{"id":54,"date":"2009-03-10T03:20:09","date_gmt":"2009-03-10T03:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/03\/top-10-ways-to-stop-being-afraid.html"},"modified":"2009-03-10T03:20:09","modified_gmt":"2009-03-10T03:20:09","slug":"top-10-ways-to-stop-being-afraid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/03\/top-10-ways-to-stop-being-afraid.html","title":{"rendered":"Top 10 Ways to Stop Being Afraid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fear is running rampant in our country and our world. Every person who refuses to buy into the terror puts out a different energy. We&#8217;ll never overcome what we&#8217;re faced with if we can&#8217;t get the fear out of the way.<\/p>\n<p>1.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Stop watching television &#8211; the news anyway.<\/b> I&#8217;m not saying to put your head in the sand, just to get your news once a day from a good paper. (Heaven knows, we need to be supporting newspapers these days. Without them, the era of serious, edited and vetted journalism could come to an end. Now, that&#8217;s something to be afraid of.)<\/p>\n<p>2.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Stop talking about how awful it is and how much worse it will get. <\/b>It may be awful, but what will happen tomorrow or next year or five years from now, we don&#8217;t know. We can help, though, by expecting things tomorrow and year from now and five years from now to be a whole lot better, and basing our actions (and our conversations) on those expectations.<\/p>\n<p>3.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Have some fun every day. <\/b>People tell jokes at funerals and then they eat pie. This tells me that humans have to have fun, no matter how bleak things appear. It keeps us functional.<\/p>\n<p>4.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Hang out with happy people.<\/b> <\/p>\n<p>5.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Act as if you&#8217;re fearless, even if you&#8217;re not. <\/b>You&#8217;ll get used to acting that way and before you know it, you&#8217;ll realize you aren&#8217;t nearly as afraid as you thought you were.<\/p>\n<p>6.&nbsp;&nbsp;<b> &nbsp;Pray a lot.<\/b> How about, &#8220;without ceasing&#8221;? And throw some gratitude prayers in there, too. <\/p>\n<p>7.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;<b>Do some good in the world &#8211; actively, noticeably.<\/b> Sending a check is good; volunteering at a soup kitchen is better.<\/p>\n<p>8.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>Take care of your health.<\/b> Your brain is part of your body and if you&#8217;re not taking care of yourself your thinking will deteriorate. <\/p>\n<p>9.&nbsp;&nbsp; <b>&nbsp;Get enough sleep.<\/b> If you&#8217;re too afraid to sleep, breathe in and out, saying &#8220;All is well&#8221; on the inhalation, and &#8220;God is in charge&#8221; on the exhalation. And help yourself by getting off caffeine, at least after 10 a.m. I used to know a psychiatrist who called coffee &#8220;paranoia punch&#8221; because he believed it contributed so much to increasing people&#8217;s fear levels.<\/p>\n<p>10.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp; <b>Get out of the drama of it all.<\/b> Fear can be addictive since doom and gloom and Armageddon are, after all, more interesting than a ho-hum life. So, delete the ho-hum! Go dancing, learn a language, adopt a dog, teach a class, take a class, get out of your comfort zone and jazz things up. It might be a little scary, but that&#8217;s tingly-scary&#8212;it&#8217;s good, and proves you&#8217;ve alive. That other kind of scared, the mired-in-fear stuff, can make you wish you were dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fear is running rampant in our country and our world. Every person who refuses to buy into the terror puts out a different energy. We&#8217;ll never overcome what we&#8217;re faced with if we can&#8217;t get the fear out of the way. 1.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Stop watching television &#8211; the news anyway. I&#8217;m not saying to put your&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solving-problems"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Top 10 Ways to Stop Being Afraid - Your Charmed Life<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yourcharmedlife\/2009\/03\/top-10-ways-to-stop-being-afraid.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Top 10 Ways to Stop Being Afraid - Your Charmed Life\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fear is running rampant in our country and our world. Every person who refuses to buy into the terror puts out a different energy. We&#8217;ll never overcome what we&#8217;re faced with if we can&#8217;t get the fear out of the way. 1.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Stop watching television &#8211; the news anyway. 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Every person who refuses to buy into the terror puts out a different energy. We&#8217;ll never overcome what we&#8217;re faced with if we can&#8217;t get the fear out of the way. 1.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Stop watching television &#8211; the news anyway. 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