I was reading a book about courage that said that bravery and fear are both wrong. Fear inhibits action and bravery lacks rational thought. It said that a person would want to do a month of the opposite of what they have been doing to partially cancel out fear on both ends, and then you can be more fearless, while still having courage. Someone who is a bit too bold, if that is even possible, would then benefit from spending some time analyzing and bringing up their fears.
Unfamiliarity Activates Your Amygdala
In another book I read, called Iconoclast(affiliate link), it mentioned that your amygdala in your brain goes off when you see something unfamiliar, like some one’s dog that just jumped on my leg while I’m writing this at the park. On that note, it has been interesting that the items I write about sometimes occurs while I am writing them, but that is also because I write about mindset occurrences that happen repeatedly through the day.
Back to the amygdala, it remains quiet as long as it sees familiar objects. If it sees something unfamiliar, it kicks in and you are out of your comfort zone. This relates to fear in that we are fearful of the unknown. The unknown represents possible danger or unnecessary risk to us.
Change Relates To Fear
If I change the colors on the side of this site, it could cause some of your amygdalas to get a little aroused, causing slight discomfort until you became accustomed to the new colors. That wouldn’t be helpful for maintaining a product’s brand, but is helpful in the realm of challenging and staying out of a comfort zone. Every change you see incites a small amount of fear until you figure out or rationalize why it occurred.
Fears Get Inflated In Our Minds To Unrealistic Proportions
Returning to the fear concept, when you let it be the dominant factor in your thoughts, your action in that aspect is reduced to nothing. Any action you see others take means their level of bravery there was higher than their level of fear. One of my interests is rapping. I searched on Google for “personal development rapper” and got 0 results. Due to the negative connotations rapping has, my motivational or informational raps would have to swim against a river current to have their intended impact. Also, fear of association with a “puerile” activity in relation to impact with readers of the site, or future academic admissions personnel, or future business prospects, was enough to cause abeyance of that plan as of yet. In that sense, fear is an in-activator.
Also, keep in mind that your biggest fears don’t materialize the way, or as bad as, you thought they would.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post!! Thanks for sharing all of this great information. It was very useful for me to read this!
Dani: Thanks for that. I appreciate the support. I tend to also enjoy writing a bit more when I am more forthcoming.
Good morning Armen. I’d like to make a short comment about fear. Lots of fears are good for us. Fear of fire keeps me from getting burned for instance. Fear of pain stops me from leaping off a cliff and trying to fly….straight down to an untimely death. But there’s one fear that is extremely bad. Fear of being judged. Personally speaking, this fear kept me from trying and failing and learning and succeeding for decades. Now I’d like to turn to your fear of teaching personal development via rapping. Let’s suppose every single fear of judgment had been banished from your life. Do you think you’d try teaching by rapping? Maybe yes. Maybe no. With that fear taken away, you’d know be sure what your true passion was. If your reason for being was rapping….off you’d go in that direction. If not…..you’d grow yourself in another direction. And the moral of my story? Fear of being judged is like a special key that unlocks our potentials. Take it away and we gain the courage of our convictions. Best Wishes. John Duffield
John: Hello to you as well. That’s a good distinction. Fear of being judged is like a useless abyss where good potential actions fall into. I hear your point about how it kept you from failing and learning for a long period. I’d say there are those few that realize that at some point, and then the majority who never reach that point of looking at their past with an understanding of what fear did. I’d say to take that positively, being in the first group. Being able to see that fear was a barrier in retrospect is much better than not seeing it at all. Certainly, without fear of judgment, I would release raps of that type. It is hard to say which type of fear it is though, as like in your example, fear of fire keeps us from getting burned, and so this one is more like that, as the consequence of being labeled with a stigma is more of a direct result than a potential worry. I have released many raps to a certain group I know online, but not publicly. One good thing is that we are only able to hold our inner self in for so long before it erupts. Your point about the special key seems to be right on the money. Thanks for your fitting discussion and viewpoints.
Don’t allow fear to keep you from growing. I remember I used to have a intense fear of rejection. It was insane how shy and bashful I was. After a year of commitment and a bunch of failures. I smile at all and make friend were ever I go. Fear is just an illusion. I saw right passed it once i seen my potential. Its all in the mind.
Great post!
Jonathan: That is a pretty cool description you provided. You get to talk about it in hindsight, which is a nice feature. Crossing that bridge of fear of rejection looks like it would take a committed period like the one you described. I don’t think it just changes on its own. Thanks for the message on the right track.