My Thoughts on Fear

Has fear ever stopped you from doing something you wanted?

I regret to say that several times in the past, I've allowed fear to paralyse me. Recently I've been thinking about fear and I want to share my conclusions.

What is fear for?


The one thing every animal on earth understands is fear. It is fundamental to our survival. It allows us to recognise threats. When it strikes, there are only two things you're able to do. Fight, or flee.

If fear is so great, what's the problem?


The main problem with fear, is that sometimes, fear lies. Sometimes it tells us that we are in danger when in fact no real danger exists.

Fear is learned.


One thing that's interesting about fear is that we're born fearless. I once saw a BBC documentary about phobias. In it, they put a baby in a room with a python. The baby, instead of being scared, tried to grab and eat the python. Only when the baby's mother reacted to the python with fear did the baby show any sign of apprehension.

We learn other fears too. Most insidious of all the fears we learn is the fear of failure. Ironically, we learn this fear from school. We learn that we must always give the right answer, that mistakes are bad, that we must never, ever fail.

Its this fear of failure that seeps into our souls and crops up whenever we face the unfamiliar. As with all fears, all that can be done when it strikes is to either fight or flee. Too often, we flee.

To illustrate how daft the fear of failure is, I give the example of a baby learning to walk.

When a baby learns to walk, they're not very steady, wobble around, trip over their own feet and fall down more often than not. This is good, because each stumble teaches the baby what not to do. Next time they get up they're a little less wobbly and walk a little further. They learn from every fall.

Imagine if the baby was scared of falling. He now has two options. Try to walk (fight), or stick to crawling (flee). Falling would petty much be inevitable so which option do you think the baby would choose?... That baby would never ever walk.

Daft, isn't it?