How to get rid of fear and panic

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (diaogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner: How to control fear and panic, and move towards our objectives?

Acharya Prashant: Ah! Now you have made it very difficult for me. You are saying that you do not want to panic, and yet you want to keep moving towards your objective. Yes? Where do your objectives come from? From the structure of your mind, your beliefs, all that has been fed into you. That is what gives rise to your goals, and objectives, and targets, right? And where does fear and panic come from? From the same stuff that has been fed into you.

You want to retain the goodie-goodie part, and you want to get rid of all that troubles you. You say, “No I want to chase those objectives, but I do not want to feel the associated pain and panic.” How is it possible?

In fact, those objectives, those goals and targets, are inseparable from fear. Wherever there is an objective, there would be fear associated with it. You hope to get something, and you fear that you may not get it. Don’t you see that a man, who is chasing goals, has condemned himself to live in fear?

Whenever you are having an objective, you want to meet the objective, don’t you? And when you want to meet it, there is always a parallel thought that you might miss it. This thought itself is fear. Now you know why you panic? Because of these objectives. To have an objective, and yet to remain centered, is a different thing altogether. That happens when the objective is not an external stuff.

It is possible to have an objective, and be on the road to it, very calmly. It is possible to work very energetically, without the fear of loss, or without the fear of failure. But that happen only when your objective is not arising from an internal sense of incompleteness.

Understand it like this.

When we set an objective, we say, “When I get that, X, I would be better-off.” Isn’t that the feeling while chasing every goal? That — “When I accomplish my mission, then something would be added to me. I would be a better man, I would be better-off.” Is that not so? Yes?

So, all our objectives, in a way, start from, and feed on our sense of inferiority. “I am not quite…