Are living with fear? Are you scared?

Fear is a natural warning system, and as such should not be ignored. But it is good to know the cause! Fear in this context does not mean blind terror, caused by some threat to life, but a long term anxiousness, a concern, an underlying unease that debilitates and may reduce a person’s ability to think or reason clearly.

Such fear, often, is brought about by a person’s inability to be alone with their thoughts. Many are frightened of what they might discover about themselves. They may have developed a phobia of being alone; they have lost touch with their core values, that which makes them who they are. They divert themselves with the most trivial, even unwelcome company, or the most meaningless pursuits, to being alone with themselves. Such people have become disconnected from their core values, their potentialities and subsequently with themselves. They do not know who they are.

A child is born with unlimited, unrealised potential and is generally unafraid. It is a person’s main task in life is to discover themselves, to discover that potential. To do any less is, indeed, to live an unproductive life. In this sense to be unproductive is to lead a life dictated by others; to do things at their behest; never to live their life as they would naturally choose. It does not just mean that a person produces less per hour than that ‘required’ by an industry standard; that a person’s chargeable hours are below budget. Not at all. It is a fundamental human need for each to fulfil their potential; to have the satisfaction of knowing that at the end of their allotted span they have done the best they could with their lives. Not to be doing so gives rise to a deep seated concern that as a human being they may be a failure (in that they have not lived up to their own innate knowledge of their potential) and thus may be rejected by their friends or peers.

For many people, and this includes particularly “baby-boomers”, there is the added fear of growing old, of no longer being a productive member of society, and of being rejected and considered as an outcaste. Such people may be convinced that the waning of their physical strength is linked to a weakening of their total personality - their emotional and intellectual powers. This is fostered by a belief in business, though some changes are apparent, in the importance and the power of youth, in the qualities of energy and ambition often evidenced by the young. These fears are unfounded, as many older people lead very fulfilling and productive (in the widest possible sense) lives. People are only as old as they feel. Only in Western capitalist oriented cultures is the wisdom that comes with age ignored and those considered “past it” are retired and consigned to specially constructed “villages” or “homes”.

Anyone’s greatest fear is that of rejection, of disapproval by their peers and being an outcast. Everyone knows the devastating emotional effect of being given the “cold shoulder” by ones choice of friend or companion. The worst punishment that can be meted to someone is to suffer solitary confinement. To be so punished is to be rejected – completely – to have no meaningful contact, no relationship with anyone. Such people are outcast, and some are driven insane in such situations. People naturally want to be accepted by their peers; but today they seem also to want acceptance by everybody and therefore are afraid to deviate, in thinking, feeling and acting, from the cultural pattern. One reason for this fear of rejection is a subtle even an unconscious feeling that if a person cannot approve of themselves, because they fail in the task of living productively, then they have to substitute it with approval by others.

This leads on to the fact that most have forgotten, or never been told, that there is an unwritten law of Cause and Effect. No one can know the full effects of a cause (some word, action or task), but of a certainty there will be an effect, on someone or something, somehow, somewhere and at sometime. This means that seeking unqualified approval has its dangers. There is also often an unconscious knowledge that no one can have real control over events which they instigate. They have no means of knowing the ultimate outcome (“the best laid plans of mice and men etc.”). To use computer terminology, “garbage in = garbage out”. People try to control one thread without knowing the pattern and a deep concern, even fear rises to the surface. The thoughts arise in the small hours, “What if ...”? or, “If only ...”!

If any of this applies, then know that to live fearlessly and harmoniously with oneself, and ultimately others, means confronting ones thoughts head on, it means avoiding the painful dead ends of blame, fault-finding, guilt, revenge and not forgiving; it means being responsible for oneself, limiting and defining one’s responsibility for others and being aware of the connections between one’s actions and the actions of others. Of knowing when to say “yes”, or “no”, or “enough and no further”! In this regard engaging a coach will certainly help to bring some measure back into a person’s life and thus restore work/life harmony.



Are living with fear? Are you scared? - To learn more about this author, visit Andrew Campbell-Watt's Website.

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