I was in my bedroom couple of weeks ago, 2 am, writing. Then I heard a noise downstairs. After a second of reviewing all the possibilities (roof rats, animals, etc.), I decided that they may be a real uninvited person or two there. So, I reviewed the situation carefully. Screaming “who is out there?” or going down to the kitchen with a baseball bat and a flash light that I don’t own, in my night gown to fight the stranger, was not an option. I am always amazed at these women on TV! They do exactly that and get a way with it. But me, 5 foot short and no bat? I don’t think so. I made sure my cell phone was working and held it close to me. Walked slowly to the door, closed it, and went back to write and I came up with this. I woke up the next day, went downstairs and thought to myself “never under estimated the power of other creatures living in your house!”
Napoleon Hills the author of “Think and Grow Rich” (I highly recommend this book) summarize all possible human fears (mouse in the pantry not included with purchase 🙂 I went through them one at the time saying: yap, that’s me, nop, not afraid of being alone, yes afraid of …
This was a great exercise – a true wake up call. Interesting fears are ones you have no control over. Like getting into an accident! Amazing are fears that you do have control over: rejection for example! I may not have control over who rejects me and why, but I sure do have control over my emotions when I get rejected. Should I take it personally? Isn’t that all about emotions after all? Don’t we all want to feel good so we avoid the unpleasant as much as possible?
Living life with fear to me, is like climbing a mountain while carrying a bag filled with heavy rocks. Life is a journey, travel light! We know we are afraid and we don’t like it, but we still are. Why? Do we not know better? Or are we addicted to the feeling of fear? Or, are we sticking with it because it is a known territory? We know how to do that: being worried, fearful, or being “realistic?” by projecting how everything can go wrong to protect ourself from failing (yet, another very common fear that we don’t like to talk about!)
We sure do know that fear is a motivator in many cases. I for example, grew up with “if you don’t do that, the consequences are (and, here comes the most creative exaggerations – I was one of the best, when I wanted to motivate myself and my kids!) That is one thing I believed in. But, here is the question: Do we still need to motivate ourselves and others in the same way, seriously? Isn’t that interesting that some corporate still use fear based motivation because we buy into it? Even advertisers use fear to sell products.
People, who are fearless from my point of view, are the ones who recognize their fear, face it and continue doing what they want to do anyway. They refuse to have their fear define their life and stop them from moving forward. Or, they totally don’t know about it. Like a child who starts to walk. He falls and gets up, falls and gets up until s/he starts walking. Just imagine if s/he stopped at the first failure and decided, nah, walking is really not me!
It could be actually fun to look into the face of fear, may be we can scare it J what do we have to loose anyway? How are you facing your fears? Would you have gone to the kitchen?