Talking about fear

Fear is a natural human emotion which must be handled well. Psychiatrists tell us that we are only born with two kinds of fear – the fear of falling and the fear of loud noise. They say all other fears are learnt. If you think about this well, you will discover this is true. If you notice you will discover small children don’t fear anything until the adults “teach” them. A small child is “fearless” until he is taught to fear. A small child wants to play with fire until we teach him to fear it.
“Fear is a habit; so is self-pity, defeat, anxiety, despair, hopelessness and resignation. You can eliminate all of these negative habits with two simple resolves: I can!! and I will!!” Unknown Fear can either be positive or negative. The problem is that fear is more of a negative than a positive emotion. Fear cripples and paralyzes.
“Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.” Daniel Defoe Fear closes the door to liberty. It destroys our joy. It creates unnecessary tension and anxiety.
“Fear of becoming a ‘has-been’ keeps some people from becoming anything.” Eric Hoffer Fear adversely affects our thinking process.
“Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.” Orison Swett Marden Most decisions taken when fear is dominant are usually wrong, for example fear that the stock market is crumbling can make people just offload their shares prematurely.
“Cowards die many times before their death” – W. Shakespeare
In view of the times we live in, we need to be very careful that fear does not become our motivation for doing things. We must put fear in proper perspective so we don’t get unnecessarily encumbered from reaching our maximum potential.
When we look at what is happening around us there is a great tendency to fear.
Fear grips our heart as we see the insecurity in the society that has led to unnecessary loss of lives. Fear invades our hearts when we see what is happening to the global economy. Fear seems to be the logical thing that occupies our minds when we see the corruption that pervades our society. We must banish fear from our hearts at these trying times, else we will go through life full of anxiety, worries and unhappiness.
Fear can sometimes produce positive results. The fear that reckless driving might increase the risk of accident makes us drive carefully. The fear of that your boss might give you a query for a shoddy work makes an employee sit up to do a good job. The fear of the teacher spanking a child for not doing his homework makes him take his homework serious.
The fear of failure drives some people to succeed and make money. The fear of a bad marriage can compel a spouse to succumb to anything just to avoid a bad marriage.
Much as fear can sometimes produce positive results, it is not the ideal motivation for doing things. We must never allow fear to dominate and rule our lives. We must never use fear as a weapon to have our way. We must graduate from being motivated by fear to being motivating by the desire to do things right. This is a major feature of a mature and responsible person.
“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love and self-discipline”. 2Timothy1:7

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