It’s a simple question but one which I have used many times in my life when faced with life changing decisions. Fear is a terrible thing; but fear of what you may ask? There are many things we fear, either consciously or subconsciously. Fear of failure, fear of ridicule, fear of peer disapproval, fear of standing out from the crowd, fear of financial difficulties, fear of losing your job, fear, fear fear. It’s all around us.
If you analyse any major decision you’ve ever made honestly you will find that fear played its part. Fear of failure is one of the biggest fears we face. Everyone has it. Fear is a natural human emotion, but we need to recognise it, face up to it, and ultimately conquer it. Mark Twain once said:
“Courage is resistance to fear; mastery of fear – not absence of fear”
One man with courage makes a majority.
The history of corporate success has shown that those companies that do not persecute people who make errors, but instead reward them for taking the chance, for thinking outside the box and for having the confidence and commitment to trust their judgement have fared better than their competition.
Samuel Smiles wrote “he who never made a mistake, never made a discovery”
I am a lover of famous quotes, because within them is embodied the wisdom of generations. One of my favourite quotations was made by Theodore Roosevelt when he said
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat”
So what does this all mean? In a nutshell we need to take control of our lives. We need to empower ourselves; face our fears and move on. When we master the forces within, we influence the forces without.
Many people are stuck in dead end jobs. They turn up for work each day but they have long since resigned; they are the living dead. It is often difficult to recognise when we have slipped into stagnant waters; like putting on weight it happens gradually until one day you notice how out of shape you have become.