Today’s topic in our continuing series is Fear.

Fear is an extremely important topic and an extremely important thing that each and every one of us needs to address and deal with in our personal lives and the reason I say that is because it has been my experience that every bad behavior and every bad choice in our lives can be traced back to fear, a very basic fear.

And fear can be very personal and it’s a very complicated subject so, in order to keep things simple for this discussion, I’m just gonna talk about two basic types of fear.

But I want to give you an example that you might be able to relate to first, and that is something that we’re all pretty familiar with and an argument that we’ve all come to accept which is the argument around bullies.

So bullies I think are a really good example of how fear can manifest into really bad behavior, really aggressive behavior. So you look at a bully on the surface and you look at someone who is very aggressive and very angry.

But the reality is we know that those people typically have extremely fragile egos, very low self-esteem and all of that stuff can ultimately be traced back to some type of fear, they’re living with some type of fear in their life either fear of loss or a fear of being called out or found out. Or worse, very real physical or emotional abuse.

So, with that in mind, the importance of fear should not ever be undervalued, you really should look at your life, especially if it’s not exactly the way you want it to be these days, and look at the fears that might be holding you back from living your true self.

So, on to the discussion, so the two major fears that I want to talk about, first and foremost is the fear of failure.

The fear of failure is the fear that keeps us from even trying, it’s the thing that stops us from ever starting, it’s the thing that keeps us where we are and its a very natural biological response. Our brains and our emotions are pre-wired to keep us alive, and no matter what the scenario is no matter what the upside is, if your brain anticipates something as a risk or as a hazard it’s going to do whatever it can to convince you not to take that risk or not to endure that hazard because it wants to keep you safe even if being safe means being stuck where you are which is a place that you don’t necessarily want to be.

Okay, so the fear of failure we know is the thing that our subconscious mind does and sometimes even our conscious mind to convince us not to do something to not try out, to not ask for that promotion, to not enter that race, to not try something new, those are all fears of failure, fear of embarrassment, a loss of social status, embarrassment – those are all fears of failure.

But the other fear I want to talk about which is much more insidious is the fear of success.

How could the fear of success even exist? Wait a minute, of course we all want to be successful, well the fear of success is a really tricky thing because it’s much harder for us to recognize. When we’re afraid to do something it’s very visceral it’s very practical, it’s right in our face, I do not want to try that, I’m afraid of that. What if I don’t succeed, what if I get hurt, what if I fail, what if I don’t reach my goal, right? Those are all really obvious when you have a fear of failure.

But a fear of success is that thing that stops us right before the finish line, it convinces us that good enough is good enough we don’t have to be great. The fear of success is that thing that sabotages us and causes us to give up just before we actually reach our goal.

So, for many people when you start a new endeavor like a new business or a new relationship it’s actually the fear of success that stops us from living fully. The reason I say that and the way I can probably best demonstrate that for you is when you sabotage yourself it’s about your ability to actually succeed at a certain level.

If I do get this promotion what’s gonna happen? Oh my gosh what if I don’t live up to it? What if I can’t handle the additional stress, the additional responsibility, right? Those are all fears of success.

So, both fear of failure keeping us from starting and a fear of success keeping us from finishing can definitely stunt our growth and stunt our success in life.

So, those are the two fears I really want you to consider exploring within yourself.

Think about times in your life when you were afraid to start something, think about times in your life where you didn’t quite get the result you wanted to or you somehow sabotaged your own success. Then pull the thread on those, do the work to either journal or meditate on it or take a walk or really think about those examples in your life.

And then try and trace that back to its fundamental, foundational fear. What was it actually that you were really afraid of? It probably wasn’t the actual goal that you were afraid of, but what were you afraid of achieving? What were you afraid of maybe losing if you didn’t achieve that level of success?

So those are the things I want you to think about today, centered around fear if you have questions, of course, put them in the comment section below, ask me a question if I forgot something, tell me I’m dead wrong if you think so, but either case I would encourage you to subscribe to the YouTube channel to continue to get short videos like this, things that you can ponder to better achieve your idea of identity and purpose in life and then at any time you can visit my website at http://therealcharlesbrowne.com/ for even more content, alright thanks for tuning in.