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fear
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I
can talk about fear quite easily because it's been such a dominant
part of my life
-- actually a driving force behind many of my actions (and
inaction) for all of the years the I've been on this planet.
Fear has been with me since early childhood and the fear of
getting in trouble or the fear of a spanking, through my
adolescent years with the fear of doing something wrong and the
fear of rejection, and through my adult years, and the fear of
being alone and the fear of things falling apart out of my
control, though I'm happy to say that the fear has diminished a
great deal over the last few years.
I've come to
learn that fear's kind of silly in most situations. It does
little except make me nervous and aggravated, but it doesn't
change the situation at all. Now, if fear actually helped
I'd be all for it, but it usually doesn't do much good at
all. It's the result of unrealistic expectations, and there
are those who believe that we aren't actually afraid of situations
or people themselves, but of what we consider those situations or
people to be. In other words, we create our own fears
through the way that we look at the world and the way that we see
things. If we see something as a threat, we feel fear; if we
see that same thing as a challenge, the fear becomes thoughts of
how to overcome that challenge.
We see this
principle in action in athletics all the time. How often
have we seen someone conquer his or her fear and perform
wonderfully in sports?
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We give our children pep talks and
tell them that even though they may be afraid to get out there and
play, they'll never know how well they could do if they don't at
least try. And if they trust us, they'll take us at our word
and go and try, usually finding out that it isn't nearly as bad as
they thought it was.
We have an awesome power as parents and
adult role models to help kids get over their fears if we want to
help them in that way, and in that power is a great
responsibility.
We adults also
have plenty of people in our lives who try to help us by
encouraging us to face our fears, but since we're their peers, we
usually don't allow them to have the same power of authority over
us. My co-worker or wife can encourage me all they want, but
I'm an adult now, and they don't know any better than I what's
good for me. So except in certain situations, I'll listen to
their input, but I'll act on what I know to be true.
In this way, fear keeps its hold on us.
Fear also can
be self-sustaining. If I'm afraid to make friends, my fear
will cause me to do very poorly when I finally do try to do
so. Because I do poorly, the situation is extremely awkward
and difficult, and chances are very good that I'll fail in my
attempt. Because of the failure, my fear grows, and my
chances of success the next time are even slimmer.
In many ways,
fear is a form of a lack of faith, and those who feel a great deal
of fear aren't trusting life or their God to be with them.
Of course, I'm not talking about the kind of fear that we feel
when a car comes careening around a corner right at us at sixty
miles an hour--that's an instinctive, reflexive fear over which we
have no control at all. But the fear that keeps us from
helping other people, from improving ourselves and starting school
again, from giving of ourselves for fear of rejection, from
sharing our feelings for fear of ridicule--these fears show that
we're not willing to trust that even if there is rejection or
ridicule or failure, God will be there with us and for us, giving
us the support that we need to deal with those fears.
Many of
our fears-- the fear that a relationship will end, the fear that
we'll lose our jobs, the fear that the world will end tomorrow--
are fears that have been with us since our very
young years, caused by some sort of lacking in our
childhood. It could have been the lack of a trustworthy
adult role model, or the lack of intimacy, or the lack of a stable
place to live, but whatever the cause, it has stayed with us and
makes our lives difficult today. Adult children of
alcoholics or of gamblers, for example, have very strong issues
with fear, and it's a lot of work--spiritually, emotionally, and
mentally--to overcome the fears that have been built over years.
The most
important thing that we can do about our fears is to acknowledge
them, and then take steps to understand them and their
sources. Once we take this step, we can work to overcome
them. Fears are our way of keeping ourselves
"safe," but the safety brought about by fears is the
false safety that we could get by locking ourselves alone in a
small room for the rest of our lives. We wouldn't ever catch
the flu again or get hit by a car or face rejection, but we also
never would grow into the people we were meant to be.
All of us must
face rejection, failure, pain, humiliation, the anger of others,
and many other unpleasant aspects of life. Dealing with
these adversities, though, is what helps us to develop our
characters and define who we are. If we listen to and obey
our fears, we'll never find out just how strong and admirable our
character may grow to be.
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When you are frightened, you
typically pull energy in to your center,
seeing less, hearing less -- shrinking consciousness precisely
when you need to expand it.
Nathaniel Branden
Self-Esteem
Every Day |
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It
is not that you must be free from
fear. The moment you try
to free
yourself from fear, you create a resistance
against
fear.
Resistance, in any form,
does not end fear. What
is needed,
rather
than running away or controlling or
suppressing
or any
other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch
it,
learn about it, come directly into contact
with it. We
are to
learn about fear,
not how to escape from it, not how to
resist it through courage and so on.
J.
Krishnamurti
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Everything on
earth gives cause for fear,
and the only freedom from fear is to be found
in the renunciation of all desire.
Bharti-hari
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Fear can
infect us early in life until eventually it cuts a deep groove
of
apprehension in all our thinking. To counteract it, let faith,
hope
and courage enter your thinking.
Fear is strong, but faith is
stronger yet.
Norman Vincent Peale |
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It is
our very fear of the future that distorts the now that could
lead
to a different future if we dared to be whole in the present.
Marion
Woodman
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You gain
strength, experience, and confidence by every experience
where you really
stop to look fear in the face. . . .
You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt
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Nothing
in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.
Marie
Curie
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Fears
are educated into us and can,
if we wish, be educated out.
Karl
A. Menninger
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There
is a time to take counsel of your fears,
and there is a time to never listen to any fear.
George
S. Patton
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If you let
your fear of consequence prevent you from following
your deepest
instinct, your life will be safe, expedient, and thin.
Katharine
Butler Hathaway
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Fear is like
fire. If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will
rise up and destroy you. People's actions depend to a great
extent
upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing
them or
because we are afraid not to do them.
John F. Milburn
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Fear is like a little
garden spider that makes
us jump back or the poor lost bee on the
steering wheel that we blame for our
automobile
wreck. The
problem in fear
is our response -- the way we treat animals
or insects that frighten us. . . . Fear is also
the
universal scapegoat we blame when we
take flight from
intimacy or shrink up
inside ourselves in a thousand little
ways.
Dan Millman
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No
passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers
of acting and reasoning as fear.
Edmund
Burke
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To
be ambitious for wealth, and yet always expecting to be poor, to be
always doubting your ability to get what you long for, is like trying to
reach east by traveling west. . . . No matter how hard you work for
success,
if your thought is saturated with the fear of failure, it will kill your
efforts,
neutralize your endeavors, and make success impossible.
Charles Baudouin
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The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
Helen Keller |
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Your
fears stand between you and what you want.
They're worth facing!
Stephen C. Paul
The earth
becomes heaven when you release your fear. |
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The
main thing in life is not to be afraid of being human.
Pau
Casals
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It is very
often asserted that fear is destructive. Yet this is not
entirely true; when fear is felt about things that truly threaten
security, it is protective. It is very fortunate that humans have
an almost unlimited capacity for learning fears; otherwise
we would have been eliminated long ago.
Smiley
Blanton
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fear 2
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Fear of trouble, present and future,
often blinds us to the numerous
small blessings we enjoy, silencing our prayers of praise and
thanksgiving.
unattributed
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The
single most empowering thing we can do for ourselves is to transform fear.
While fear contains tremendous power, it doesn't propel us forward and
upward,
but, rather, drags us down and chains us to the past. Freeing
ourselves from fear is
a loving intention because, as fear subsides, we are better able to access
the soft,
sweet power of our hearts, which naturally leads to loving
ourselves and others more freely and completely.
Sue
Patton Thoele
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Fear and lack of faith go hand in hand. The one is born of the other.
Tell me how much one is given to fear, and I will tell you how much
that person lacks in faith. Fear is a most expensive guest to entertain,
the same as worry is: so expensive are they that no one can afford to
entertain them. We invite what we fear, the same as, by a different
attitude of mind, we invite and attract the influences
and conditions we desire.
Ralph Waldo Trine
"Thought I Met on the Highway" |
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We are
all afraid of something. But that shouldn't stop us from going on
every day. We should not always walk in fear of the shadow while we
are
in the light. It is certain we will not know when or how the
difficult and bad
times will come, but if we accept that they will come, then they are
easier
to face when they do.
And always remember that anything that causes the shadow
is smaller than the source of light.
Joseph M.
Marshall III
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Fear
keeps us rooted in the past. Fear of the unknown, fear of
abandonment, fear of rejection, fear of not having enough, fear
of not being enough, fear of the future--all these fears and more
keep us trapped, repeating the same old patterns and making the
same choices over and over again. Fear prevents us from moving
outside the comfort--or even the familiar discomfort--of what we
know. It's nearly impossible to achieve our highest vision for
our lives as long as we are being guided by our fears.
Debbie Ford
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One
of the recurring statements of most philosophers and religions is that
life is not scary. You'll find yourself wanting to stop because of
fear.
You may want to ask for a date, or a raise, or for a loan, but fear will
often
stop you. The big secret is that there is nothing to fear.
This will be hard
to accept because of your mind, which will terrify you with scenarios to
make you afraid. Be not afraid. Do the thing you wish,
and walk through the fire. On the other side is freedom.
Joe Vitale
Life's Missing Instruction Manual |
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Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with
others.
Robert Louis
Stevenson |
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Fear
is a question. What are you afraid of and why? Our fears
are a treasure house of self-knowledge if we explore them.
Marilyn Ferguson |
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