Don't fear fear!

- January 23, 2020

Fear!! You cant live with it and you can't live without it!

Fear is the emotion that we all fear! ....

Yep I'm stating the bloody obvious and attempting to be funny at the same time.... oh well, cue the tumble weed.. but I will try to redeem myself and not get my coat just yet!

So that old devil called fear. What's it all about?

Well fear, believe it or not, is actually a positive emotion that is designed to protect us and when we feel it, it gives us a strength to override all other feelings in favour of the natural instincts that are in us all to ensure that we automatically respond to protect ourselves from the perceived threat in one of three ways;

Freeze
Flight
Fight

To feel fear means that you must have some hope that you can survive the danger that you are faced with! When you have no hope of escaping from the threat then you will accept this and fear will not be triggered in you.

But...
Yes there is always a but!
The problem is that many people tend to feel fear that is not there and is nothing more than a negative perception of a change being something to fear and they revert to number 1 when responding to this imagined fear which is to freeze!

This response has its uses but it hinders more than being of use in today's world!

It makes us stand still and do nothing because we are afraid of a fear that is a projection of the future!

Fear is always orientated in the future as you can only fear something that is going to happen however we quite often jump to conclusions about the outcome being a negative one without having any good reason! So then quite often number 2 kicks in and we move forward from being in freeze mode to flight and we flee from the fear in our attempt to avoid it without having the gumption to make the connection that the fear is only due to our inner projection of a fear that we perceive may be there in the future when we have no real insight to its existence or likelihood that it is definitely there and most probably isn't! This is when we bury our heads and quite often shy away from a situation that we are even aware is likely to be better for us in the long run because we fear making the decision or the change we need to make for it to happen which is often because we doubt our ability and even that we deserve it.
This is what makes so many people feel regret in later life and they wish that they had just taken the chance at the time as they now feel more fear and have decided that it's not something that they can do now as it's too late.
Its not often that you hear someone say that they regret taking the chance and facing the fear even in the remote occasions that when they did it failed as they very rarely fail for too long and they often then succeed as a result of the failure which is then seen as something that they had to deal to with in order to achieve everything they have done since as a result.

As an example of this then I will use Walt Disney to illustrate.. (pun intended!)

Walt Disney was told by his first employer, a small local newspaper in Kansas, that he was not up to the job as their illustrator because he lacked talent as well as imagine and when he refused to accept this opinion and just take the safe option of a menial role, they fired him.. I'm sure at the time Mr Disney not only felt demoralised but he also was full of fear especially when he had given up the safety of having a job in favour of no job and the nagging doubts in the back of his mind caused by an editor who he was aware had to have some expertise and therefore maybe some truth in the words he had said that was he was not good enough and never would be.
Instead of let this fear which actually was not unjustified or unrealistic for him to feel and he could have been justified to deal with by freezing which he could have done by taking the menial role and then fleeing the fear by accepting that he should not bother to try by accepting that the editor probably knows best..
He chose to use the fear and fight and the whole world has benefited from his decision and that fear and the initial failure of facing the fear are nothing more than distant memories to him now and he has probably never been in a situation where he has ever regretted choosing option 3 nor has he had to look back on this time with regret...

Fear comes with options and in my opinion option three (Fight) can never be the wrong choice but both options one or two, freeze or flee can never be more than self created barriers to stop you from achieving your true potential and your dreams!

When you are facing fear that is not life threatening then your only fear is about whether you may fail and if you fail to try then you have already failed!