What Is Our Greatest Fear? And How Do We Overcome It?

Going back to the question at hand, I can definitely say that I have had already had to face my greatest fear twice and unless someone finds a way for us to live forever, I know I will have to face it again. My first real experience with death came with the passing of my stepmother back in 1999. For all intensive purposes, she was a very healthy person and none of us had reason to believe that she was in any danger. One morning I was asleep in my room when my father woke me up saying that she had passed out downstairs in the kitchen. By the time I got down there and felt how cold her hands were, I knew that there was nothing else we could do to save her.

The amazing thing about my stepmother's death is that it ended up strengthening my relationship with my father. We had always been close, but I had never been in a position where he needed to lean on me as much as I needed to lean on him. As much as I would love to have my stepmother back today, I thank her for helping my father and I to form an even tighter bond and for helping us to realize just how short life really can be.

My second experience with death came a couple of years later when my grandmother lost her battle with breast cancer. Her whole ordeal taught me exactly how a person should live with dignity and die with grace. The whole situation was crazy because it was almost as if she knew that her time was coming to a close. She had all of her financial affairs wrapped up, and always seemed to just be relishing the moment each time we had a family function. I can clearly remember her sitting down surrounded by a bunch of Christmas presents and not even worrying about opening them. She was more concerned with witnessing all of our faces as we opened our own presents. To this day, I am not sure if she ever got around to opening her own.

I can remember being a senior in college, and she would always tell me that her goal was to live long enough to see me graduate. It always seemed like something silly that a grandmother would say to motivate her grandson in order to finish school on time. Remarkably, her cancer took her life not even a full year after I completed my studies. Graduating from college was the best give I ever gave her, and I am so happy that she was able to share that moment with me.

So yes, I have faced my greatest fear on more than one occasion and although it brought an immense amount of pain with it, it also taught me so much about how precious life is. It is unfortunate that it sometimes takes death for us to realize how lucky we are in life, but I am thankful to still have the opportunity to get it right.

We all have things that we fear, and some of us have had to confront those fears for one reason or another. The key is to embrace the challenge, and try to learn something from the experience. Often this can change the relationship from one of fear to one of understanding. If all else fails, realize that there are tons of other people who are afraid of the same things. It never hurts to ask for a shoulder to lean on if you are in need.

Here is a list of common fears and phobias people deal with in everyday life:

1. Arachnophobia: the fear of spiders
2. Ophidiophobia: the fear of snakes
3. Acrophobia: the fear of heights
4. Agoraphobia: the fear of situations in which escape is difficult
5. Cynophobia: the fear of dogs
6: Astraphobia: the fear of thunder and lightening
7: Trypanophobia: the fear of injections
8: Social Phobias: the fear of social situations
9. Pteromerhanophobia: the fear of flying
10. Mysophobia: the fear of germs/dirt

Learn more about these phobias as well as how to overcome them.