Fear’s Real Name!

What stops us from accomplishing dreams, living life to its fullest and just existing?

It is those four little letters: F-E-A-R.

I propose to you that fear is not some evil, angry faced old man cloaked in a mystique of oppression. Fear is a very different emotion all together that has gotten unjustly lumped into a category with asking a girl on a date or breaking away and starting your own company. You see, fear does have its place and is part of human nature for a reason. Fear keeps us safe from an impending death, it should not be a thing to hold us back from taking risks. I propose to you that the majority of the time that we use the word, “fear”, we really mean to use the word, “excitement”.

The reason for this inadvertent word swap is because the two emotions manifest themselves physiologically in similar ways. We get those butterflies in the stomach, maybe feel a bit of nausea, however, two differing feelings can produce the same symptoms just as two different symptoms may produce the same emotion. All being said, the way to determine whether you are feeling fear or excitement, is to determine the endgame. Will stepping out of a plane without a parachute cause for my life’s super objective to cease being attainable? Most likely yes–unless clouds are not made of tiny particulates of water, but instead, fluffy marshmallows that will allow us to gingerly bounce around the sky without a care in the world. This most likely is not the case, and therefore, this action could be categorized by the word, “fear”.

So when are you feeling excitement, but are calling it fear in your life?  What implication does that have on every decision you make?  The truth is, only you can answer that question for yourself; what I can say is, to a greater or lesser degree, it affects us all. Granted the result of this misrepresentation ranges from second guessing oneself, to being down right crippling. FEAR should stop you from doing things; EXCITEMENT should push you forward. The trouble with confusing the two is that a person unnecessarily halts themselves from a positive trajectory when the word fear is used instead of excitement, even when only in one’s own mind.

Your challenge: In moments where you feel the word, “fear”, stop and ask yourself if the risk you are about to undergo is truly one that is life terminating, or just life changing. Once you have that answer– proceed forward. Something as simple as this little vocabulary change can have a transformation on how we are able to make decisions, our happiness with those decisions and the ability to strive for what we wish to attain.

This is just one of the techniques to apply to your life. Marrying this with the other elements, gives greater success.