Five Forms of Fear

Fear is learned. Fear is real for those who practice fear.

Fear has killed more men and women than any disease or event. Fear is how most people deal with failure.

Fear is the most seductive mistress. Fear will always overpower the greatest of forces because fear lies in the shadows of every bright event.

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Over the past 50 years I have heard many acronyms of FEAR. I think they are all funny.

            Forget Everything And Run

            False Events Appearing Real

            Finding Excuses And Reasons

            Failure Expected And Received

            Forget Everything About Reality

Pick one. I laugh at all of these because FEAR is the most prevalent emotion experienced by all of us, everywhere.

The working definition I use is simply that FEAR is a emotional learned response to a problem you face. And in the short of it, fear and problems arise at the same time. Every single problem you will face in your life that is left incomplete will devolve into fear.

Fear is rough to overcome once you have learned it and embedded it into your self. Because fear paralyzes the muscles, makes your mind scream, and causes your hormones to all respond in a way to prevent you from facing the thing you are afraid of. And that is the deal. Fear is an emotional response that stops you. That is what fear is designed to do.

Fear is a powerful effective tool that has one purpose to stop you. Whether you teach yourself fear or fear is influenced by someone else who doesn’t want you to do a particular thing, Fear will stop you.

The only problem is do you want to stop? Maybe you ought to be moving toward the event you fear and not away.

There are five basic fears.

In your physical life the greatest fear is the fear of death. You fear that the thing you are doing will cause the body to die. And this fear of death initially keeps you safe but eventually prevents you from living.

In your intellectual life, the greatest fear is the fear of being found out. As you learn and acquire knowledge you begin to realize you may not be able to learn it all, you get low grades, or you just cannot recall, or someone else is smarter. So you begin to encounter fear by covering up or sounding smarter than you are. That fear of being found out prevents you from actual learning over time, and stops you from learning.

In your pursuit of wealth or rather delivering value the biggest fear is loss. We get jobs and do work and save money and construct fear around the notion that making choices that lose money or taking risks with money will cause us to be poor. So in advertently we slowly very slowly shelter our lives from loss. And as you can imagine being on the defense overtime will ensure loss. We stop ourselves from winning.

Regarding your relationships, our biggest fear is that of being alone. This fear is the most destructive I think. Fear of being alone is the great saboteur in all areas of life. Fear of being alone causes you to first make odd choices on who you are hanging with, then next it makes you stay in bad relationships, then finally the fear of being alone makes you push others away and you are in the end: Alone. Fear here stops you from truly being one with someone else.

The fifth fear is the most nebulous but most impactful. In your spiritual growth, our greatest fear is that we our powerful beyond measure. I didn’t expect that, yet that is the spiritual truth bomb. We are so afraid to be powerful. Think about that today. Think about how disconnecting it is to allow the fear of your own greatness stop you from it.

Fear is the stopping force of everyone’s life. Stops you from greatness, stops you from being one, stops you from real abundance, stops you from learning, and prevents you from winning.

And all you really need to do to overcome fear is to turn toward the thing you fear and face it. You must take action toward everything that you fear.

Be bold, Be Brave, Be Unbreakable