Dare to Fear
Don’t you have fear?
Do you struggle with fear or anxiety?
Would you like to overcome fear? Or how to beat fear.
The question is not if some people don’t fear. No, the question is what their mindset towards fear?
One can freeze the other can thrive from fear, it all depends on the mindset.
No one is born fearless, unlike in the movies people always have a natural fear. It’s one of those emotions that are quite primitive. Fear is what kept our ancestors alive. For most of our time on this earth, we were just a nice snack to all the predators that roamed the earth. The only thing that kept us alive is that it instilled fear of those animals. We used this fear to hide, to build, to invent our way out of our position on the bottom of the food chain. Nowadays our houses protect us from most storms, relatively few people go hungry. The average lifespan is longer than it has ever been. Then why do we walk around so anxious, so full of fear? The answer is not terrorists, TV, emigrants, or neo nazi’s. The answer is our legacy of ancient fears.
If someone tells you he fearless, he is either lying his ass off or he is already dead.
From the soldiers on D-Day storming those beaches to a person that fears to ride a motorcycle. They both experience that same primitive emotion. One may be more than the other but that depends on attitude towards that fear.
For both situations, fear levels can be the same. Maybe the guy or girl that fears to ride a motorcycle feels that same life or death fear as the guy in the landing boat on Omaha beach.
It is crazy to think our brains work like that but they do.
The hero and the coward
Let me tell you a really simple story. Two guys are walking on the street when suddenly, an asshole appears and tries to steal the bag of a girl waiting for the bus. You got the picture? Right.
What happens next is that the first guy runs away. The second one runs at the asshole to prevent the girl from being stolen.
Record this scene on a video and show it to a bunch of people. What will they think? What do you think?
“Well, the first guy is a coward and ran because he feared the asshole. The second one is a hero and didn’t feel that fear, so he saved the girl.”
You’re right. And you’re wrong.
Probably that the first guy is a coward and the second a hero.
But the point is: both of them felt fear. The only difference is that the first guy used the fear to run away. The second one projected the fear on the asshole to defeat him.
Fear is natural. All of us feel it.
The question is “what do we decide to make out of it?”
“The hero and the coward both feel the same thing, but the hero uses his fear, projects it onto his opponent, while the coward runs. It’s the same thing, fear, but it’s what you do with it that matters.” — Cus D’Amato
Dare to fear.
We all have a hero and a coward in our minds. We all feel fear. Fear is natural. Whether we fight or we flight depends on which one we trained the most in the past.
You will feel fear during the rest of your life. It can be because you’re aggressed, but it can also be because of your feelings for someone or because of the challenges you may face.
If you don’t, it means that you stay at home for the whole day, doing nothing and trying nothing new. And it’s this shitty life that you should fear.
I feel fear when I think about my next challenges when crossing Africa by motorcycle when I think about how I’ll deal with money at some points.
It’s natural. But it’s my decision to use this fear as a powerful energy to go forward and create what I really want.
It’s your decision to decide to train the hero in you instead of the coward.
It’s your decision not to run away when you have to face your feelings.
It’s your decision not to escape when you have to challenge yourself.
So get out there face those fears, face them head-on. But do step aside for that big bus when passing the sidewalk.
But before heading out check out this next article about peace.
Photo by Sammie Vasquez on Unsplash
