Fear

Someone very wise said that you should do something that frightens you every day. I’m not really sure what the point of that is….but maybe it’s a good thing to feel frightened daily. Fear is often irrational but also often grounded in protection of oneself.

For instance, apparently all babies have a natural fear of snakes (I have no idea where this nugget of information comes from, but I seem to remember reading it somewhere fairly recently). If that’s true then why don’t they have a natural fear of fire? Surely the average nappy-wearer in the UK has far more chance of getting burnt than of being bitten by a Black Mamba…or even our native Adder.

Adults’ fears are based upon experience – I know that large dogs have big teeth and could bite me, therefore I’m frightened of them (the ‘I’ here isn’t me – I rather like dogs, even big ones). But what about the irrational fears? Or even the slightly irrational? Like a fear of flying….seems quite rational at first – no one wants to plummet from god knows how many feet in the air, but actually the chances of that happening are tiny, therefore the fear is irrational.

How about the fears and doubts you have surreptitiously developed? Remember as a child when anything seemed possible? You could be an astronaut or ballerina if you wanted to….all you had to do was work hard and you could achieve. And then, there you are an adult and you’re not an astronaut or a ballerina. Well that’s fine if you grew up and changed you mind about what you wanted to become and you’re happy with what you’ve achieved. But what if you’ve grown up and you still want to be a ballerina? And maybe you have the skills, knowledge and capabilities to become a ballerina but for some strange reason you just can’t do it….Why? Because someone somewhere once told you that you couldn’t….

Why is it we give credence to the negative remarks? We really listen closely to them and store them up, ever ready to drag them out as good reasons for not achieving what we really want. Yet when someone pays us a complement or tells us that we can do something we seem to choose not to hear them or dismiss their opinion as flawed. Pretty soon all that’s heard is the negative stuff; all that counts is the negative stuff. And before you know it you’re full of irrational fears….

But how do you get rid of those fears when you need to?

Is it even possible to get rid of the fears?

Maybe a genius somewhere can come up with a specially designed bag into which we could throw all of those irrational fears…then the bag would just disappear and leave us fearless and able to do whatever we chose to do….it doesn’t even have to be a bag, an envelope would do, or a Tupperware container….

If any of you out there who read this blog regularly have suggestions of how to be rid of irrational fears do let me know….