Overcoming The Fear That's Holding You Back

In James Allen's timeless masterpiece, “As A Man Thinketh," he describes fear like this:

“Thoughts of fear have been known to kill a man as speedily as a bullet, and they are continually killing thousands of people just as surely though less rapidly. The people who live in fear of disease are the people who get it. Anxiety quickly demoralizes the whole body, and lays it open to the entrance of disease; while impure thoughts, even if not physically indulged, will soon shatter the nervous system."

Pretty sobering if you really think about it, and if you are really honest with yourself you probably can admit to the fact that fear has had some negative effect in your life. I know it has mine, so I decided to look a little deeper into overcoming fear before it overcame me. There are so many things we are fearful of; loss, failure, death, loneliness, people, dogs, cats, pickles and even success. Now I understand that many of us have reason for fearful thoughts, but in most cases the fear we have are based upon the “what if" premise. “What if I lose my job?" “What If they don't like me?" so on and so forth. If I'm being totally honest with you, I've been guilty of that kind of fear myself and I cannot promise you I won't be in the future. Just because I'm writing this article doesn't mean I have it all figured out, it simply means I'm making a serious effort to understand why and what I can do to not get stuck in that thought process and have it affect me the way James Allen describes it.

I've researched fear and how to overcome it and I've seen a common thread amongst the people I've studied, here it is. You MUST FACE IT!

If we ignore it, feed it, allow it a permanent residence in our soul it will eventually wreck our lives. So how exactly do we face it?

Here is what I've come to realize in my life and it's something I think can help you revolutionize the way you handle this situation that we all encounter at some point in our lifetime. Ready? Embrace it! Don't run from it, don't fight it, don't replace it, don't ignore it…embrace it! The mistake I think people are making is thinking that fear is a bad thing when it isn't. Fear is a great thing. The emotion of fear was given to us to help us survive. It's the evolutionary process that has affected the way we see and respond to fear.

When a lion is chasing you the fight or flight mechanism kicks in. We all know that so I'm not teaching you anything new here. What I'm trying to articulate is that fear is good and we must embrace it otherwise we die, unless we can beat a lion in a fight. That's real. When we are in a situation where we need to react to the natural response of “fight or flight" it's NOW. It's go time.

Maybe you've read the powerful book “The Power Of Now" by Eckhart Tolle, maybe you haven't but what Tolle says, boiling it down to one thought, is: Don't worry about what's in the past or what the future might bring, the only thing you have in life is NOW! That's it. You cannot change the past or affect the future. You might not even have a future, who really knows, so why project fearful thoughts into the future or harbor fearful or hurtful thoughts from the past?

Here is what I've done in my own life. I've learned to understand the difference between the fear response that was placed in us by nature and the fearful thoughts that we create by our imagination running wild.

If I'm walking in an alley and something jumps out at me I run. If I'm sitting in my house and I think to myself, “what happens to my family if I get cancer and die?" I quickly put that thought of fear in its place! It's not worth my time or energy, especially since I'm fully aware that it will serve no positive outcome in my life with the possible exception being going to the doctor for a check up and raising my life insurance policy to meet the needs of my family in the event something does happen to me.

I don't feel the need to elaborate any further because I know you are all very intelligent people and know what I am sharing is accurate. I'll leave you with this additional quote from As A Man Thinketh.

“Strong, pure, and happy thoughts build up the body in vigor and grace. The body is a delicate and plastic instrument, which responds readily to the thoughts by which it is impressed, and habits of thought will produce their own effects, good or bad, upon it."

James Allen book is available free online, I highly suggest you read it, but read it slowly and deliberately.