Humans, once they stop internal conflict, hesitate, and act decisively, become too terrifying. History has proven this countless times.

So, God designed a mechanism specifically to make you weaker and more hesitant. This mechanism has been discovered by different schools of thought; some call it the Id, Superego, Self, some call it attachment, and some call it the Alaya consciousness. Whatever it's called, we can simply understand it as a little person.

This little person feeds on these negative emotions, and your relationship with it is somewhat yin and yang. The more anxious, regretful, tense, and depressed you are, the bigger this little person becomes, and your own willpower becomes weaker. In the end, you dare not do anything you want to do, and it turns into learned helplessness. Over time, it becomes depression.

Once it reaches the level of depression, you almost find it very difficult to defeat this little person; the only way is to perish with it. It’s somewhat like our immune system—normal times, it protects us, but once it becomes too strong, it can backfire.

If you don’t want to reach that point, you can only weaken it and strengthen yourself.

Fortunately, although different schools of thought have different names, their methods to weaken it are highly consistent: realize its existence, observe it without emotion—that's enough. It’s that simple. Because as long as you observe without emotion, it’s like cutting off its food source; if it has nothing to eat, it will naturally weaken and become limp.

If you still think that’s not enough, then make yourself stronger. The way to do that is also very simple: do what you want to do, go and succeed. The more you win, the stronger you become.

Being afraid to face failure is essentially feeding this little person. What you need to do is first recognize and admit your cowardice. Once you do this, you will naturally be at ease.

Whether you can be brave after knowing shame depends on your determination.