She would hold mine hand and led me through the thick darkness by the lonely path beside the three tomb epitaphs under the big mango tree. Graveyard silence pervades the serene atmosphere while the owls and the crickets sang their dirge. As if being led through the valley of shadow of death I would follow her with a panting breath, while my mind raced within me. Then she would say ‘don’t fear, nothing is here’. After she had ferried me across then would I be free from the torture of fear. Free from the fear of the imaginary monsters that would come out of the dark and swallow me. The fear bubble burst that night.
The above passage is an excerpt from my book ‘Success Unplugged, powered by conquest’. As a little child I was always afraid of the dark. It happens that whenever I visited my granny and she asked me to wait for dinner, after dinner when it’s time to go I would feel reluctant to go because of the dark night. This happened on many occasions, and I did not knowing that she has been observing me. So on a fateful day holding my hand in her right hand and the lantern on her left hand she helped me burst the fear bubble. She taught me the best lesson of life I have ever received as she led me along the dark and lonely path.
Within a few seconds I received one of the most valuable tutorials of life which many would pay heavily to receive in this present day world. It was a lesson about fear, that dreadful phenomenon that has left unmitigated damages to the psyche of many individuals. Many dreams have been battered, many visions have been blighted and many destinies truncated, all because of fear.
The scourge of fear is in its torture. Fear once it captures your mind puts you in the prison of torture. Just like my granny would say ‘nothing is here’, there is nothing in fear. It is like the imaginary hot air balloon which can burst at the slightest pinch. Fear really is nothing other than the figment of our imagination. It is a creation of the negative imagination. It is the ‘monster’ we create out of our own imagination. Fear is inimical to our happiness and satisfaction in life as it puts a limitation to our potentials and frustrates all our efforts in life.
Fear has a subtle means of caging men in the dungeon of mediocrity by taming their potentials. Its torture infringes on the freedom of people to express their potentials. Fear makes people not to unpack and tap into the creative content of the baggage of life. However, not until you burst the catatonic fear bubble you can never express your potentials. And you will remain redundant as far as success is concerned. In other words you cannot achieve success and fulfillment in the atmosphere of fear. This explicitly captures what I have termed the ‘infidelity of fear’.
Infidelity in this regard is not about unfaithfulness to one’s spouse or partner, rather infidelity in this context is about unfaithfulness to a moral obligation. Every one of us is under a moral obligation to succeed in life. Remember we have the mandate of success. Hence success or fulfillment is not the exclusive right of a certain class of people. It is open to all and sundry irrespective of their background provided they meet the requirements.
There is nothing we cannot achieve including fulfillment in life since we have the capacity and the wherewithal to succeed. But we are stripped of all our abilities to fulfill this moral obligation and confined to the dungeon of mediocrity when we live in fear. Fear has a demeaning effect on the individual worldview. And looking through the prism of life tainted with fear all we could see is impossibilities, doubt and unbelief.
Under the worldview of fear you will be ignorant of your self-worth. Basically you don’t know what you are capable of until you give it a try. In other words your self-worth is defined by your capability, and when you are in doubt of your abilities your self-worth will also be in doubt. Moreover you cannot develop your potentials without given it a try. Fear makes you rusty. A life of fear is replete with low self esteem, self pity and self defeat. Then a situation arises where you eventually lose faith in your abilities.
There is need for you to burst the fear bubble if you want to make maximum impact in life. A toddler taking its first stride must first overcome the initial fear of falling down if it must succeed in walking. There is an adage that ‘the fear of death does not stop a warrior from going to war’. At least testing his might in a battle will enable him know his self worth, if not he will be ignorant of his capacity even though he may have great fighting skills. Bury your fear not your potentials or talents. It is either you bury your fear or your fear will bury your potentials. Don’t allow fear place a lid on the treasure-box of your potentials.
Let’s say your mind is the treasure box, and inside it are great potentials, (treasures) which you must freely express or trade with for you to be happy and satisfied in life. Now what fear does is that it closes this treasure box, put a tab on these wonderful potentials and make sure you don’t express them. This is one major reason why many lack fulfillment today. Not that they don’t have what it takes but because of fear of expression of their talents.
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