Life: Blink and you will miss it!

FEAR

What is fear?  It is a state of mind, an emotion, a feeling that describes a situation where the person that is immersed in that state is going through an experience in which something is occurring that they think is not the nest for their existence.

I think fear is a primal or base emotion.  By that I mean this is an emotion that is built into our genetic makeup.  As animals living in the zoo called Earth, fear is a very necessary part of survival.

Picture the situation: All of a sudden you are in a jungle, and in front of you is a very angry tiger, with very large teeth, growling, and is about to pounce on you and rip you to shreds. Your first instinct will not be to lie on your back and play dead, or get ready for a fight, it will be to run like absolute hell!  What happens is that your body gets pumped with hormones which changes your body to allow you to make rapid decisions and execute them just as rapidly.  Your feelings will go into a state of fear which allows you to make the conscious choice of “FIGHT OR FLIGHT”.

Now in that situation remove fear.  Imagine your body is pumped and ready, your brain is in a state to make decisions and execute, and you decide to smile, and say “Here kitty kitty…” Well Humans as a species would not be here today.

While fear has this very important side, it does not allow for rational thought.  Its purpose is not designed to allow you to think.  And this has very serious ramifications, because people allow fear to control how they react to situations that might need thought. 

Fear con be cultivated and instilled in others. It can be used as a method to control people. And it is, very successfully.  Fear is at the heart of today’s society.  Think about it, if you don’t brush with toothpaste, plaque will build up and your teeth will rot and you will be in pain.  That would be a campaign based on fear.  Imagine this: if you don’t brush with toothpaste, you might have to eat porridge for the rest of your life... Doesn’t make you so worried, does it??   Now expand that to a global level.

Terrorism has a basic principle—cause terror.  Terror is fear taking to the extreme.  People involved in causing terrorism are probably very afraid of something themselves, and they feel they have to cause others to be that afraid for the thing that they are afraid of, to change. 

As Yoghurt in Spaceballs said “Vat a voild!”

So what can be done???  First and foremost is to recognize fear.  To accept it and allow it into our conscious consciousness. To become aware when we feel fear, this is very important because as a base/primal feeling it is essential to our humaness.  You might feel it when confronted with something different, such as a job change, or you might feel it when you look at your bank balance, but the KEY is this: Unless it is necessary for your immediate survival, do not let fear control your decision making.

Stop, say to yourself “I am afraid and I that is OK, and I will make my own conscious decision”… and then think about the situation.  If your bank balance is low, eat in for the rest of the month, and work on ways not to spend so much in the future, if you are faced with a job (or similar) sudden change, remind yourself that you are afraid, its OK, and then work on a way to deal with the affect of the changes.

Hand in hand with fear is anger, so at the same time as you become aware of fear, feel your anger, and ensure you allow to it be, and ensure you don’t allow it to control your decisions!  (more on anger in another section)

Why should fear not be allowed to control decision making? The P.O.C is by allowing fear to control a decision, will mean the decision will be in favor of the person making it. The decision will most likely not be the best outcome for the situation, so it is imperative at all levels of social interaction to see this, from every child, to  Home Technicians to Presidents  of countries

Can you imagine a world where non life threatening decisions are made with rational thought?? It would be a very different place.

In her Book, Irresistibillity by Phillipa Daves, she has this to say about Fear in relation to Self-Esteem:

“If we felt utterly confident in every situation then fear wouldn’t arouse our survival instincts to cope with danger. We wouldn’t learn anything because we wouldn’t see the need to. We wouldn’t pick up the signals from our environment in new situations. Perhaps some of use would never achieve anything.”