Fear: A distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; to regard with distrust; doubt and uneasiness. To shrink from doing. To paraphrase Shakespeare – Wherefore art thou fear. Hiding in the bosom of mine heart.

• The Bible contains the directive “Do not fear” over two hundred times.
• The Torah’s most repeated commandment is al tirah, “Be not afraid.”
• The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous calls fear “An evil and corroding thread” that weaves its way through our lives.

But fear is also the most powerful motivating force in the human experience.

It is the clarion call; the signals that there is something you need to change in order to live a completely fulfilled life.

Honoring this feeling is the greatest gift you can give yourself.

Fear is one of the strongest words in the human emotional language.

We would rather say

• we are anxious
• worried
• nervous
• stressed
• overwhelmed
• or complicated

than say outright we are afraid.

Somehow the word fear connotes weakness or intense vulnerability so we prefer to cloak it in ambiguous language like

• “I don’t feel like it,”
• “It doesn’t work for me”, or “
• I’m too busy,
• too tired,
• or too stressed.”

Fear leads to

• anger,
• inappropriate behavior,
• offensive language
• or complete rejection.

We find tons of excuses to avoid ‘feeling’ the fear because we all know that fear is

• alarming,
• abrasive,
• unpleasant
• and painful.

Susan Jeffers in her book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway® says, “fear is essentially a lack of belief in your ability to handle whatever comes your way.”  It is a fundamental lack of trust in You.

But Fear is also a basic fact of nature. Whenever you enter unfamiliar territory, you experience it. That vast unknown is where you choose not to go, because you have no idea what is waiting for you, or you can’t stand the place between knowing and not knowing. Fear is the abyss of uncertainty that draws you away from making decisions that influence your life in a positive manner; it undermines who you want to be.

Why Do We Ignore It?

Fear is both instinctual and lifesaving. When kept in its rightful place, fear can actually be a vital part of the human experience. In the case of an imminent attack, fear is your body’s alarm telling you, “There is danger here. Hide. Run. Fight back. Get help.” The action needed is decided by a quick evaluation of the circumstances.

Instantly, when the fear alarm rings, your body prepares for the fight-or-flight reaction. Blood immediately rushes to the core of your body ready to dedicate its energy to the large muscles, leaving your hands and feet cold. Your heart pounds more quickly, in preparation for physical exertion. Adrenaline courses through your body to provide a jolt of needed energy. Digestion shuts down and your body empties itself so you can run faster. Your mind drops its focus on any other activity to keep your attention directly on the matter at hand. This all makes perfect sense if you need to fight off an attack or flee from an enemy but most of the time, it’s your imagination on overtime that’s causing this reaction.

In this scenario, your body is efficiently launching into its fight-or-flight reaction. Each aspect of this physiological event has its basis in preparing your body for combat or the quickest escape route. This reaction may be valuable to people actually encountering savage animals in the jungle. In daily life, however, this magical trick doesn’t really help much.

For many, fear has a warped place of prominence in their lives. In order to meet life’s demands and leap into your greatest dreams, you need to learn the real purpose of fear, where it has gone awry in your life, and how you can direct it toward your future success.

Where in YOUR Life Do You Experience Fear?

Regrettably, fear does not just strike when there is something life threatening, it can happen when entering a job interview or starting a new relationship.

There are also innumerable versions of intense fear attached to specific experiences—phobias of certain things, such as

• spiders,
• airplanes,
• dogs,
• and public speaking.

Phobic reactions put your mind on steroids, exaggerating the physical reaction to extraordinary heights. At any given moment this can be alarming, embarrassing, and absolutely crippling.

If you have too much fear stimulus, or if your life is filled with dangerous situations, the alarm goes haywire. It may sound constantly, or it might go off intermittently and at inappropriate times. One tragic aspect of a broken danger alarm is that it may not go off when it should. What if your home’s fire alarm ignored smoke and flame, but rang wildly whenever you started the dishwasher? Many people live with internal alarms that are just as broken. But eventually, you can also reach a place where the alarm bells are no longer ringing. Fear has simply become a constant part of your life. It hold you in it’s grip confining you to a life of limitation, of uncertainty and certain unhappiness.

Everyone knows people who enter one dangerous situation after another, taking little notice of the hideous consequences coming their way. They don’t recognize obvious danger, but are terrified of everyday situations that develop into phobias. Perhaps you let fear stop you from applying for a new job—yet you don’t register any fear when driving without your seat belt, applying for another credit card, or giving an abusive husband one more chance.

Fear helps us to avoid suffering. If you feel afraid when you walk near the edge of a cliff, perhaps you will instead stay a safe distance back from the precipice. If fear strikes when you feel a fire’s heat, you will position yourself away from the flames. Applying this to social situations, if someone important in your life has shamed you, you may avoid their friendship. If you were abused in any way, you learn not to trust. No one wants pain, discomfort, embarrassment, humiliation, or rejection, so in order to avoid the consequences, you create all kinds of reasons in your mind why you can’t go into a particular situation.

These reasons are the stories people tell themselves. They are the stories inherited from your parents or other significant people in your life. They are the stories you told yourself in order to avoid being hurt and disappointed. They are the stories that no longer serve you. They are the habits you have created in your life.

Learning how to handle your fear, self-doubt and anxiety is what The Fearless Factor is all about. It’s about the choices we make when fear shows up in our lives, and ways in which we can minimize our conditioned reaction to these uncomfortable feelings that signal our need to run, defend, react and destroy in order to avoid them.

We learn to overcome fear not by running away, but by

• standing our ground,
• being willing to make changes in our life,
• and building confidence by practicing new survival skills over and over again.

Fear is an extraordinary motivating force because it sets us a challenge to change something that’s not working.

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face….You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.
—Eleanor Roosevelt

For most people, fear starts in the birth canal. There is a primitive force at work here, and the mother and the child in her womb share emotions equally.  The struggle to give birth is one of the most violent acts in the human experience and it is created by nature.  Women enter the experience with a great deal of fear because they have heard how painful it will be, and they worry that they are unprepared.  They fear for the life of their child and pray that it will be born with all the right body parts and come through this ordeal unscathed. Even today, death can be a major consideration. Generations of this conditioning have been passed down from mother to mother-through fear-filled stories.

A recent article in The New York Times Magazine analyzed at length whether fetuses can feel pain. After several experiments (let’s not even go there!) it was suggested they can, and it is now standard practice for doctors to anesthetize babies in utero if there is any surgery to be performed. So if they can feel pain, do they also feel fear?

Humans are exquisite creatures whose potential receptivity to all forms of energy is highly developed. If you can feel physical pain, you can also feel emotional pain, no matter how young. During the birthing process, the mother’s body contracts in waves of tension as the child pushes its way downwards from the seclusion and security of her watery existence. The child can hear sounds, even if it may not know what they are. It can feel the tightening and the terror as a woman pushes with all her might. With the last push of the head through the bulging vagina, the child is brought into a blinding, light-filled existence of crashing sounds, yelling people, and hands that wrap themselves around her. There is a sudden feeling of being exposed, vulnerable, and yes, afraid. Is it any wonder the child cries when it emerges? Does it want to return to the safety of the womb? The brain may not be able to express that thought, but the whole body reacts instinctively to that need.

After the birth experience is over, fear is quickly forgotten. The trauma of birth is met with a rush of love, warmth, and caring; babies are cherished for being in the lives of their parents.

Fear is like that.  Once we are on the other side of whatever it is that was feared, it is quickly forgotten.  We frequently say aloud “what was I so worried about.”  Our memories are selective. We remember only that which we need for our survival, until the next time something comes up that jogs the memory and brings us back to frightening experience.

We live our lives in the past, afraid for the future, unable to connect to the present.

How Do YOU Get Beyond The Fears?

Ask yourself what am I afraid of?

• Make a list of all the things that trigger a fearful response then ask yourself if it’s true.
• Can you absolutely say it’s the truth, or is it your imagination making up stories?
• When you have debated with yourself about the merits of your fear,
• ask if there is anything you could do that would give a different outcome?
• If you could take any action that would allow the feeling to pass, what would it be?  (Running and hiding don’t count!)