Fear: Are You Always On Your Brakes?

Fear is integral to safety, like the brakes of a car. But many people are like drivers who only use their brakes.

Fear defeats more people than any other one thing in the world. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is the biggest danger with fear ~ always being on the brakes will result in you losing all movement (action), resulting in defeat, frustration and unhappiness.

It isn't possible to completely eliminate fear, and you shouldn't want to, anymore than you would want to drive a car without brakes. But if you imagine yourself driving a car you would have to agree that you are off your breaks more than you're on them. Unless you're driving in peak-hour traffic, which everyone prefers to avoid. Yet the existence of peak-hour traffic tells us that most people find it hard to avoid. If we don't learn to manage fear it will have us constantly braking.

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one. ~ Elbert Hubbard

This is what keeps people on their brakes ~ fear of mistakes, fear of failure, fear judgement, fear of loss. I'm going to continue the braking analogy by saying that the more aware you are, the less ignorant you are to what's happening on the road, the less heavy braking you will require.

Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance. ~ Arnold Glasow

Confront your fears, list them, get to know them, and only then will you be able to put them aside and move ahead. ~ Jerry Gilles

The only thing that can cure a fear of public speaking is repeatedly engaging in it. This is why directly challenging our fears is so crucial. But the injudicious approach will often be unsuccessful, or even compound your fears.

So there are two very important points ~ being prepared and being aware. If you fear public speaking then having a good speech prepared, possibly with the help of someone experienced in the field, and then learning about public speaking skills could significantly help you be "off the brakes" when you have to get up and talk.

You know that feeling? When the words won't come out, when you're "paralyzed by fear"? This is fear at its worst, when a person has let fear take over by not being prepared and aware. The brakes are jammed to floor. This is almost as likely to cause an accident as speeding around without using your brakes.

The goal is not to eliminate fear entirely, but to get confident that you can push past it, that you can use it to your benefit, that you can manage it and have success despite of it.

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear. ~ Richard Bach

So work on knowing your fears and being aware of them. Be confident of how you can work with them, rather than them working against you. Don't ride your brakes all the way through life out of fear that something bad will happen. Learn how to use fear - to use your brakes - the way that they were meant to be used. Fear is an integral part of staying in touch with truth and reality, but if you try to ignore it or avoid it you only give it more power and spend more of your life breaking.

Get to know fear and how to use it to your benefit and it will become a friend rather than a foe.

There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world. ~ Thomas Jefferson