Saturday, July 30, 2011

The influence of fear.

It's interesting to see the influence fear has on our lives and how they, most of the times, prejudice our lives decisions and changes.


We all have fears. I think I have ever met a person who didn't know fear. And on one hand fear is a good thing, there it keeps us save from danger, makes us realize when to run or when to defend ourselves. Yet on the other hand many of our fears are surrealistic. Or sometimes they are realistic, but they are given way to much credit and atention.

I think we can divide different types of fears. The first one I would call the general fear. By this I mean the fear shared by a whole society, mostly created by  the mass media, as there is the fear of terrorism. Mostly those type of fears are created on purpose, with deeper intentions. Yet I don't want to go into detail on this subject.

The second type of fear is the personal fear. Even though those fears may be the same for many people in our society, they are the result of our own experiences. Everything we experience in life we divide in good of bad. Someone went on a holiday, when he comes back he will talk about his experiences and will label them 'good experiences' or 'bad experiences'. 
The division of good and bad is one of the factors of the creation of personal fears. When we label something as bad, we make it negative and in a way we say that we don't want to experience the same again. So then we try to avoid such a situation. When we feel we do come near a similar situation we start to feel restless and before you know a fear is created. Now, the more credibility you give those fears, the more power they get over you. In a short amount of time you will see that those fears start to take over your life, they will influence all of the decisions you make in you life. The more fears you create the more limited your life will be, in every aspect. Did you get heartbroken, you might fear to open up to someone again. Did you get fired, you might fear to start a similar job. Did you get an accident, you might never drive again.

Then there is another fear, the reflected fear. This is the fear of other people that they try to reflect on you. Say you want to start you own company and your brother in law once got bankrupted, most likely he will reflect his fears on you, which might you start doubting your own ideas and capacities. Of course, a self conscious man with high self-esteem and -confidence will not be as accessible to those reflected fear as someone who has a lower self-esteem. The latter will always give credit to the opinions of other people and is no able to distinguish fear and reality, neither in the person, nor in them selves, what makes them very indecisive people.

So, if we want to start living our lives to the fullest and in the way we deserve, it's utterly important we start recognizing those fears and deal with them. Only then we will get back a hold on our lives.


Most of our fears are well recognizable, we might picture them as the 'bears on the way'. One way of dealing with our fears is by using our brainpower. Whenever you feel you're being confronted with one of your fears, try to picture it in your head. It might be a very frightening image. Once you got this, make it smaller, like zooming out with a camera. This way you visualize yourself giving less and less credit to this fear. Or, if easier, try to make it ridiculous. So, going back to the bear on the way, showing his big claws and wide open mouth: try to see the nails of this claws with a sugary taint of nail polish. Or maybe all his teeth fall out of his mouth and therefore he starts looking like your grandma after taking out her denture. Anyway, make it smaller or ridiculous, it will help you overcome the fears already existing in your life.

Now, to make sure you don't create any more of those unnecessary fears we have to look back to what I said about the division of good and bad. We already saw that fears are mainly based on experiences we classified as 'good' or 'bad'. So, if we stop labelling our experiences and see them as learning points in our life it might make us more and more alert in the next situation, yet it doesn't create fear.
When you got heartbroken, in stead of fearing getting close to someone again, appreciate all the beautiful things this relationship has given you and know that the next will bring them too. Even learn to appreciate the hurtful things, as they gave you the live experiences you need for you to grow and get wiser.
And in stead of fearing the next job in another company, make sure this time you'll be more assertive. 

Once you start recognizing our own personal fears it will get more an more easy to recognize the general and reflected fears as well. Before you know you will be writing your life script again!

Nb: Important to know as well is that you'll be attracting those things you fear most. By fearing them, you give your fears a lot of attention and energy, what will be send into the universe, where it will find itself with its object. By the vibration sent out by you the object of your fear will come to you.