Conquering Fear – Part One
Funny thing about fear seems to be it is one of those things that tends to multiply quickly, or disappear depending on how we handle it. Prior to the unexpected and tragic death of my wife Natalia who also happened to be the mother of my two smallest children I was pretty much fearless. For years I joked around that the only things I was scared of in life were dentist appointments and sharks. Other than those two things I pretty much went at life as hard as I could. Climbing mountains, white water rafting, jumping out of airplanes, swimming in all kinds of oceans, surfing, these were all just a way to enjoy life at its maximum adrenaline point. Public speaking to crowds sometimes close to 20,000+ was just another part of making the most of life. Suddenly in an instant my life, and my children’s life changed forever. All the wonderful illusion of bad things happen to other people not us went out the window. It has only been a couple years and I still find myself having fearful thoughts that I never used to have. Most of my life I was pretty fearless, but at a fairly young age I was taught to meet my fears head on. It was explained to me in no uncertain terms that courage was being afraid and going forward anyways. So I had embraced this philosophy wholeheartedly. The only problem was that now I was dealing with death itself. There was no way to experience that and come back. All of a sudden if something happened to me, where would that leave my young children.
A lot of people will make the argument that conquering our fears is all about doing the thing that you are afraid of so many times that it no longer scares you. Ironically for myself, I had taken risks that brought me close to death if you will many times. The cold reality though was I had deluded myself secretly into believing I was invincible. Maybe that is an okay philosophy when you are single, young and having fun. However, when you have the responsibilities of supporting a family, raising children, taking care of business it looks a lot different. Still, there is no doubt we have to find a way to soldier on in life when we are faced with tragedy even if it has scarred us forever in ways other people may never fully understand. One of the easiest and simplest ways to conquer fear I have adopted in my own life is to live vicariously if you will through others amazing feats of daring and adventure. Of course I will still have adventures of my own, but I have to be much more careful than I was in my younger days. The fear of dying is stronger than it has ever been in my life, and with good reason until I have grown my children to the point of independence. Given that at the moment they are 3 and 6 years old, I am in for quite a bit of downtime so to speak from jumping out of airplanes to face my fears. I love the Red Bull Commercial we have attached to this post, because it shows other human beings doing truly amazing things physically. True success in life comes from the great Wheel of Family, Spiritual, Financial, Emotional, Mental, Social, and Physical. So we must understand that physical accomplishments as amazing as they are represent only a seventh of what we need to work on. Still, taking a moment to witness greatness is a profound way to begin conquering the fears we have in our life. For example, watching a man jump from space makes being afraid of a few bills seem far less scary. Looking at a man flipping in mid air over a cliff kind of lessens the worry we have over flying in an airplane so to speak. Anyways, part one of conquering our fears in life, borrow the inspiration and motivation from other people’s accomplishments without shame. Witnessing our fellow human beings conquering their fears is a great way to begin conquering our own, in a far less risky way than making a jump from space ourselves. Stay tuned for part two in this lovely little series, and good luck in conquering your fears in business and in life!
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