You Need Not Fear, Fear

You do not have to fear, fear. Nor does fear necessarily debilitate you. It is you who debilitates yourself by caving into fear. It is not fear but your reaction to it which determines whether fear works for or against you.

You must learn not to fear your fear. Fear is a normal part of life; it passes over your fields like a thunderstorm. It has its place and is not really your enemy. Fear may begin as a signal of doubt or distress, as an inner prophet of impending danger. If you believe this voice, your body reacts with the fear emotion, which urges you to fight or take flight as men, or to tend and befriend as women.

Better to fight than take flight from fear; better to listen to it, if not befriend it. Instead of seeking to run from fear, turn and face it. Learn of it, what it is, when it comes, what danger it dreads might be drawing near. Realize that fear does not don’t know the future; it only claims to foresee what could happen. When you fear, you know what you fear; when you have anxiety, you are not sure what it is you fear. Anxiety is a vague foreboding of something dreadful about to happen; it has been defined as “living in the gap between the now and the then.”

To minimize fear’s effect on you, do this:

Discipline yourself. I remember boot camp in the Marines Corps. We learned discipline by being disciplined. The training was designed to prepare us for combat, which produces indescribable fear. We learned to fight through and in spite of fear. We learned that the difference between the hero and coward was not fear but how they reacted to fear. Fear can empower as well as enfeeble.

Discipline strengthens you to do what you have to do when you have to do it, regardless of what is else is going on around or within you. It’s true in theater that you do in performance as you did in rehearsal. Disciplining is rehearsing in every way, overlearning the tasks before you. You must do all you can now, so that when the need arises you can do all you must.

Increase your desire. Desire has real power and issues from your will, which is your inner engine of action. Desire strengthens will, and will aroused into passion can overcome fear. If you want something bad enough, you won’t let your fear stop you from reaching for it. It’s been said that American soldiers are the finest in the world, not due to their superior ability, but to their superior desire to stay alive.

Make love your aim. Love has the power to cast out fear. Love and fear cannot coexist. Love can push fear to the sidelines, reducing it to a bit player in your inner drama. Mothers run back into burning buildings to save their children due to their love; soldiers fight on for the altruistic sake of their buddies.

Practice your fear. Invite it in, even wrestle with it. Prepare for multiple battles, for the war likely won’t be won or lost in a single bout. Even if you lose some bouts, you’ll win the war. Over time you will fear your fear less and less; eventually you will feel more tired than afraid of it. When that happens, you’ve ceased to fear your fear.

Share your fear with another. Sharing your fear with a trusted other dissipates it. Turning it over to your higher Power can take it away.