How to Conquer Fear and Anxiety

What if we lived a life without fear and anxiety — how much more of our potential could we reach?

In this essay, I will attempt to talk about the etymology of the concepts of fear/anxiety, and provide some personal examples of how I was able to conquer fear and anxiety in my personal life:

Why didn’t the ancients talk about depression?

A thought occurred to me:

In ancient times (Greek and Roman times) — there was very rarely any talk about ‘depression’ — but a lot of talk about fear and anxiety.

This is my basic theory:

Perhaps because everyone was constantly in a state of fear of death, famine, and exile (the feeling of anxiety) — people didn’t have the opportunity or the time to feel depressed (I believe depression usually happens when we have too much time to think).

Anyways, I wanted to use this essay as an attempt to talk about anxiety, fear, and how we can conquer it.

Anxiety vs fear

First of all, what is the difference between ‘anxiety’ and ‘fear’?

1. Anxiety

The word ‘anxiety’ comes from the latin “ango“, which means to bind, draw together, and press together (perhaps the feeling of your throat or heart closing up, when you feel fearful and anxious). And apparently the original word for ‘ango’ meant to ‘choke, throttle, and strangle’ (the feeling of “choking” when you get nervous, and you must shoot the “game winning shot”).

If we study the etymology of the word anxiety->ango, we eventually get to the ancient greek word ‘Ankho‘ , which means to pressure on, or to compress (tighten) the throat.

So simply stated, the concept of “anxiety” comes literally from the idea of “throat tightening” (the feeling that we get when we feel very nervous).

2. Fear

Now when we study the word ‘fear‘ — the etymology gets very interesting.

The old english word ‘faer’ means “calamity, sudden danger, peril, terrible sight.” The Proto-Germanic “fero” comes from the Proto-Indo-European word “per” (which means ‘to attempt, risk, try, research).

So in a very basic sense, we feel fear when we attempt or risk/attempt/try new things!

My best friend Seneca is probably one of the best stoics to study in terms of conquering ‘risk aversion’, and how to conquer fear in our everyday lives.

In his letters to his best friend Lucilius, he writes:

Two elements must therefore be rooted out once for all, – the fear of future suffering, and the recollection of past suffering; since the latter no longer concerns me, and the former concerns me not yet. But when set in the very midst of troubles one should say: “Perchance some day the memory of this sorrow will even bring delight.”

However– when Seneca talks about ‘fear’ of the future– what is he really saying?

I studied the original Latin, to find more specific words. Here it is:

Circumcidenda ergo duo sunt, et futuri timor et veteris incommodi memoria; hoc ad me iam non pertinet, illud nondum. In ipsis positus difficultatibus dicat: “Forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.”

Seneca uses the word ‘timor’ — which I interpret more as ‘timidity’, or “timeo” in Latin. which also means the root word of ‘to choke’ (Vedic Sankrit word, ‘tam’– which means to choke, or to Sanskrit which means “breathless, difficulty breathing.”

But to me, to be timid means to be frightful of action. To be timid means to not have the courage to take risks.

Thus to sum up, to be “anxious” and “fearful” essentially means the same thing.

Anxiety-fear

So moving forward, when I mention ‘anxiety’ or ‘fear’ — let’s assume I’m saying the same thing.

When you feel fearful or anxious, you literally feel the choking sensation in your throat. Or perhaps you feel your heart rate increase. Whatever it means for you, the feeling and sensation is real — and it is bad when it prevents us from moving forward.

My friend Jimmy Iovine (co-founded of ‘beats by Dre’//founder of Interscope records // I recommend watching “The Defiant ones” documentary on him-DR.DRE on HBO) had a quote from Dr. Dre’s “Compton” album:

“When you use fear to push you from behind instead of getting in front of you, it is very powerful!”

So I think what we are trying to do is this:

Not eliminate our fear-anxiety, but rather, use the power of fear to DRIVE US FORWARD, to PUSH US FORWARD, instead of paralyzing us!

I think most brave people I know still feel fear when they attempt risky things, or epic shit. Elon Musk is apparently very risk-averse, and many great entrepreneurs from the past have of course felt fear-doubt-anxiety often before launching their new products and ideas.

But once again what we are trying to do is this:

NOT let fear-anxiety paralyze us, or hold us back.

Thus, what if we were able to utilize our fear-anxiety to drive us to higher heights, like a booster-pack or a jetpack?

Fear tells us what we should do

This is one of my theories:

Fear tells us what we should do — things we want to do, but we feel nervous to attempt, because taking risks are inherently scary in itself.

For example in street photography, when I see something that scares me, it is usually something I want to photograph, yet– I feel nervous to photograph it. And the problem is this:

When fear paralyzes me and prevents me from shooting a street photograph.

But this is a good scenario:

When I see an interesting scene I want to photograph, feel fear, yet shoot the scene anyways.

The same is in business, entrepreneurship, and life. We should do more stuff which scares us– because often what we are fearful of is what we want to do.

Conquering anxiety for the future

Taking it to more practical ideas– often we feel anxious for the future. We are fearful that in the future, we will go bankrupt, have a major illness, etc, that will pummel us into poverty.

I am lucky enough that I grew up in poverty, so I know what it feels like being fearful that my mom wouldn’t be able to pay the rent every month, and that we may be homeless. But this is the great benefit:

Because when I was a kid, I knew that the reality of me being homeless every month was real — I actually became less afraid and anxious of it.

A lot of us fear financial ruin (bankruptcy). But my mom has filed bankruptcy after my dad gambled away all my mom’s hard-earned rent money, and after we couldn’t pay off all our credit cards to cover our asses and debt. But the good thing (at least in America) — having bankruptcy on your record made life more difficult (my mom couldn’t open up a bank account), but we still survived! My mom’s friends and family helped support us and our family — helping her co-open a new bank account, rebuilding her credit, etc. Now she’s cool.

So this is the practical advice I would give you:

Actually write down what your worst-case scenario/fear/anxiety is. And then write down how probabilistically-practically it might happen. Then write down how you think you would adapt to that situation.

The great thing about humans:

We are more adaptable to negative situations than we think we are.

In other words,

Even if you went bankrupt, lost a leg, whatever– you would probably “get over it”, and be ok!

Conclusion: Do epic shit

Without rambling on too much, I want to encourage you:

Go hard, and do epic shit.

Our lives are short. Why be basic and do boring, routine, mechanical things which AI can perhaps do one day?

Let us maximize our humanity, our human-ness, our skills, and leverage our ‘Archimedes lever‘ to the maximum — to supersede our self-imposed limits, and to take it to the next level.

BE STRONG,
ERIC