Motivation Tips
"If fear is cultivated it will become stronger, if faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery." - John Paul Jones. Jones is a well-remembered naval hero of the American Revolutionary War.
Fear can be beneficial to us all especially if it stops us from causing harm to ourselves or to others.
Fear in this context makes us all stop and think before we do anything.
Like everyone, I have had a fear of something in my life. Fear is our response or our reaction to a previous life experience that caused us some degree of trauma. Trauma can be experienced when we start new ventures in life and this can be escalated if we have no idea of the result. Fear can be felt if we end a relationship, lose our job, cannot pay our bills, the list goes on.
My greatest fear was a fear of heights. This was not a fear I had as a child as I could climb a tree as good as anyone and I could stand on the edge of a cliff and shout out to the world. As I grew older I cultivated this fear from one small incident, the fear became so great that I could not even look out of a window from a skyscraper, even though I knew that there were bars on the windows.
This fear of heights apart from making me feel a little silly when I was out and about with friends did not really cause me any harm, it was not a cause of failure in my life, or was it? What I was doing was very easy, I was caring for this fear, one might say the same as I fed my pets, I was feeding it daily, the more attention I gave to the fear the greater the fear became.
On a trip to France, about four years ago, I was planning with my partner about all the sights we would visit in Paris. We knew that as our time there was limited, we needed to set goals as to the places that we would definitely visit and where we would like to visit if time permitted. John of course listed the Eiffel Tower as a must. I skirted around that topic and suggested that I would do something else on that day. John’s reply made me take notice of what this fear was doing to me.
“You can sit in this plane, look out of the window when you are coming into a new airport, in fact if you could get any further out of the plane’s window your would, but you are going to let your holiday be a total failure because you cannot look out and soak up the entirety of Paris from one of the wonders of this world.”…….He also added something along the lines that I need not think I was going to make his stay a failure because of my fear.
There was no more discussion on my part relating to our stay in Paris. From Australia to Paris is a long flight, I had an abundance of time to look at and indeed work on solving this issue.
I gave some thought to a quote that I had come across several times by Dr Maya Angelou…… “One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest."
I worked on my fear as well as my courage and visited the Eiffel Tower. On that trip I did not make it all the way, but I ventured higher and looked out over the Paris skyline. It is in my Journal to go all the way on my next trip.
Do have a fear that is causing you to fail?
Are you afraid of success and is your fear taking away your dreams?
Fear can be what is stopping you from doing what you want to do, it may be limiting you from improving your life, it may well be consuming all your energy and causing you that continual feeling of frustration.
Being afraid makes you hesitant to move forward, you procrastinate and do nothing or just dig your heels in as the saying goes remaining in your current situation. Maybe you have chosen to go into denial about your fear, blaming others for your situation and the fact that you cannot be successful. Maybe you are just not putting yourself into any situation that leads you to be successful which removes any risk of fear.
Fear is about choice. Your choice to stay where you are or a choice to move forward. The fear that is associated with life empowerment, success, self esteem have no relevance to those fears that keep you from doing something that is dangerous and harmful, they are not fears associated with basic survival. These fears are what you have chosen to conjure up in your mind.
If you choose to overcome this fear and move forward you will find that there are untold avenues available for you regarding new opportunities and a new enjoyment in life. Your self confidence will be increased as will your self esteem.
To move forward and achieve those goals or dreams that you have been storing in the back of your consciousness you must put your fear aside, work on the obstacles that you believe are causing your failure and move on in your new journey.
What do you fear? Why not switch on the light and step through the door of empowerment, conquer yourself.
In the words of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to conquer Everest, “its not the mountain you conquer it is yourself.”
Hillary was the first man to climb to the top of Mt. Everest, the highest peak in the world. His feat has now been conquered many times by climbers who themselves have switched on their light to empowerment.
