Fear. Who has not been stopped cold in his or her tracks when fear of what might happen seemed to paralyze you. Who has not turned and ran from fear of what might happen even before the situation developed into what we feared?
We have a defense system that has as its sole purpose in existence the duty to protect us from harm. It does this by showing us what might happen at some point in the future. It gives us not just one but sometimes many possible outcomes of a situation that we would not want to experience. It is truly one of our best friends and since we are afraid of what it shows us concerning possibilities, we fear it and do not want to entertain what it has brought us to consider. We call it an enemy. An enemy of our peace and equilibrium.
How does this friend show us these possibilities? It alerts us of the unwanted possibilities in one of four ways. One is showing us still pictures in our mind. Two is by showing us full-color, 3-D movies in our mind. Three is by whispers or shouts that we hear in the confines of our mind. The fourth is just an uneasy feeling that something is not right.
Any of the possibilities that it offers us for our consideration are just that – possibilities. They may or they may not happen.
Of course, if you jump off the edge of Niagara Falls, the image in your mind of your death when you get to the bottom of the falls will probably come true. Not necessarily true but most likely it will be just what you imagined.
If you imagine that speaking your mind in any given situation will bring the wrath of others down upon you and cause them to do great bodily harm or bring you intense embarrassment to you, this too, might happen. Then again, it might not. You never really know until you try and you might be surprised at the respect and admiration you receive by being the one with the courage to speak up and tell the truth.
Regardless of what you have feared in your life, I will wager that less than ten percent of what you feared ever happened to you. When the less than ten percent did happen, I will wager that less than ten percent of that ten percent EVER was as bad as you feared it to be. If I am wrong and lose this wager, you probably are not alive – what you feared DID really kill you. In that case, you would not be reading this anyway, would you?
A good mental exercise is to ask yourself, “What is the worst that can happen? And if that happened, then what might happen? And if that happened, then what? And so on and so on.
If you run away from your fears, then you will not even be where you were when you ran from them. You will not be as close as you were to walking through your fears and seeing them for the paper tiger that they were. Who knows when you might get another opportunity to see the paper tiger for what it is – just a possibility – not a certainty.
If you did the right thing running away from your fears, then why do you still wonder, “What might have happened if only I had went forward through the curtain of fear and faced whatever the situation I found on the other side?”
In fact, part of the excitement in living is going through paper tiger after paper tiger and seeing that what you were shown, what you called a fear, was just a possibility that was meant to keep you on guard while you continued forward into the unknown of your future.
Worry is just our expectation that all we fear is proably going to happen.
NINETY PERCENT of anything you have ever worried about NEVER HAPPENED.
NINETY PERCENT of the time it was NEVER AS BAD AS YOU FEARED IT TO BE.
by SHOWING you the possibilities.
It is your FRIEND.
