I drove by a sign today that read “Live Your Life Fearlessly.” Yes, indeed, I thought. But why the need to state the obvious? What is it we are so fearful of in life?

The unknown, I thought. When we boil it down, most of our fears arise from not knowing what tomorrow will bring. The fear of failure. The fear of not living up to expectations. The fear of rejection. The fear of becoming ill. The fear of being less than perfect. And the ultimate fear – The fear of dying.

But why do we fear the unknown? The unknown itself is exciting. It’s pure potential. It’s the opportunity to create a new reality. Life wouldn’t exist as we know it without the unknown – It’s the space for our creativity.

I’m not sure it’s the unknown that we fear. What we really fear, I think, is becoming what we have labeled and judged as bad or undesireable.

We have labeled failure as bad; rejection as undesirable; sickness as failure. We seek perfection because we view average as weak. We fear dying because we were told about “hell.”

An interesting thing about our fears is that often they did not originate for us. We have accepted the labels and judgments of others, and they have become our fears. And it is not until we actually encounter that label or judgment that we lose our fear of it. Failing is bad until we do so and learn from it. Rejection is bad until we learn that the opinions of others are of no consequence. Being average is undesirable until we learn that we are all unique and perfect in our own way. When we encounter our fears we are forced to form our own opinions.

And just like facing down the bully, the best way to get rid of our fears is to look them squarely in the face for what they are – judgments and labels. When we stop judging and labeling our fears will slowly fade away.

So where does that leave us with dying? If God is the loving sort, even just a little bit, is there really any chance that we could be separated at death? Ask any parent and I think you’ll have your answer.

Timothy Velner is a husband, father, attorney and author living in Minneapolis. You can follow his daily blog – a series of discussions between the worry-self and the present-self at – thespiritualgym.me