that “we can train our tolerance to fear”.
We can train our tolerance to fear by developing courageous behaviour: inner beliefs, daily habits and practices. The speaker examined the question, “What inner beliefs lead to fear?” and found that the inner belief that underpins the majority of fears, both internal and external, is the belief that “we can’t handle it”. He also found that this belief can be changed.
Joey Ra delivering his presentation to an audience of about 50 people
One way to change these beliefs is by setting ourselves “edge challenges”. The main characteristics of these are that they should make us feel slightly uncomfortable, lead to accountability, result in fear ownership, and bring about “momentum” by being set regularly.
At this point, the speaker invited the audience to generate their own “edge challenges” in groups and then elicited some for discussion.
A student asking a question, following the presentation
He then moved on to the development of mindfulness, for example, through mindful breathing or walking. The aim of such techniques is to bring about detachment from the self and the development of the ability to cope with fears. A further means of developing mindfulness is by personifying our inner critic: visualising, naming and, most importantly, starving that element of our personality that tends to criticise our behaviours and feelings.
Another strategy for dealing with fears is, the speaker suggested, to listen to them, predicting possible concrete outcomes and identifying how one can prevent or repair those outcomes.
At the end of the talk, the audience were encouraged to ask questions, which they enthusiastically did. It was clear that the presentation had generated a great deal of thought and debate.