Handling Fear

I had the occassion to spend time with my little brother, Malaki. Malaki is my adopted brother who is taking part in the Big Brother program. I have had the unique privilege and joy of talking and sharing moments of joy with this precocious youngster. He is all of seven and bound and determined to explore all that life has to offer him. Once I took him out to the pool and he was like a young man possessed, He couldnt't get enough of it, I had to practically drag him out of the pool.

Hes not afraid to take a hit. Malaki plays football and is just learning what his body and mind can do. Sometimes though his body and mind get confused and fear rules. We've all had fears: I had fear of heights when I was young.. fear of public speaking (most of us do)... Malaki as it turns out had a morbid fear of dogs! I didnt know that until he practically did a 180 turned  and jumped  into my arms as we went into Petsmart!. For a second, I didnt know  what he was doing, until a little furry creature (dog) showed up just wanted to sniff him, youd think it was a crocodile lunging out of the lagoon, He was terrified.

All of a sudden he wanted to hold my hand tightly, so  we walked around the store and I calmed him down. Evidently Malaki has had a very bad experience with dogs. Funny, what other consider threatening others consider nonthreatening... The same boy that loved the water, and meeting new friends, felt threatened by a little dog.?

Fears are illogical, sometimes it doesnt make sense. When we assess our fears it stimulates the fight or flight response. Other times it is just new experiences that we resist. We get so comfortable with the routine. However this limits our future prospects. We cannot live solely  by our emotions, we have  to use our minds when confronting fear.

Fear is paralyzing. Just as Malaki had a mortal fear of dogs, we all have paralyzing fears. If we allow them to paralyze us, it is our trap built with our own hands. Instead of being the free and open youngster he was cowering behind my back in the store.  Fear will do that to any body.

Shakespeare once said, " Fear makes us cowards of us all."

Lastly, fear distorts reality. Malaki  had seen dogs before, but his sense of reality was distorted because he felt that a harmless old Muffi was going to get him. Only by desensitizing him, do we have a chance to cure him of this. Eventually hes going to have a couple of good experiences with dogs, and he will be fine.

In much the same way.. in life we all need good experiences to replace a fear of phobia. In many cases the fear of public speaking and a new job, is unfounded. With confidence  and conditioning, we can overcome many obstacles that thwarted us many times before. I once read a book by Susan Jeffers entitled, Feel the Fear and Do it anyway"     So true, many times the fear is what Zig Ziglar calls   False   Evidence Appearing Real.

And so it is, the same primal fear that stymied normally a happy go lucky kid stops many adults.  Face your fears head on and take action.