Naming our Fears

I was poking around the net this morning and I came across a really good article by Curt Rosengren about dealing with fear appropriately titled The F-Word. Check out his opening paragraph:

FEAR IS A DREAM KILLER. It’s the biggest and most common obstacle I see in my work helping people create passion-filled careers. Fear paralyzes, and it magnifies failures. Worst of all, it brings an acceptance of the status quo, however unpalatable that might be.

Bam! Right in the kisser.

Curt lays it out there for us. Our fears could very well be the single biggest thing that keeps us from actually moving forward and accomplishing great things in our lives.

There are so many take-away’s from his article you really need to read the whole thing.

He talks about “shining a light on our fears.” He says that if we don’t name our fears then

Without realizing it, you make that fear your de facto reality.

That is so true! I grew up with this vague fear that I was never going to amount to anything. As a result, for the vast majority of my nearly 40 years on this planet I have pretty much hung out in the middle of the pack. I rarely ever attempted anything big and then when I did actually take something on I’d be prone to give it up earlier than I really should have. That fear was becoming a reality in my life!

Fear feeds on the belief that we can’t handle what might happen, and then we unknowingly reinforce that belief.

Again Curt is spot on. Gorgeous and I have worked hard over the years to get debt free. And at one time in our marriage we actually were. But we share a fear of never really having any kind of savings to speak of. Because of that financial fear, we tend to be a little too risk adverse with our money. We have turned down opportunities to invest because we tend to “what if” them to death. As a result, our savings is not what we’d like it to be. Go figure.

Taking action, any action, is one of the most effective tools for success I know.

The good news is Curt offers up some things we can do to get past our fears. And as far as I can see he is not at all wrong.

Fear is a big reality in the everyday lives of us mortals. The Bible mentions the word fear over 250 times. And when you add in the word afraid and other variations the number more than doubles to nearly 550 references. Apparently God knows about our fear issues.

Here’s my favorite passage about fear:

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

Since the first step in dealing with fear is to name it, here are some of the things, silly or not, that I am afraid of:

• Snakes
• Talking to people I don’t know
• Cold calling on the phone in a sales situation
• Failure
• Mediocrity
• Dropping the ball
• Being irresponsible with my money

That should get me started.

What are you afraid of?

Tags: Fear, Life, Curt Rosengren, CREEations, Chris Cree