The Mastery of Fear
The Mastery of Fear can be a wonderful emotion that keeps you alive. It is fear which has you react quickly and without thought when there is an on-coming car. Your instincts take over and, without thought or analysis, you move quickly out of the way of danger. As much as fear can keep you alive, it can also freeze you into inaction. You can become so terrified you will be hurt in some way that you refuse to take risks and try new things. In this situation fear is simply False Evidence Appearing Real.
False Evidence
When your mind runs wild with the danger of taking a particular action, you are convincing yourself of something you have no evidence will actually happen. Let's say you're interested in mountain climbing but you're terrified you'll fall and either die or be severely hurt. True, this has happened to many people, but not to as many as you might think. The news takes great relish in furiously reporting death and destruction. It rarely reports life and excitement, unless it's involving a national or college sports team.
How many people do you know who have successfully climbed the 55 fourteeners (14,000+ foot high peaks) in Colorado? I have no idea, but I did a quick internet search using the keywords, "climbing the 14000 foot mountains of Colorado." There were 774,000 results with the top ones containing a tremendous amount of information of the 14ers, the moniker used by one web site. If you have a desire to climb, are you going to be paralyzed by the negative of what might happen or by the positive accomplishments of tens of thousands of people who regularly climb?
By researching you can learn the definite danger spots of climbing mountains, or any other endeavor for that matter, and form a plan to overcome them. All you need is education, a plan of action, the right equipment or tools, and the desire to move forward.
Appearing Real
When your self-talk is negative, you are training your brain to be afraid. You've heard the saying, "Be afraid. Be very afraid." (This came from the movie "The Fly" with Jeff Goldbloom.) Although, the actual intent of the slogan was humorous, your negative self-talk is training your mind to be in a state of fear. You would protect yourself more by being wary of what you can do to yourself through your thoughts and beliefs than fearing whatever effect an action you take can have. When you combine the power of your emotions with thoughts, you form a chemical bond which imprints upon your brain. Your thoughts plus emotion can form a loop which is difficult to break out of. Use positive feelings with positive thoughts and you will move further in life in one year than you have ever done before.
Your brain and your mental abilities are amazing. Science is just beginning to seriously study the power of the combination of your thoughts plus your emotions. We are learning that the thought plus emotion combo fools your brain into believing that what you are thinking of is real. When you combine emotions of fear with thoughts of "I can't do this or something bad will happen," your brain believes it is real. You've just created for yourselfFalse Evidence Appearing Real.
Napoleon Hill in "The Law of Success" talks about how the enemy of progress is fear. It can immobilize you if you let it. It can prevent you from accessing the power residing within you to fulfill your dreams. It will quench the passion which fuels your action.
The promise in the power you have within you if you only allow it to bloom, is that by controlling what you think and feel, and that includes fear and thoughts of fear, you can accomplish more than you ever dreamed possible.
