Fear: An Enemy or An Ally?

Do you know that you can turn your fear to your ally?

Yes, you can.

Fear is one of the oldest challenges of man. No matter who you are and what you do, fear needs no introduction. We all have to deal with it at some point in our lives.

But as familiar as we have been to this self-acclaimed ruler of most men is, we find it one of the most difficult enemies to conquer.

In my teenage years, I was faced with countless fears

• fear of failure

• fear of not being able to retain success

• fear of the opposite sex

• fear of pain

• fear of life after death

• fear of the unknown

• Fear of darkness.

I struggled through my teenage years trying to conquer all these fears. But I never succeeded until I came across a strategy that now works for me.

In my little experience in life, I have come to discover that the uglier the picture of fear you paint the more negatively it impacts your life. It makes you more anxious, more depressed; less enthused, and most unfortunately leads you to take irrational decisions.

I remember how I dreaded failure in my university days. I didn’t want to fail, so I spent 20 hours a day reading.

And the result: Massive failure.

Why? Because I reacted wrongly to fear.

I never stopped to digest what I read… and then fatigue and confusion set in, making me to lose all I could have absolved by taking 2 or 3 hours break during the day.

Fear makes you lose all sense of reason. It leads you to make the wrong choices.

What then is the way out?

In the words of the motivational guru, Tony Robbins, what metaphors you use to describe your life affects the quality of your perceptions, and ultimately your life.

The name you call fear is what it bears.

To many, fear is the tyrant that determines what they do and what they don’t do. To some, it is the critic that brings up the dark side of the sun. I bet you have your own definition as well.

But mine is…

Fear: My first signal of success.

Each time I feel fear swelling in me against embarking on a task, I take it as a sign that I am about to celebrate another success.

This does not mean I never made mistakes. But with this attitude, Inever fail. I either succeed or learn. When someone thinks I failed, I only learn a lesson for the next success.

If you carry this attitude, fear will be too weak stop you from succeeding.

This is the best way to handle fear.

The more you hate fear and fight it, the greater its hold on you.

So why don’t you face it and prove it wrong.

Someone once said, ‘Courage is not pressing on the absence of fear, it is pressing on in spite of fear’.

Fear in itself is not harmful. It is what you make of it that makes all the difference.

Make up your mind to look fear in the face and do whatever you know you should do. As time goes on you will see how powerless fear is, in determining your future.

No man can achieve significant success at the comfort zone. Fear is only an indicator that tells you that you are moving out of the level you are to a higher one. And of course, you need a stronger and more developed ‘muscle’ to reach and settle at this higher success level.

It is like a pregnant woman whose belly grows. She knows she’ll soon be a mother. That helps her to disregard the extra weight and belly.

As long as you have the sun and the moon, fear will always be around. But whether or not it makes or mar you is another thing altogether.

For many it is the reason why they’ll never succeed. But for some of us, it’s all we need to keep moving towards a greater goal.

You can join this relatively few and see how much difference it makes in your life.