Learn the definition of fear and how fear is the number one obstacle to individuals striving to achieve success.
“Fear is the mind-killer,” Frank Herbert said. A coward dies several times before he dies,” while “the valiant dies just once.” Rev. Edward Kirkpatrick says that “God cannot help you unless you have faith, and the Devil cannot touch you unless you have fear.” It is very accurate. It is best to think of fear as a karmic death nail. Fear of any kind is a lack of faith and a lack of confidence, and both are deadly.
Since we know fear is a bad thing, we have many euphemisms for it. We prefer to call it anxiety, dread, worry, concern, or fretting, but these experiences are rooted in fear. So the important thing is to stop excusing your fear and get rid of it.
What is Fear?
Fear may be best understood as an entity. It is a separate being that lives in your mind and the minds of others. It feeds on your thoughts and, in turn, regurgitates those thoughts as something other than, and worse than, the initial concerns you may have had. Where does the entity come from? You make it! You create it with the power of your mind. You have created your own worst enemy, and now you must best it. It takes knowledge and passion, but the ability can be learned, and the power is available.
Fear can be palpable. You wrestle with it in the dark, in dreams, and the recesses of your subconscious. For example, you may wrestle with fear when you have to speak in public, apply for a job, face someone you aren’t comfortable with or do something new for the first time.
Sometimes fear seems to take form and whip you quicker than any bully on the playground. But unfortunately, fear is the tool of all playground bullies. Without fear, a bully is powerless.
In adult life, bullies are anything that keeps you from your goal or keeps you from being happy by inducing fear. Thus there are many bullies in life. Humans often intimidate each other, either knowingly or unknowingly. Circumstances seem to bully and often feel inescapable. Worst of all is the inner bullies. Inner bullies are those voices you have allowed yourself to remember whenever you feel self-doubt.
Fear of Failure as an Inner Voice
The record of every time you ever felt that you failed or did less than your best resides in your head as a voice. Often, parents, teachers, friends, and grade-school classmates were the first to point out your shortcomings, and their condemning voices are now a part of your psychological makeup. It is silly to think of these people, many of whom are insignificant to us now, still torture us for things we had done when we were so much younger, yet we all still feel like that same kid who lost their homework in third grade, left our math book in the rain, or perhaps didn’t dress like the other children.
You hear a voice in your brain saying you’re inadequate. What could you accomplish if you could silence these voices and think things out in a fresh way, based not on the past but upon the eternal now? Who would you become if you realized that you are new to change every day? You can become whatever you wish at any moment as an act of your will. You are not stuck in your old pattern of thinking and being. Now realize that you remove the power from these bullies by taking out the fear factor. Those of courage can overcome all the bullies. You can develop that kind of courage.
