Conquering
Fear
Is it the belief of being in control that keeps us
on an even keel. The moment we suspect that
we are losing control is the moment when fear
edges into the fragile balance of our
sanity. Uncontrolled fear is a corrosive
emotion, something that gnaws away at the
fabric of your mind, screws you up to a
frightful aching state of anxiety and leaves
you with nothing good. Will I win or lose? Do
people like me? Am I a failure? Am I good
enough? There is nothing but sickness in
this sort of fear; sickness of the mind which
produces no answers to your questions and
leaves you in an agonizing limbo. At least
there is the fight or flight surge of adrenalin
-induced from our primal fears and the sense
of achievement and confidence that comes
from confronting the fear. If you choose to
stand at the bottom of Kilimanjaro and make
that first committing step up, then you have
the comfort of choosing to conquer your fear.
It is something you go to willingly. Embracing
the near future and all that it will throw at you,
you do so with open arms and a clear mind,
confident that you will succeed, you will
control it. But in this circumstance, there is no
control over anxiety and self-doubts. Once
indulged, fears of this kind hold us, prisoner,
they devour away your rational thinking. They
are the penalty of thinking, the penance of life.
Living for the moment, for nothing but the
present, brings with it an unexpected bonus.
10 - Ewya July 2016
It seems that if you can escape from the need
to know the future you free yourself.
There are life enhancing moments in life when
this is precisely so. They are fragile transient
times when the borders between living and
dying seem to overlap when the past and the
future cease to exist, and you are free. It is
because of this commitment to the present
that it is so difficult to look back at what you
have done and explain why you chose to do
it. Perhaps you have to accept that at some
point your future self will look back and mock
at all that you once were; this is time
betraying everything you once believed in.
Release the constraints of the past and in so
doing, act in and only for the present, then
you choose to experience absolute freedom.
In a curious way, maybe an adventurer stops
living when he begins to experience his chosen challenge. He steps out of the living world
of anxiety into a world where there is no room,
no time, for such distractions. All that
concerns him is surviving the present. He
leads a separate life of black and white
decisions - check equipment, rest, be aware.
Be aware of everything until is there nothing
but the present and there are no corrosive
fears to eat away at confidence.
An adventurer edges along the fragile line
between the worlds of life and death, peering
cautiously into the other side - it is as if he
were immortal, neither alive nor actually dead.
When he comes back from his adventure and
steps unsteadily back into life, he tries, with
little success, to comprehend what he has just
experienced. He has a tantalising memory of
those days but is unable to say exactly what
has happened. At one time he knew what he
had seen, knew it to be real, but now he is not
sure, nothing seems real, and he trembles on
the verge of going back for a second look to
be sure that he did see it. The
uncertainty tickles at his mind until he is
forced to go back. When the corrosive fears
and anxieties of the present, crowd him once
again, he remembers that elusive state when
time stood still, when his perspectives shifted
into another dimension of living, and he
hungers to go back there.
Darren MacDonald
www.souladventures.co.za
Most of us have never experienced the
mind-numbing fear that Darren experiences
on a regular basis, but we all have inherent
fears that hold us back from experiencing our
brilliance. Some of us are terrified of heights,
spiders, how people judge us and what they
think about us. Whatever your fears are, if
you allow them to hold you prisoner they will
grow into monsters and keep you locked in a
cell of terror. How do you escape???
I found my escape by facing my fears head-on
I looked each one in the eye and conquered
them. By doing this, it allows a person to
open themselves to opportunities and
possibilities that they would have never
considered before. But only you can take the
first step. Opportunities shift you to new
places in your life. The choice is truly yours.
Fear can be paralyzing for some people. Fear
is not always a bad thing. There are
obviously some things about which we should
be afraid and in which we should exercise
appropriate caution. If our fears control or
prevent us from taking certain risks, we
allow them to define and limit who we truly are
to engage in only courses of action that we
deem to be sufficiently safe. As a result, many
of us never achieve our potential, or we cheat
ourselves out of the richness that life would
otherwise hold for us.
Ewya July 2016 - 11