Growing & Efforting Part 3: Propensity for Fear
“Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.”
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Fear is a funny thing when you come right down to it. It can save our lives or it can ruin them forever. Fear can cause a wondrous change, or keep us in ugly stagnation. Fear is a kind of power and you either wield that power, or are subjected to it. Fear will make you bow before it, or open up opportunities you never thought possible. When it comes down it, which road will you choose? Will you grow comfortable with the fear and learn to stay just within its boundaries or will you channel that fear to accomplish your dreams? The answer isn’t as simple as you think. Sometimes this fear is necessary, even beautifully comforting.
Our fears sometimes keep in the safety that we need to stay alive. The fear that says I’m afraid of jumping off that roof, is fear that ought to be listened to. That fear that says I’m afraid that car may hit me, should also be listened to. This fear isn’t detrimental, on the contrary it’s helpful; it’s the little voice in your head that’s steering you clear of all the things that might hurt you physically. That physical fear is a wonderful survival tool, grounding us to our values of life. This fear is comforting, safe.
Fear gets you into trouble when you begin to give into fears of emotions and ego. As opposed to the fear of physical harm, which is designed to keep you alive and in one piece, the fear of emotional and egotistical harm is the fear of hurting your pride, or breaking your heart. So often we find ourselves thinking She’ll never like me, or What if this idea doesn’t work? These thought are emotional and egotistical fears. These fears don’t keep us alive; they keep us stagnant and usually unhappy. Fear of ego and emotion says that our hearts might suffer and what we want just isn’t worth what might happen.
As humans we hate to have our hearts suffer because the damage seems so much more permanent. A broken leg can heal as good as new; it may be clumsy to use for a while, but soon it will be back the way it was. A broken heart is never quite the same somehow. It’s as if we can put the pieces back together, but we’re always afraid that the cracks will show. Whether it’s fear of romantic heartbreak or ambitious heartbreak, a heart with cracks is never quite as strong the second time around.
But what makes this fear so detrimental?
In part two of this series I talked about my experience with fear of the emotional:
I was afraid that if I failed, people might laugh at me and I would never find support for my endeavors again. I was afraid that even trying what I wanted might be too much because perhaps there was something I didn’t understand, or perhaps it wouldn’t turn out the way I expected. I worried that maybe dreaming of perfect goals would be better than actually achieving them. What if they weren’t as good as I thought they might be? I’d have wasted all that time on nothing. I was afraid that if I succeeded my life would change too drastically. I liked the life I had and changing me might mean permanently shifting my life in ways that may prove uncomfortable. Even in success I felt I couldn’t win.
Once this propensity for fear was faced and accepted, I realized that my life onstage had benefited as much as my life offstage.
This says everything about why the egotistical fears are harmful; they are fears of future pains. Physical fear is a fear of something that could or is happening right now. Emotional fear is fear of something that may or may not happen at some point down the road. You see, I was afraid that my dreams might not end up being as good as I had hoped they would be. I was afraid that I might fail. I wasn’t afraid of realities, I was afraid of fantasies. These fantasies were destroying my future. If I didn’t take steps toward my goals I would never feel truly fulfilled; if I did take steps toward my goals I would be terrified at something that might occur. I was in emotional limbo. Risks were what I needed, but they were the things I couldn’t take.
I’m not alone either, many people feel this way. You might feel this way, too. There’s some change you want to make in your life, or some new project you want to start, some risk you want to take. The idea of this change, or project, or risk is intoxicating to fantasize about and one day you’ll get started on it . . . when the time is right . . . But somehow the right time never comes and one day you realize that you’re no closer to what you want. You may even become self-aware enough to realize that it isn’t the outcome you want, it’s the dream of the outcome itself; the fantasy.
If this is the way find your life heading, what can you do about it? How did I get over it? How did I overcome my fear, you ask? How did I do away with my fears and become a constant forward thinker, fearless and self-motivated? The answer is, I didn’t. Not like that.
Look at what I said in the quote above. I said my propensity for fear was “faced and accepted” not overcome or done-away-with. I didn’t say that I had thrown them all over my shoulder and never looked back again. I didn’t loose them to become fearless and self-motivated. I still have them; the difference is that I do not let them have the final say when I make decisions now. I view these fears as advisors to me; they give me dissenting opinions. I give them my ear for a time and I weigh what they tell me, but in the end I make my decisions based on what I truly want, not what I’m afraid may come to pass.
Fears are not things to be overcome or done away with. You should never be without them. Your fears are like the voices of reason telling you all of the possible outcomes of your endeavors. The trick comes in that you cannot let them make the decisions. Your fears can give you advice, but they should never be allowed to make your decisions.
Most importantly, fears are nothing to be ashamed of. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid to fail. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid to succeed. These are natural reactions that everyone has to deal with, so you’re never alone. The first step to ridding yourself of your propensity for fear is to accept that it exists and seek not to alter it. Just because you have these fears doesn’t mean they will affect you in anyway.
I’ll go into more in-depth ways of working with your fears in the next update. I really hadn’t expected this to become a true series of articles, but the email responses I’ve gotten from these have been surprising. So look out for the next update where we’ll discuss how to not be ruled by your fears, but to work with them. Remember until then that they are a part of you and always will be and to loose a part of yourself would be a great pity.
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This is great. I had to learn to not let fear direct me or I’d never do anything. I’m looking forward to future articles on this because I’m still learning.