Aug 23 2007
The Price of Fear
We all have fears.
Throughout my life I have worked on letting go of my fears.
What drives us to let go of a fear?
What drives most of us to let go of a fear is that we have a desire that is stronger than the fear.
For example, let’s say you have a fear of flying. You land your dream job and the job requires you to fly all over the world. In fact, flying is a big part of your job. You must either work on letting go of the fear or you must let go of the job.
I write, “letting go” of fear instead of “overcoming” because I feel that we chose our fears - they don’t come to us; they are not something that was forced on us that we have to fight with.
Holding onto fear comes at a cost.
Real fear is a rational response to danger. What most of us call our fears are false fears: mild phobias or even full-blown ones.
A phobia is an irrational or intense reaction to an object or a certain situation. Phobias can prevent people from living a normal life.
The first fear I recall overcoming was the fear of public speaking. I was in middle school and I had to give a book report in front of the class. I was about 10 or 11 years old at the time. I stood at the podium with my handwritten report in front of me.
I began to speak and … I couldn’t! My mouth was dry and I literally squeaked! I was an Chinese Minnie Mouse!
I felt a bit light-headed and I really can’t recall what I did. I just know I somehow squeaked or squirmed my way through the report looking at my classmates and feeling very, very humiliated and embarrassed.
This fear came out of nowhere for me. I just recall walking up to the podium being very nervous and then totally paralyzed.
We had to do book reports on a regular basis. I remember watching my fellow classmates do their reports and I realized that I was rooting for them. When I saw one struggling and nervous and faltering, I felt empathy and I wanted, really wanted them to succeed. When I realized what I was feeling, I thought, this is what they must be feeling for me when I’m at the podium. Somehow I had thought of everyone as watching me in critical judgment and this tapped into some other issues, which created this fear.
Once I viewed everyone as being on my side, I was able to let go of my fear.
Not releasing a fear comes at a cost.
Real fear is a rational response to danger. Real fear is a reaction to save our life.
A false fear, or phobia, takes a little bit of our life away. It cuts away parts of our life. It reduced our enjoyment of life; it restricts us.
I have let go of many fears. You may find my fears laughable but I experienced them. Everyone’s fears are his or her own.
Fears are self-imposed limits.
My life would be so much narrower if I had not let go of my fears.
Letting go of my fears allowed me to go to the senior prom, make friends, travel and even work! I was afraid of driving! Specifically, freeway driving. I actually took a job that required me to drive to force myself to let go of the fear.
Fears can be very inconvenient.
Would I rather take 2 hours to get to work by public transportation or 45 minutes by car?
False fears can come at a high price.
If I hadn’t let go of my fear of driving, it would have cost me how many days of my life as hour added to hour to become a day, and the days would become weeks and weeks would add into months. Months of managing my time around a bus schedule.
I remember that first day of work. I remember thinking that some day I would take driving for granted, that one day driving 45 miles on the freeway would be no big deal.
I remember thinking that at some point I would not be thinking about every action, that I could actually take my right hand (from the “2 o’clock position”) from the steering wheel to adjust the radio. Heck, that at some point I could actually drive while the radio was playing!
I became that person. I no longer drive with fear.
I’ve been thinking about fear quite a bit these days.
Real fear can save your life.
False fears can cost you your life.
Moment by moment, false fears prevent you from experiencing all who you can be.
I believe that joy is fully experiencing our potential.
As a friend told me in my post The Hero’s Path:
“All I can offer you, as your friend, is to say: follow the path of courage, and every time you choose this path, your first feeling will be fear. Only after you make this leap, and go through fear will you feel joy. If you do this over and over, one day fear will become your friend, and a guide post to the hero’s path. And, every time you choose the path of courage your life, and your comfort space, will become larger.”
I am currently working on letting go of a false fear. One that has had a profound effect on my life.
There is a name for it: atychiphobia.
What is it?
The fear of failure.
Have I ever failed? Of course.
I just don’t fail very often.
Not failing often is the problem. I don’t challenge myself, not really.
I’m not living up to my full potential. I am not experiencing all the joy that is in the human experience.
I am paying a very high price by holding onto my fears.
I believe that not experiencing joy is too high a price to pay for a false fear.
Don’t you?
I seldom express profanity of any form these days. Just no big desire to. However, the woman in this photo has such a joyous expression while giving “The Finger” that I have to laugh and share her joy.
I call the photo Giving Fear the Finger.
Have a fear but don’t know it’s official name? Here’s a list.
Want to overcome a fear? A good place to start might be listening to Steve Pavlina’s podcast, Overcoming Fear. He has an interesting take on it.
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Interesting thoughts on being fearful. I remember as a kid being rather frightened of things (but they were more along the normal lines of witches and clowns). Still, I’m sure that none of them existed, and although they WERE slightly irrational (there was no witch brewing a cauldron of potions in the closet) it would have been pretty hard to “let go of” at such a young age.
I think that a big thing that helped me let go of those fears, though, was realizing that as I got bigger (physically), the fears made less and less sense. I eventually got to the point (irrational as well) that I could fight off these evils.
In any case, thanks for the thoughts on sharing! I think that I agree for the most part that the fears are ours to keep or ours to lose. And that is very useful for all of us to remember.
I used to be so scared of flying. I finally started just going to sleep for the entire flight & pretending I was on a greyhound bus. Now I stay awake or sleep and the only part that even bothers me is actually boarding the airplane. And even then I think the *idea* of boarding is actually worse than boarding itself, so I push it out of my mind until I’m actually doing it. I don’t think it felt quite as much “letting go” as it did “shoving away”…but at least I (mostly) got rid of it.
I have more of a fear of being wrong (& esp. being laughed at for being wrong) I think than strictly failure, though maybe not. And my daughter caught it from me.
Once when she was 2, my mom & dad gave her a little, tiny, toddler sized umbrella. She said, “Oh good! Now we can float in it!!!” We were all like, “Huh?” And she explained that one used an umbrella to turn upside down and float in like a boat. We all laughed.
She flew to her room and came back with a Winnie the Pooh book open to the page where a couple of the characters are floating in an umbrella. “See!!!!” she pointed emphatically, “SEE?!?!? You DO float in it!” My dad said it meant she was going to be an academic, sighting her references. But I was pretty sure it just meant she hated being laughed at, like her mom.
Sort of interesting I guess that I mostly stick to blog posts that can be laughed at.
Derek: Clowns ARE scary!! Well, not scary exactly but freaky. Something about that big white face and the painted smile.
Hmmm. Kinda like MY photos.
I watched a lot of vampire movies (Christopher Lee) so I had fears of warewolves and vampires. Oh, and not getting an “A” or “Excellent” on tests.
I’m not so scared of “things” like dogs or spiders. I’m more frightened of the “unseen” I would say - germs, viruses, rage…
Jill: Bravo for you flying despite your fears! It sound like you’re slowly letting that fear go!
I think the fear of being wrong is some subset of the fear of failure. I first thought I had the fear of making a mistake but there was no word for it that I could find. There IS a word for the fear of failure. I pondered this and realized that at the root I fear failure.
I have noticed that you downplay your intelligence and play things “light” in your blog. I noticed this especially in when you were worried about your “logic” in your comment section where you thought that women who didn’t wear makeup probably were not surgically enhance in any manner.
Nothing wrong with having a lighthearted and funny blog. It’s only a problem if you think it’s a problem!
When it comes to your daughter and your passing down your fears to her, that might be the case. You could always talk about it and perhaps work on letting go of the fear together or if she doesn’t have that particular fear but something else, maybe you can inspire her by leaving yourself open to “ridicule” and being okay with it and then she’ll feel more comfortable with discussing what she is afraid of and asking you for support.
Just a thought…
My mom has a lot of fears and she was worried (another fear!) that she would pass them on to me. In my case my own fears are a response to her fears! I have seen how fears can paralyze someone and letting go of some fears can require quite a bit of loving support.
The book report bit reminded me of a couple of things. First, I was much the same way with that sort of stuff. Second, a psych. class I took back in college talked about a survey of around that time (~mid 80’s) on what people were afraid of. Death came in second. Public speaking was #1. So, people would rather die than get up and give a speech.
And I still remember a teacher from my speech class not understanding how I did all the classic nervous bits when up in front of the class, but was fine from my desk.
ack: I keep hearing about how public speaking is the number one fear with death being second and … I wonder if it’s an urban myth. I vaguely recall reading that there is a caveat or something more to the number system.
When you gave a speech from your desk, were you sitting or standing? Are you over that fear now?
Oddly enough, once I got over the fear of public speaking (which really lasted only a few weeks) I enjoyed it. This came in handy when I moved on to high school and college. I can’t recall making any speech in high school but a speech class was a general education requirement in junior college. It was interesting to be taught how to prepare for a speech.
I remember when my university made a senior presentation a requirement. I didn’t have to do it because it was implemented a year after I entered. I was happy to be exempt just because it was one less thing I had to do. Some people were happy to be exempt because the thought of speaking in front of people was quite nerve-wracking.
I can see why the university made it a requirement, especially for computer science majors. Presentation and communications skills are valuable and perhaps more valuable in an age where programming skills is more of a commodity.
I remember when I was 5 or 6 years old, I had this fear that our house would burn down while I was asleep, and I also had a fear of the dark. So I would not go to sleep for what must have been weeks.
My dad dealt with his in a remarkable way that still makes me smile when I think of it. He put me on the sofa next to him and said, with a voice that grownups would only use when speaking to other grownups: “I know you are afraid of a fire bruning the house down. And you know what? I understand that. I too would be afraid, if the curtains in my bedroom were as thin as yours are. Now, you see, these curtains in your bedroom are so thin that the light of that street lamp post outside still shines through them, and it is probably that light that makes you think of a fire when you are half asleep. And this is what causes your fear. So we are going to fix this and get you some thicker curtains.”
Isn’t that amazing? He gave me a real ‘handle’, a ‘grip’ on that ungraspable fear, so I could make it go away; and at the same time he turned the “darkness”, that I had also feared so much, into my friend.
Jos: Wow. That is a terrific story! Your father sounds terrific. I’d love for you to write that up on your blog! It’s amazing how life is really all about perception. I am trying to change my perception or attitude from Fear to Curiosity or even, Challenge.
MsQ: Thanks, that might be a good idea.
But I did not write it down here for no reason
Thank you for the suggestion. ~Jos
At your service
http://ogendicht.blogspot.com/2007/08/so-wheres-fire.html
~Jos
It wasn’t so much giving a speech as participating in the group discussion, making points, etc. I was sitting, which is how one normally is in one’s desk. Had it been a requirement to stand, I probably would have felt uncomfortable. But sitting in my desk, i was fine.
Long since past it. (I think.) the acid test will be if they ever ask me to present at the company dog and pony show, i suppose. still haven’t done that in all these years. (not that i’m begging to, mind you.) Still, i thought it odd that company decided it made sense to fly someone in from China rather than ask moi to pop over to vegas from the SF bay area. but, what do i know? i’m just a software engineer.