"Too many of us are not living our Dreams,
because we are living our Fears."
This very insightful quotation,
attributed to the African-American motivational speaker, author, and politician,
Leslie Calvin (Les) Brown, has always
been one of my favorites. On innumerable occasions during my many years of medical
practice, I have had to make reference to it with my patients in order to
illustrate how it prevented us from enjoying the life we are entitled to enjoy;
by smothering us with dark clouds of uncertainty and fear. Without question,
this truth exerts a powerful hold on the lives of large numbers of people, and
has blocked them from achieving their basic hopes and dreams.
From time to time we have all been guilty of
failing to take action in situations that were well within our capabilities to do
so, and each time this occurs we are likely to experience feelings of loss and
regret for the resulting inaction, especially when we realized that it could
have been avoided. In fact, on balance, this is probably the most important of
the factors which serve to limit human behavior, and compromise the ultimate
choice of action undertaken.
The behavior is clearly visible in countless
situations involving all aspects of daily living beginning from very early childhood
at the time when awareness begins. It is present, for example, if the child
cries when the mother puts him down for fear of losing her, or when he holds
back from jumping into the pool for fear of drowning, or from riding the bicycle
for fear of falling. Equally it is present when he fails to respond to the
teacher because of a basic subconscious fear of embarrassment or failure. This
pattern can become quickly ingrained in the person’s psyche and can take total
control and fully color the rest of his life. St Thomas Aquinas, the 13th
century Catholic theologian and philosopher warned of this when he advised:
“If
you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save
you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, then what you do not bring
forth will destroy you.”
Living
life in a milieu surrounded by fear is never a happy or satisfying one. An old Spanish
proverb attests to this:
“A life lived in fear is only half
filled”
We
relive our fears each time we avoid accepting a challenge, or of stepping
forward to assist others because of the fear of confrontation. And we do so
equally, when we fail to comment on a situation in order to avoid the risk of losing
favor, or even to intentionally hurt others. It also happens when we
consciously make a false decision to avoid being found out. And most of the
time we do this not so much to hurt others, but more with the misguided intention
of trying to protect ourselves from having to commit mistakes. But this action will more
likely leave us with a bitter sense of self-depreciation and regret, rather than
with satisfaction. Unfortunately, we are all guilty of repeating this behavior
over and over, without ever pausing long enough to understand the damage it
causes to our psyche, and we do this under the mistaken guise of protecting
ourselves. This is precisely what John C. Maxwell, the very successful American
author and ordained minister meant to convey when he wrote:
“The greatest mistake we make is
living in constant fear
that we will make one.”
In the wider picture, whenever we set about,
wittingly or unwittingly, to submerge our needs, hopes and dreams of achieving
a goal because of the paralysis of fear, or of uncertainty, we leave scars on
our psyche which are not easy to be erased. With time, this will be reinforced
into negative actions and will inevitably serve to aggravate subsequent
behavior. These changes will also affect basic personality by altering perception
and compromising responses. The sum effect of this is that any definitive intentions
are slowly replaced by fear of consequences, and correct action is retarded by subsequent
inaction. With time they become entrenched in our thinking and then converted into
patterns of behavior. They ultimately interfere with our thinking and our relationships,
and end up compromising our relationships.
In addition, this underlying fear plays a
broader and often overlooked role in other facets of people’s lives, affecting
not only behavior, but values, choices and relationships. Many of these are the
result of subtle conditioning influenced by prevailing attitudes, social expectations
and family pressures. They remain largely below surface, and are capable of
fueling a wide range of life-shaping emotional dilemmas, conflicts and
uncertainties. They generally develop from a clash between needs and underlying
personality, and they play a significant role in formulating the outcome. The
incidence of being influenced rises in people with negative and recessive tendencies
who are generally afraid of the unknown,
uncertain of the future and unwilling to accept change.
It is not, as so many would like us to
believe, that real or unconscious fear is the main cause of this dilemma, since
fear itself, in the right setting, is a helpful component in initiating and
protecting the individual. But it becomes toxic when it succeeds in altering perception
and thinking and interfering with any of the subsequent relationships, experiences and
life-events. In every situation, fear itself is never the cause of inaction, it
merely functions as a colored lens that alters the perception and changes the
direction, and the key to control is not allowing it to do so. This must begin
with honest self-introspection, recognizing and accepting one’s shortfalls and failings,
and then resolving to convert these insights into positive action by developing a
sense of direction and purpose. If this can be achieved, the power of fear will
lessen or be altered into a less destructive direction, and once again free the
person to be the best he can be.
The great Jamaican-born reggae entertainer and
social philosopher, Bob Marley, in his own fundamentally inimitable
style, gave the right advice, when he declared:
“Emancipate yourself from mental
slavery.
None more than ourselves can free our
mind.”
-Indeed,
no better advice can ever be given to anyone who lives under the terrible
burden of living his fears. For unless he succeeds in casting off the darkness
of fear’s colored lenses, and live in the bright sunshine of reality, he is
destined to spend his life, as so many are doing, in despair and uncertainty.
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