Self Help

There is nothing greater that comes in the way of success then fear does. It literally can paralyze people from making those decisions to live a greater existence. We all know what fear feels like. It is probably the most common limiting emotion and, for many people, the most common emotion, period. Not only do we fear new things, we also feel fear in addition to other negative emotions. We feel guilt, and we’re afraid to feel the guilt. We feel pain, and we’re afraid to feel the pain. Even when we feel fear, we’re often afraid to feel the fear. That’s known as “worrying about your worries,” “an anxiety attack.”

Because it’s so common, fear has many other names: apprehension, misgiving, trepidation, dread, horror, phobia, terror, alarm, consternation, foreboding, qualm, suspicion, trepidation, fret, alarm, uneasiness, distress, panic, etc. Physically, we feel fear in the area we generally call the stomach. In its more intense forms, the feeling of fear is accompanied by a quickening of the pulse, a widening of the eyes, and a sharpening of the senses.

Someone once described fear in an acronym: “False Expectations Appearing Real.” For the most part, what we fear is not real - it is merely our mind imagining something awful that has not yet happened. Seldom do we do the thing we fear, so we never discover if our projection of disaster was accurate. In fact, when we don’t do the thing we are afraid of, we breathe a sigh of relief as though it actually would have taken place. “That was a close one!” we say, even though we never actually got close to anything but a string of our own negative thoughts.

Fear breeds lack of experience, lack of experience breeds ignorance, ignorance breeds more fear. It is a vicious circle. As Lucretius described it more than two centuries ago, “For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true.” Put another way, fear is interest paid on a debt you may not owe.

When we begin to feel fear, we look around for something to fear. Considering all there is to look at (the media, the environment, our body, our memory, our imagination), we have little trouble finding something. Thus the fear grows, our perception of the world darkens and it becomes an increasingly terrible place.

Eventually, we begin to avoid all things and thoughts that even might produce fear, or that might produce the fear of fear, or that might produce the fear of fear of fear. It becomes a many-layered fortress - fear defending fear defending fear defending fear - and inside: nothing.

Anytime we let unreal fears (and that includes untested fears) keep us from moving toward our dreams, it is a form of madness. Do not let this madness get in the way of your success, whatever that may be for you.