Thursday: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid

Laughter kills fear, and without fear there can be no faith. For without fear of the devil there is no need for God.

Sean Connery

Fear has been my adversary for most of life. I don't think I am different than most people in that it is a constant companion. Fear is what helps us as a species - well, all species - survive. Fear, like all emotions, is based upon a real need. It is when fear gets out of our control and starts to control us is when it becomes an issue.


I think it was Winston Churchill who said - We have nothing to fear, but fear itself. This is the ultimate enemy of expanding one's potential and one's possibilities in life. When fear freezes our exploration into ways of creating a more interesting and joyful life, we might as well be dead.


I started out when I was about 20 something with a goal to face everything that I feared that was keeping me from becoming a free and happy person. Sometimes I would get myself in some very strange situations just because I wanted to prove that I was an adventuresome soul. As I aged, I really started to address this in a more logical manner. When I feared something I wanted to look and see was I realistic in my fear or was it a creation of my mind. And I developed a way of chatting with myself when faced with a new experience that might potentially create a threat to me. I now ask myself this question when faced with a new adventure, project, or issue: What is the worse that can happen? and then I ask: What is the best that can happen? I am now able to make more rationale choices not based upon an unfounded reaction that I call fear, but based upon a cost benefits ratio. If I potentially have more to gain then I have to lose, I will usually move forward to obtain what I desire.


Usually when I ask these questions, it has to do with my writing career. The worse that can happen is someone won't like it. Well, not everyone is going to like what you write, what you create, what you say, and often they just are not going to like you. That is not my problem unless I make it a problem by giving into the fear of not being accepted, liked or appreciated. The best that can happen, is that my writing will move someone and I will have been a help. A second best thing that can happen, is that I will be able to make money doing what I must do and that is write.


To me what I value most is the freedom to be me. I cannot enjoy that freedom if I am walking along my path with fear guiding each step.


Fear also comes when what one values is threatened. The primitive spirit in me does not want to take flight but to fight. In those moments I have a rise of adrenalin. I am poised to take action so that I may continue along my path doing what I do which is being me. When I was younger I would take these signals of external control by being ready to fight. When I felt that I could not win, I would still be angry but I would be frozen by an approach/avoidance conflict. Now, I take it more lightly. I have come to realize that those who would control me are only an illusion unless I empower them by giving into fear. It is fear that provokes the fight or flight. When I learned to detach from the emotion of fear of rejection, fear of not being liked, fear of not being loved, I found that more people seemed to accept me, more seemed to like me, more love seemed to flow into my life.


Oh, it is not that some folks reject my ideas and sometimes will push buttons that want to make me evoke the dragon of wrath, I have just learned that I always have a choice to respond in a negative, a positive or a neutral way. Usually now it is neutral because, "Frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn."