Everybody has a fear of something.
I train with some great martial artists and boxers who have huge courage but admit that they dread speaking in public. I also know very talented IT engineers who are so frightened of exams that they never take them. They would rather suffer a huge drop in income then face the exam.
What is fear though and what can we do about it?
There have been many experts and gurus who have examined fear in great detail. If you want to read what they think then the two people I recommend are Susan Jeffers and Geoff Thompson. You can Google both of them.
You have heard I’m sure that fear stands for False Evidence Appearing Real however does that really help us do something about it?
Interestingly – A Course in Miracles says that ‘The opposite of love is?fear’ and that ‘all fear is self created.’ That really struck me because if we create our own fear then it means fear isn’t ‘out there’ but ‘inside here.’
Sure, we are bound to have a physical response to an impending attack or a fall from a great height but fear of stuff like flying, dying, speaking or exams is all self generated.
Of course, in these few words I can hardly tackle all fears but I wanted to get you thinking about your fears and how you use your mind to create images of things going badly wrong for you and how thoughts create feelings which creates the dread we feel around our fears.
Most fears come down to fear of failure, rejection by others and death. If we realise that in our lives we are going to fail, be laughed at by others and at the end die the we may come to the realisation that we have nothing to fear after all.
Paul Browning