‘There’s Fear in the Air’ Series
I am always afraid. There is always something to be afraid of. Right before my most courageous moment, many times I have to fight down an unhealthy fear. There is no person on earth who is not afraid. Just the nature of the unknown will cause fear.
The main point to remember is that it is not fear that is the problem. It is focusing on the fear. If the fear depletes a person’s energy because fear is uncontrolled, there will be no resources left to fight with. Uncontrolled, fear will eat at a person from the inside out. A body can only stand to be in the fight or flight status for a short time. When the fear is uncontrolled for a long time, chronic illness becomes a problem.
Fear’s Purpose
Fear serves a purpose. You cannot live without it. It is the alarm that wakes you up to danger. It gives you the physical ability to go on when your resources are gone. It gives you total awareness and focus for analyzing, for surviving and the strength to remove barriers.
It is indeed the superhero in each one of us. I am glad we have fear. It can be our friend more than it can become our enemy. Treat fear as an ally and every battle will be won.
It is what builds the champion mentality in athletes, in military pursuits. It is our friend, if we treat fear with that respect.
Fear is what enables us to have the strength to continue and finally breakthrough to complete success. It gives us the skills we need to make our purpose succeed. When we need skills in an instant, it is our friend fear who gives us the ability to figure out what we need to do. Fear is what helps propel us to break through barriers and break down strongholds.
Fear is a good thing. It is always a good thing, but we let it get out of control. Then it controls us and becomes a bad thing.
Learning to Control Fear
Controlling our fears is not an easy thing to learn. It is much easier to take the simple way out and be overcome by our fears. Everyone has the ability to sort through fear and use fear to make our lives useful and successful.
Slowly and deliberately fear can be controlled. It takes time to learn skills to control fear. All negative things are easy. Fear can be a negative thing until it is turned around. The best thing you can teach your children, every child must learn how to control fear.
When fear controls a person, they will act, say and do things they normally would not do. They would take advantage of people that normally they would not. They become emotionally out of control. Anger, worry, selfishness, crazy thinking, taking things that they normally would not be tempted to do become the norm. They allow their standards to become lower and lower. It does not matter if they have always let fear control them in the past, the point is, is that bad habits are motivated by uncontrolled fear.
Steps to Self-Control
- Keep a diary for a month about the things you think about during the day.
- At the end of that month, check off the negatives and positives.
- Determine the source of your thoughts, are they based on fear?
- Are they based on fear that controls or on fear that motivates?
- Write a list of what you are afraid of and the consequences of any actions you have done.
- Give yourself some grace. Start thinking thoughts that show gratitude for you and your life.
- Here’s the hardest part. Make yourself accountable for every thought you think that is fearful.
- Counter every thought based on debilitating fear with a positive thought based on self-control.
- They say if you do something consistently for 6 weeks, it’s yours for life.
Have Fun!
*Note: This series “There’s Fear in the Air” was a series that was started before our current global crisis.
