Acharya Prashant explains that fear is not an existential reality but a man-made, social construct rooted in a cultivated sense of incompleteness. He compares various fears to leaves on a tree, suggesting that instead of trying to eliminate individual fears, one must strike at the root. This root is the learned inadequacy and the false assumption that one is fundamentally unworthy or missing something. Society, education, and systems like advertising continuously reinforce the idea that self-worth depends on external acquisitions such as money, respect, qualifications, and relationships. Because these external things are given by the world, they can also be taken away, which creates the constant state of fear.
