Q: Do your fears live up to your expectations?
I was, at one time in my life, dominated by fear. I can remember at the height of my childhood anxiety and fears of the bullies on the playground, I had a nightmare dream of the bush-lot behind my house being ablaze and threatening to destroy everything around it. I watched it burn, afraid, from my bedroom window. I watched my dream-self watch one of those fiery trees uproot itself, walk over to the house and fall against my bedroom window. I woke up, blazing with terror. As a child, I didn't understand that my unconscious self was simply reflecting my conscious fears of my everyday reality.
I endured bullying for several more years, relentless as it came.
It wasn't until I was entering high school - and the removal of my braces! - that I decided I did not wish to be bullied any more. I began to face up to the bullies. I learned that my pounding fear of their reprisals and revolts was unwarranted - as I found my voice and confidence to deflect them, they backed away. Actually, they faded into the background of my life. I began my journey back to personal empowerment.
Becoming an adult, I still had fears. Fears of speaking in front of crowds, fears of speaking my opinion when it mattered most, fear of stepping out on my own. Fear of making my own way in life. Fear of being alone. Fear of losing my children to calamity. Many typical fears others bear. Some of them were debilitating, though.
Like the fear of what everyone else thought of me.
That one was spirit-crushing.
I have discovered, however, over the course of my life that facing my fears head-on eradicates their hold on me! I have learned that my fears, in their inkling ways and their full-bloomed exaggerations, really are illusions and misplaced energies. They never reach expected peak, they never manifest into the magnitudes of expression or execution that my mind builds them up to deliver. They are dusted and dealt death-blows the moment I decide to acknowledge them. They are blown away the moment I exercise the power of my voice and choice.
And that is the secret ingredient to eradicating our fears: exercising our voice and choice. As the Les Brown quote to the left notes, our fears actually are powerful motivators to prompt us to embrace capacities to rise up empowered to craft our own way, carve our own path, deliver our own dreams and successes.
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