Fear - noun
ˈfir
Synonyms of fear
an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger
an instance of this emotion
a state marked by this emotion
reason for alarm: DANGER
Fear - verb
feared; fearing; fears
Fear - transitive verb
to be afraid of: expect with alarm
fear the worst
Fear - intransitive verb
to be afraid or apprehensive
feared for their lives
feared to go out at night
fearer noun
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…Here are the two fears that kept me from living my best life. It took years of life experience and professional help to overcome them and live my best life.
Fear of failure – my father had this interesting idea that if he showed me how to do something once, I would immediately get it. Like woodwork and motorcycle maintenance when I was six. Being told I was stupid influenced me and I stayed away from him as much as possible well up into my fifties. The result was as a young kid/teenager I did a lot of things for the first time through trial and error. Mostly error but somehow, I survived.
Fear of failure taken to the extreme, which I did often, meant I would invest myself fully in the activity to the detriment of relationships with my brother and sisters, friends, and co-workers. It also had the interesting effect of pushing me to seek out physically dangerous sports and activities so I could demonstrate my fearlessness.
Fear of not being good enough – If I cared about something, I wished it had been English classes, I would agonize over being good enough. I had a sense I was not the smartest nor the most physically adept but that did not keep me from setting self-expectations that I could compete at a high level in whatever I chose to do. One day in high school, I think late in my junior year, I decided that I would show my father I was good enough by focusing on my classes and make the honor roll.
But I ignored the emotional side of not being good enough, which meant that after an award, accolade, or promotion I would get right back at it as if it hadn’t happened. I was one of those people that was stuck in a revolving door of proof that I was doing things right that would get overwritten with my father’s message I was stupid and a screw up. Spending time with a therapist helped me see changing the message was an inside job and that it was up to me to make the change.
Once I decided to like myself, what I had done, and who I’d become, the fear of not being good enough lost its sway over me. I can now say that I enjoy the daily challenge of being a better writer than I was yesterday. It also goes for everything else in my life. I want to be better than I was yesterday but I don’t fear being good enough because I’ll never be done learning, improving, moving forward.
One final note on fear. I have more fear of rock climbing than I do leaving airplanes at ten or twenty thousand feet above the ground. Some people say its depth perception that makes the difference or that I have more experience leaving a perfectly good airplane. I think it’s a little of both.
Do you have a subject (like writing) or sport that you engage in even though you experience fear?