Daily Musings: Top Example of Overcoming Fear

What is the main concern in the world? Natural Disasters? War? Famine? Disease? Man’s inhumanity to man?...These are all traumatizing. However, I’d suggest that they are not the real issue. Fear, which is caused by these tragedies, is the true root of suffering. This negative emotion has become a serious, crippling pandemic. Our anxiety manifests itself in a number of ways. Here’s a partial list:

Rage/Offense
Neuroses
Psychological defense mechanisms
Self-absorption
Avoidance (of the source of fear)

An Example of Courage

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”—Nelson Mandela

Ahmed Kanan is a man I met on Google+. He is the owner of the community, Awesome Bloggers. He has lived in many places. Therefore, he is familiar with many cultures and societies. He accepts wisdom and truth from a variety of sources. I admire Ahmed greatly. He is a man with a heart of gold to whom life has dealt a tough deck of cards.

One of his current challenges is to make his true feelings known to the woman he loves. He recently wrote a cute article about it on his blog. He discusses how he decided to just push past the anxiety because he knew that it was the only way to find true resolution in the end:

…regardless of what she says, at the end of the day I will be relieved, knowing that I faced my fear…Knowing that I will no longer going to live with the haunting “what if?”…knowing that I am no longer scared from the two lettered word “No”…I am free because I now I know I won’t live in regret from being afraid and not saying anything…

Ahmed’s article also includes this quote: “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.”—Nora Roberts

Obviously, there are many types of fear. However let’s examine the two most prevalent kinds:

**Fear of Leaving our Comfort Zone (Fear of the Unkown)

My friend also references a wonderful saying that discusses how some people may be scared to push beyond mediocrity and uncover their true potential:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.—Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love

**Fear of Failure

Successful people are knowledgeable about the fear of not succeeding, in particular. Why? They have had to push through this fear many times in order to get to where they are. They had to move past the easy 9-to-5 job.

Every accomplishment is built on past mistakes. Often, we don’t know what will work until we’ve determined what does not work. It’s a process of elimination. This is a truth of nature. It’s the rationale behind the entire process of scientific experimentation. (Experiment means “to try”, not “to have a written guarantee of success.”) Thomas Edison, or any other scientist/engineer, would be able to confirm that fact. Fame seems to go hand in hand with success as well as failure. There’s no getting around it. I would like to share some celebrity quotes from an article on calebwojcik.com:

“You always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”—Hockey legend, Wayne Gretzky

************

“Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable”—Fashion designer and founder of the Chanel brand, Coco Chanel

************

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”—American Country music legend, Johnny Cash

My Conclusion