If you’re honest with yourself, you must admit that there are fears that attempt to creep into your consciousness, particularly when you are considering doing something new. These fears have a dual purpose: 1) to keep you from enjoying life now to its fullest, and 2) to lure you into placing them in your subconscious mind through inordinate worry about them so that they may contribute to your early demise. To achieve the greatest level of success possible, you must challenge these fears and conquer them completely. Otherwise, they will rob you of the personal joy and satisfaction of all that you have already accomplished and inhibit your belief that you can achieve an even greater level of personal success in the future. The 7 Basic Fears include: criticism, ostracism, being alone, losing everything, aging, debilitating sickness, and death.
No one enjoys being criticized, particularly when it is not constructive—and most of the criticism people will give you tends to be less than helpful and more an opportunity for them to share their negative thoughts about you. But you must decide that you cannot let your fear of criticism keep you from your destiny. The lesson you must learn is that people will criticize you for whatever you choose to do or not do. If you make or refuse to make decisions based on whether or not you will be criticized, then you will forever have to change whatever course you take whenever the criticism gets too harsh. The antidote to this fear of criticism is to realize that since you’re subject to criticism no matter what you do, you need to do whatever you believe will get you to the personal success you seek. You do have a choice: you can be criticized for succeeding or failing. Choose the former!
If you’re not careful, your fear of ostracism—being put out, separated from the company of those you admire—can work to thwart your goal of becoming successful. If your sense of who you are requires the approval of others to validate you, then you will make decisions not based on what you believe to be the right or best choices, but on the responses of your social validators. In that case, you’re not functioning as a self-determining subject, but rather, as an other-directed object, devoid of the capacity of agency that defines your humanity in a state of freedom.
The fear of being alone is so common in our society that people rush into meaningless and unfulfilling relationships to avoid it. In fact, countless people stay in unrewarding and lifeless relationships just so they won’t experience being alone. Somewhere deep in the recesses of our brains is this fear of abandonment, of being left alone forever. As with any fear you may experience, the first step is to acknowledge it and seek to discover what in your past caused this fear. Discovering the root cause of this fear is important for gaining the confidence you need to overcome it.
You cannot get to personal success without taking risks—large, life-changing risks. The risks related to moving forward, however, are not as scary or difficult to face and overcome as the risks associated with leaving the comfort zone of your present experience. If you’re not careful, the fear of leaving and losing everything you have will keep you from moving into the future where your success lies. To take any journey, you must leave where you are to get where you’re going.
Your fear of losing everything you know, understand and with which you’re familiar rears its ugly head whenever you’re required to move away from your past to embrace your future. Countless people let this fear of losing everything inhibit them from risking the loss of their current life to gain the benefit of a better, more fulfilling life. Success cannot be achieved without taking significant personal risks—not once, but over and over again.
Fear of aging is not something that crosses the minds of young people: they presume that they will be young forever. But for people over the age of 35, there just may be some momentary, fleeting thoughts about what life will be like when they’re older.
Modern medicine has actually heightened the fear of aging for many people. Because medical science has found ways to treat chronic illness and prolong life, many people are worried about outliving their resources. So the thought of aging brings with it the fear of ending up in poverty, regardless of the financial success that may have been part of life when they were younger. You must decide not to worry or fret about what might happen to you when you’re 95. You must believe that you will never get old until you decide to be old—which may be when you’re 137!
The fear of contracting or inheriting a debilitating sickness is more on the minds of aging people and younger persons who are aware of their family medical history than on people in the population generally. This fear can limit people’s choices for themselves today because they feel tethered to inevitable timelines in which they see themselves crippled physically, mentally, and/or emotionally tomorrow. Consequently, they make what they believe to be “safe” choices—not the choices they would even consider for themselves if the fear of a debilitating sickness were not hanging over their heads.
Like every other fear that stands in the way of your success, this fear must be faced squarely and conquered. You must decide and focus your thoughts on the fact of your long-term health and well-being. You must live your life believing that nothing can keep you from achieving your destiny. Such an attitude will allow you—in the worst-case scenario—to adjust to whatever happens to you and keep moving forward into the future, undeterred. Your Faith and Iron Will are sufficient to get you where you desire to be in life.
Death is probably the biggest fear that most people have. It can come at any moment and it is usually unexpected. There is a real sense in which each of the six fears mentioned before this one has direct, though long, tendrils that connect to your fear of death—the final frontier. For example, your fears of criticism and ostracism are related to your not wanting to experience social death. Your fears of being alone and losing everything mirrors your views about the isolation and the “You can’t take it with you when you go” reality of physical death. Finally, your fears of aging and debilitating sickness are metaphors for the emotional and psychological death that you view as an inevitable precursor to death itself.
Although a discussion about the fear of death is a difficult one to hold, you must pursue and master it if you seek to be personally successful. Even when you tell yourself that death is a natural part of living it doesn’t get at the heart of your fear of death. Fear of death is linked to a deeper fear that you will not be able to accomplish all the things you have planned to do in your life. Therefore, your fear of death is less about the process of dying and much more about not having enough time to finish what you’ve started.
When you examine this root cause of fear carefully, you will discover that the “disease” the fear causes you is illusory. When you really think about it, you have to admit that you don’t really care, deep down, whether you finish or not. If you finish, you’ll be looking for your next big project. If you don’t finish, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that death came to you while you were working on the project at hand. In either case, life is the process of living, learning, and loving and not necessarily finishing a particular task or project. In this context, finishing is of no importance whatsoever.
If you’re ready to face and overcome the fears that are holding you back from a more prosperous, meaningful, and happy life, then consider contacting me to find out whether you are a good fit for my taking you on as a coaching client. But, I warn you: I don’t take on everyone—“Many are called, but few are chosen.” I’m only interested in serious people who have the courage and tenacity to change, stretch themselves, and who are teachable.
No comments:
Post a Comment