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FEAR – Don't Let it Control You!
Copyright (c) 1999 Glen
Hopkins
Fear. What is
it? Can you touch it? Can you hold it? Can you show it to another person? I can
almost hear you from where I am sitting. "No, no, no". Okay then, so you can't
touch it, you can't hold it, and you can't show it to
another person. The
question then is, why? Why do we have fear? Fear is nothing more than an emotion
or a feeling that we hold in our mind.
We fear either the emotional or
physical pain something may cause. The problem is, these emotions and feeling
affect the way we live our lives. We fear doing certain things because we think
we might fail. This may be due to past failures we have actually experienced or
it may be due to failures we fear we might experience.
I urge you to
remember and live by the following motto.
Fear stands
for,
False
Evidence that
Appears
Real
Most of the time
what we fear, we have never even experienced! Isn't that crazy? You see, your
mind has a hard time determining whether you've actually experienced the failure
or just imagined it. Either way, you feel the
physiological symptoms of the
fear; such as an upset stomach. Often, because we can imagine some sort of
failure, we believe it will come true, and then we don't even try! And that is
what makes a failure; a person who is afraid to try because they fear the
potential of a negative outcome. If you don't at least try, you can never
succeed.
"I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of
which actually happened." - Mark Twain
The question now becomes who
defines what 'failure' and ‘success' is? You do right? Either you create the
definition yourself or you accept someone else's definition. Is it true then
that some people create more difficult
definitions of success and failure for
themselves than others do? You bet it is! Who do you think leads a more
successful live, Alex who defines success as, "everyday that I wake up and I'm
not six feet under, is a great day." Or
Jeff, who defines success as, "I have
to be earning at least million dollars a year before I am
successful."
You guessed right again. Alex. You see, Alex has created her
own definition of what success means and that definition is relatively easy to
achieve! Therefore, in her mind, she is successful everyday. Whereas Jeff, as
per his own definition, cannot be successful until he is earning one million
dollars a year. What are the chances that most of the 'Jeff's' in the world feel
like failures on a daily basis because they are not yet earning one million
dollars a year? Now don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that you should not set
high standards and goals for yourself. What I am saying is that you have to be
careful that you 'happily achieve, rather than achieve to be happy'.
The
more difficult your definition of success is to attain, the more fear you will
attach to it. Don't let your own definitions limit you. Or even worse, the
definitions of others. Create your own definitions to make it harder to
feel
like a failure and easier to feel like a success. That way you will attach less
fear to what you want in life.
What would you attempt to do if you knew
you could not fail? Image what you can do in your life with that type of belief
system. Try thinking of every 'failure' as a success. That is, every time you
'fail' at something, you have really succeeded because you have learned what
does not work.
Therefore, you are closer to succeeding the next time you
try. Remember that the past does not equal the future. Yesterday's failure does
not equal your future outcomes. Just because you may have failed yesterday, or
even five minutes ago, it doesn't mean you are going to fail again. Just learn
from what you did wrong and change your approach. Don't fear the past. The past
is what has taught you how to succeed in the future. Be
fearless!
About the Author:
Glen Hopkins, owns
Motivational-Messages.com, your Free resource for daily motivation and
inspiration, including quotes, tips, and stories to help you lead a successful
life. To join the Free mailing list, send an e-mail to
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