Able to Learn Zen is a blessing. Start to Apply Zen's teaching in daily life is double of   the blessing.  The teaching seems so direct and simple. But yet to be able to break through the thinking pattern needs triple of blessing as it requires great courage to yank out the root that we are holding tight to.   The sky might be blurry,  the road might be bumpy,  but you are not alone.  Rest and settle your mind½  And let Master guide you to the light.   Student:  "How to overcome our fear?" Master:  "In our mind, we have many habitual thinking patterns.  Based on habitual thinking patterns, we define things, people and everything.  When the reality is far beyond with our definition or expectation, we will have depression, anger, or negative feelings.  All types of emotions only represent or tell you that you don't know how to handle the reality.  Most of people only handle their emotions but not the reality.  We build the wall and we need to tear the wall down.  We do this all the time. Fear is an emotion; it is a feeling.  What does feeling mean?  In this right moment, I am generating one single thought related to fear.  If I keep generating thoughts related to fear, it will become an emotion called fear.  We have our mind keep generating similar thoughts related to fear; so we have fear. The mind is the only place where can generate the thought.  The thought gives us all types of feelings. We are afraid of changing because we try to keep our attachments.  Based on our attachments, we keep creating something similar corresponding to our self-attachment.  If we don't fix our personality, if we don't fix our negative habitual thinking patterns, we will spend a lot of time in vain.   Check with yourself, how much time has been wasted by you?  It is a lot!  Mind has no form.  Fundamentally you are free.  You are free from anything; however you lose your freedom because you attach to your own thoughts and thinking patterns .  Let go off the thought and you are free. " Does it ring a bell? Hope this help!