How Real Is Your Fear of the Future and What You Can Do About It

 We have no idea of what is going to happen to us tomorrow

Would I like to know what happens in my future? Would it not be like fast-forwarding the video to see what happens next? Or would it not be like reading the last page of the novel when you can’t handle the suspense?

If all of us knew the future, the anxiety in our lives would end — it would be a blessing if you ask me. But think of this: there would also be no suspense, no thrill, and no willingness to face formidable challenges that force us out of our comfort zones.

Life as we know it would be over. There would be no stock exchanges, no horse races, no baseball matches, no elections, no murders, no robberies, no accidents, and the list can go on forever. Everyone would be a precog.

Imagine if you knew all the companies you would work for, all the sweethearts you would have, and all the food choices you would make. If you knew the future, there would be no free will. You would live life like a person who had to follow a plan. It would be the end of anything fun.

Another major casualty would be our ability to take risks. As we would know everything about the future, the question of taking risks would never arise. There would be no danger and no risk. There would be no need to sharpen our senses to figure the risk of doing something in our lives.

In the absence of risk and danger, our fears would die as well. We would be free of all kinds of fear. With time, we would become automatons who had to follow a script written by an unknown free agent.

If at this point, you feel that it is impossible to know about the future — and it is a good thing that we don’t know much about the future — then we can move on to our topic: How real is your fear of the future?

To understand this, you must know that fear is knit into the fabric of our lives. Our five senses and other sensibilities have evolved to sense danger through fear. We consider the fear to be our enemy, but it is our fundamental design principle. We have developed our limbs, heart rhythms, and brain functions to manage this fear response.

Fear is not a villain despite its bad reputation. It is actually a helpful body response that alerts us to danger. It is a lifesaving emotion-based mechanism.

When our bodies sense danger, our hearts beat faster to pump more blood and provide more energy to the muscles in our limbs to run away. Our brains become sharp to neutralize the threat most effectively. Nature has developed this mechanism over millions of years of evolution, and our subconscious minds control it. Our subconscious mind is not in our control, though we can consciously stay away from threatening situations.

Fear and the future are linked only in our minds. Most animals live in the present moment. The thoughts of the future do not trigger their fear response.

Our fears arise from our imagination and memory of past events. From our perspective, we start painting all life experiences with our past painful memories using our imagination. Then we begin to expect that something terrible might happen in real life as well.

For example, think of a horror movie. A child is not afraid of sharks, but then she watches the film. In this film, sharks attack and kill people, and she learns to fear sharks. Similarly, you don’t fear romantic relationships until your first one ends painfully.

Our minds start a guessing game about every future experience. We are anxious to avoid pain — from our perspective — but in reality, we are only making ourselves miserable.

Our ability to construct future scenarios borrows heavily from our memories of the past. We can build future scenarios that we like or that we don’t like. If we have experienced something we didn’t like, we would perceive a similar future situation to be a source of fear.

Even future boredom has become a source of fear — but there is no sign of danger in boredom. Fear of loneliness — though baseless — is perhaps the most terrifying thought for most of us.

Fear is meant for dangerous situations only. Nature has not designed our bodies to handle it over long periods. But when fear links itself to every thought of the future, it becomes a threat to our well-being.

It is totally irrational. It is a lie that we keep telling ourselves.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933, during the Great Depression.

The future is unknown, but we must celebrate its uncertainty. We owe the thrill in our lives to this uncertainty. Our senses and sensibilities evolve when we overcome challenges and conquer our fears.

Parents must tell their children that their future holds many challenges — to make them what they wish to become. Most children naturally welcome the future and are fascinated by its potential.

“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves — regret for the past and fear of the future.” ~ Fulton Oursler

Takeaways

Our future exists only as a consequence of our present choices and actions. Barack Obama emphasized this fact using these words, ‘We did not come to fear the future. We came here to shape it.’

To handle your fear of the future, consider these points:

1. Fear of the future is irrational; the future only offers new challenges.
2. The unknowability of the future makes life fun — as well as potentially risky.
3. You can change the future only because no one knows it.
4. Reduce the pain of past experiences because fears of your future are rooted in past experiences. Talk to a shrink if you have to.
5. Do what you can at the present moment with what you have to create a better future.
6. Making a list of what you want in your future can stop your mind from imagining horrible future scenarios.
7. Talking with family and friends about your future can also help.
8. Since you can’t know with 100% certainty anything about the future, your emphasis on an adverse outcome is going to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Avoid this self-sabotaging behavior.
9. Your worst fears of the future may not come to pass. Sometimes, the discomfort you experience in the present moment is a blessing in disguise but you would know about its truth only in the future.
10. It is a feeling. Fear of the future is, in fact, a fear of an emotion you felt in the past, and you don’t want to experience it again.
11. Rename your fears of the future as upcoming challenges of life.

The wish to know — or control — the future is pure madness. It is like negating the very fundamental principles of our existence.

Don’t let your fear of the future cripple you. Make its uncertainty a source of strength because it is not known, and you can change it by your choices in the present.

Originally published on Medium.com