Lately, one thing I've been doing is anxiety challenges. That is, I intentionally do things that make me fearful and anxious to overcome them and get over myself. I have been doing things like singing in public places, talking with strangers, and next time I plan to wear glasses that I find ridiculous in size, on top of the glasses I have with magnification (done for the date). Things like that. I do silly things, whatever comes to mind at the time, to lose the fear of making a fool of myself. It sounds ridiculous, I know, that's why I do it. Nice to watch? Probably not, just a crazy guy doing crazy things. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter because in my opinion what I do works. For some reason, we are very afraid to be different and stand out from the crowd. Sometimes I want to look “normal”, and we definitively don't want to be an outcast.
I first thought about this a few years ago now and I remember doing some challenges back then. Then I heard Jordan Peterson talk about it and back it up with some studies. He said that if you face your fears, it doesn't make your fears go down, but on the contrary, it makes you braver.
If a person is afraid of spiders and confronts that fear, he not only overcomes the fear of spiders but changes the way he relates to fear in general. Facing the fear of spiders causes the person to make a lot of decisions in other areas of his life that he could not make before because he had different fears. This courage makes his life after facing his fear unpredictable.
We often don't realize how enslaved we are by fear. What would you do if you were braver? You can be braver, though that doesn't necessarily mean fear-free. But facing a particular fear makes us universally braver. Facing the fear of spiders in turn makes us overcome many other fears we have.
I once made a drawing of a house for someone to interpret psychologically and the interpretation was so accurate, I almost cried. She said several things, including that I had a deep-rooted fear. Knowing this simply from looking at a drawing of mine was almost like she was looking straight into my soul. Sometimes I can feel a lot of fear, and it's not necessarily a strong fear, just a nagging fear of seemingly mundane things.
I went to a psychologist and she helped me in a practical way with this. She had me make a list of my fears, and then she said, you have to face them. So that's what I've been doing, partly. And it's hard. And to be honest it's scary. No matter how ridiculous the challenge, it's terrifying to try to do it. Many times we are so afraid to do something that really seems insignificant, that you wouldn't even imagine it. It's like, I'm not facing life-threatening situations. Rather, it's just a little fear of making a fool of myself. It's amazing how much drama you can make over something seemingly insignificant. How bad can it get? What damage can be done? What's the worst thing that can happen? Well, according to my fears... the world ending. No, I'm just playing. That's definitely not the most likely scenario. Chances are, no one will care. And what can happen to us if we make a fool of ourselves for, say, a few seconds of our lives? The moment itself will pass and no one will care about it. It's not forever anyway. And nobody pays that much attention to us.
Most of the fears we have are (usually, and in my case) over petty things and insecurities. I have found that if you write down your insecurities and fears on paper you realize how ridiculous most of them are. Most of the time they are completely unrealistic.
So, going back to the challenges, have they helped? I would say I am somewhat braver now than I was before, however, it is quite difficult to have a record of progress on something you can't quantify. But based on how I'm currently dealing with circumstances, I'd say it's helped a lot. I'm certainly braver today than I was before.
I can't advise since everyone is different and it can vary, but in my case, I do think it has helped. So for me, it does.
We just have to be more attentive to practice being courageous daily, to face our fears during our life, because we don't really know how much fear limits us, how many things we avoid doing because of it, and how much it keeps us from the life we want. The simple act of being more courageous daily and facing our fears, no matter how mundane the circumstances, can drastically change our lives. At least that's what I think.