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Become Fearless

Although we may want to better our lives and accelerate our productivity, many of our decisions are governed by fear. We want more, but avoid risks, so we continually produce similar results over again. We fear change, for we may lose some degree of control over the outcome. We fear expressing how we feel or what matters most to us, in fear that it would make us vulnerable. We fear leaving what’s predictable and comfortable, although it may not be best for us. We fear not having and not getting, having what we want and losing it, even getting what we want and no longer wanting it!

We resist what we don’t understand, preventing growth by staying with what’s familiar and safe. We even do things or don’t engage in certain activities in the hope of avoiding fear. Resisting the fear of the unknown paralyzes our efforts to create greater opportunities for ourselves.

Ironically, most of our fears are not based on logic or reality. They are not real. Granted, the feeling of fear is very real and I’m certainly not disputing that. Fear is just another feeling, like happy, angry, frustrated, excited, or sad. These feelings often trigger a physiological reaction. Like these other feelings, our body’s reaction to the feeling of fear manifests in a variety of ways; an elevated pulse or heart beat, temporary paralysis, a knot in our stomach, neck, or back, even perspiration.

There are actually two parts that make up the experience of fear. However, we often collapse these two parts together. If one component of fear is the feeling of fear, the other part of fear is that which we actually fear or the trigger that sends us into fear.

Because most of us collapse what we fear and the feeling of fear together without distinguishing between these two parts, we have a tendency to resist fear and make it our adversary rather than embracing fear as an ally.

We’re all familiar with the three points in time: the past, the present, and the future. That which we fear is only the negative expectation or assumption of what may happen in the future (what we don’t want to happen) and what is never happening in the present.

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