Fear paralyzes. Fear debilitates. And fear can prevent you from achieving your full potentials.
Fear is a potent human emotion and contrary to what many believe, it s a matter of the head and not the mind. Fear is a triggered when a small almond shaped organ sitting deep in the centre of your brain, the amygdala , releases a large amount of adrenaline and cortisol to the blood stream. The sudden gush of these two powerful chemical has an immediate effect to the body’s central nervous system. Heart beat and blood pressure increases. The pupil dilates to take in more light. The body’s muscles tighten. All this response, popularly known as the “fight or flee”, is in-built, natural and has kept the human species alive for centuries.
The human race, starting out in the plains of east Africa tens of thousands years ago faced real danger. They had every reason to fear ending up as lunch or dinner of some wild beast. Danger was ever present. Being hunter-gatherers every endeavor was risky. They neither had the tools nor the time to do statistical study of risk. They did not have board meetings to discuss their fears. They did not hire consultants to manage their risks. They developed an automatic response to fear and that response being constructive had been passed through the ages to the modern man.
If you are reading this, the chances that you hunt with spears for your lunch are nil. We do not fear being eaten by a lion when we go the office’s cafeteria for lunch. Some real, some imagined and all robs us from life's joy.
Researchers have found that there are only three in-built fears in humans; the fear of falling down, fear of loud noises and fear of snakes. These three fears are hard-wired to us. The others are learned and/or fed to us by fear merchants.
Open the newspaper today and there pages and pages of news to scare us. The recent reporting of A(H1N1) flu virus is a good example. While the dangers of the virus are real, it is now being reported as an endemic capable to wipe the human race out of existence. Years before this was the avian flu, mad cow disease, West Nile virus, herpes and the list goes on and on. Switch on the TV and what you get. More often than not there are images that trigger fear flashing in front of our eyes. Why is this so?
Fear sells.
Despite living in an era where the life expectancies are higher than before, where every nation has shown progress, where many diseases that cause death, i.e. smallpox and measles are almost eradicated, we are more afraid than ever before.
We fear almost everything, from breakfast (which we suspect might contain cancer inducing chemicals) to being hit by an asteroid. While totally eliminating fear from our lives is not only impossible but potentially hazardous, we must manage it.
Fear unchecked is fear fed. To live a life that allows us to be all that we can be, we must manage our fears. There are many ways we can learn to do this and a simple and effective way is keeping a positive state of mind.
Resource: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=424388&ca=Self
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