|
Most of the time we do everything to avoid fear and view it as a negative emotion. As a result we often find ourselves eventually overwhelmed with fear to the point of depression. Perhaps instead of trying to fight fear we should use fear to get where we want to go. So I wonder, what is the best way to use fear in terms of pick up? We all know about the less useful fears we have; fear of rejection, fear of opinions, fear of approaching, fear of other people. We know those. But we rarely talk about the fears that can propel us forward, if a fear of approaching can cause someone to start sweating, anxious behavior, torment himself and in the end not even DO something then the fear clearly has some kind of control over that individual. What I've noticed is that if you try to overcome a fear directly by forcing yourself through willpower that it tends to strengthen the fear itself. The one exception to this is that if you force yourself through, DO it and rinse repeat this often enough you start to go numb to the fear and eventually surpass it. This however seems a terribly inefficient way to go about this. If you fight fear it gets stronger. Always worked every single time.
Method 1- Now this works better then mindlessly pushing through fear with sheer willpower until you go numb. The problem I see with this is that you need to rewire your brain from fearful thinking (bad outcome thinking) towards positive thinking (good outcome thinking). Basically asking people to 'rewire' there brains. Certainly possible but a long process to go through. People that are accustomed to fearful thinking will automatically fall back into old patterns and only through bringing back the positive thinking every single time until it eventually becomes your default pattern.
Method 2- In terms of results both are pretty much the same. The second method though doesn't take a complete rewiring of your brain from fearful thinking towards positive outcome thinking. Basically you're using the wiring that you normally use to propel yourself forward. Perhaps fear isn't evil, the devil, suffering or hell but the way we use fear determines where we end up.
Some more thoughts on this:
At the basis of both is the other. You can argue that with positive imagination there is a root fear of maintaining status
quo; that you will always be in this situation. While you can also argue that at the root of negative imagination is a root
hope that one day things can be better. Yin/Yang, one can't exist without the other. Maybe the problem isn't so much that don't have dreams or don't have (correct) fears (no idea of another term that properly describes it), it's that they don't go one way or another. There in limbo. They constantly feel pulled forward by desires but pulled back by fears while mastering neither. Perhaps the key is to either use only fear for motivation and desire as aim or only desire as motivation and fear as cautionary tool.
And a few new thoughts on this topic: What I do know is that focusing on what you can't do will always bring unhappiness. Changing the focus from 'I fear this and therefore can't do it' towards 'I fear this and therefore I HAVE to do xxx to avoid it' while leaving the end condition (avoiding that which you fear) in your control (if you want you can avoid it). This doesn't mean you have to FEEL afraid all the time. You can be afraid of something without getting the actual feelings associated with it (you know that tightness in the stomach, the panic, the desperation that sorta thing). Perhaps fear isn't the right word (although it comes close), it's more a feeling of 'I don't want xxx therefore I do yyy however I am not afraid because it's within my control'. I don't think you should ever fear that which is not within your control.
|
