F ... is for Fear
Fear is defined as an unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger, a state marked by this emotion. Also fear, dread, fright, alarm, panic, trepidation.
As if this wasn't bad enough, fear is actually much worse than this...fear is what keeps us from being and becoming whole human beings. You can dress fear up in any one of a number of outfits, you can call it anger, grief, rage, jealousy, depression...but fear is still fear - it is any negative emotion that keeps you from being the best you can be. Fear is the opposite of love and a negative emotion that you need to eliminate from your life.
Fear never kept your safe, not one moment of your life, and it's a terrible way to live. One method of facing your fear, whatever it is, is to fully go into it - feel it - think about how it would feel to do the thing you fear, or how you would cope with the loss of a loved one, or what's the worst that would happen if you spoke up to the person who's been pushing you around. Whatever it is that you fear...go into it...feel it...and come out the other side of your fear.
To be frightened and to short change yourself in life because of your fear is guaranteed to lower an already low self-esteem. If you find that you are always settling in life...settling on a mate you don't really love because of the fear of being alone, settling on a job you don't like because you lack confidence to go after some other job, settling on what other people want because you're afraid to challenge behavior you don't agree with, then you're operating your life (or rather not operating your life) through fear.
Once you start to face your fears and try to come out on the other side of them, the next thing to do is to force yourself to take some low-risk chances. Challenge yourself, and with every low-risk challenge you take, your fear will start to fall away. Even if you don't succeed, your confidence and self-esteem will rise with every risk you take. The only thing you risk is failure, and it's not even failing if you take a chance.
When you confront your fears you have nothing to lose but fear...what a wonderfully freeing concept!
Let's operate our lives on the concept of love...and remove the fear from our lives.
