If you started on a scavenger hunt today and you were told to bring back a bucket full of fear, you could look forever, but you’d always come home empty-handed. Fear simply does not exist out there in the world; we conjure up all kinds of fearful thoughts in our mind and therefore create our own fears.
Often times, people are unwilling to try a new behavior because the thoughts they have about it create “fear.” I was working with a girl on learning to be assertive and let other people know how she truly felt, but the fear of speaking up was so strong that she continually avoided being assertive.
When you need to do something that is out of your comfort zone, you may convince yourself that some person won’t like you, or that some disaster will happen, or you might think of a hundred other things that may happen if you move forward and try out the new behavior. But the fear is internal, and it is supported by your habitual way of thinking which you cleverly use to avoid dealing directly with your self-imposed dread. You may think some of the following thoughts:
- I’ll fail
- I’ll look stupid
- I’m not sure
- I might get my feelings hurt
- They might not like me
- I’d feel too guilty
- I’ll lose everything
- They might get mad at me
- I might lose my job
- Something bad will probably happen if I do
- I know I’ll feel awful if I say that
- I won’t be able to live with myself
Thoughts like these betray your internal support system and keep you in fear which robs you of your strength to move forward. Every time you reach inward and come up with one of these fear sentences, you’ve consulted your weakness mentality, and the victim stamp will soon be evident on your forehead.
If you have to guarantee that everything will be all right before you take a risk, before you try a new behavior, you will never get off first base, because there are no guarantees that things will go okay. You have to toss away your panicky thoughts if you want to get what you want out of life.
Remember that almost all of your fearful thoughts are purely “head trips.” They rarely ever happen in real life. An ancient sage once said, “I’m an old man and I’ve had many troubles, most of which never happened.”
