The Author's Corner: Afraid

Ask yourself what you are afraid of. Everyone has fears in their life. Most people do everything they can do to avoid these fears. Some for example are using their fear itself to drive themselves towards their life’s goal, like fuel to propel them in their career. Another one is to motivate them into moving to a new community where there are better opportunities for their family and career.

One of the biggest fears is to fail in life. In today’s society there is the way people think is right for them and if they do not reach that goal or dream, they feel as though they have failed. The ones who stop and look back on what has happened in their life can see that in reality they did not fail. It is something that is hard to do when you suffer a setback to see that you have moved closer to that goal and dream.

Sometimes in life we are faced with the fear of what could happen in the future. This creates problems of its own as we have no real control of the future other than how we respond to it. Having this fear prevents you from living your life to the fullest every day. We think we have the ability to see what will happen and for most people it is in a negative context. When we see what positives could happen for us the fear of tomorrow and our future will disappear.

Within all, fear is a truth to who we truly are. Fear in itself is not a bad thing as it helps us make the difficult decisions in our life. It also shows us where we do not want to be. Make no question about it, fear is our friend. It moves us forward and helps us come into the person who we are going to become.

Over the span of our lives, fear starts in childhood and changes as we grow. A fear of an animal can save us in time as the fight or flight kicks in when we see that animal. It is this one thing that fear does for us as it in a way protects us from harm. There are so many fears that we all have and most of us have several fears.

I have a fear when I go to sleep at night that I will wake up back at the age of seventeen back in the town where I experienced ten years of physical and mental abuse from that community. The fear is that I am just dreaming this life that I have had since moving out of that town in August of 1996. Deep inside I know that this is real, however the fear is still there.

When it comes to your fears they will always come up and to understand them is all that we can do.

Stay safe.