Saturday, 13 December 2014

Fear is just a state of mind...

The #RiseAboveFear film by : Mountain Dew
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Being a trainer, I’m often asked during my training conferences about “fear” and how one can overcome it. Further, having a degree in Psychology and giving training on self-confidence – people tend to relate the things and ask me – does fear have to do anything with confidence? My answer always is – of course.
You’re fearful of something when you’re not confidence of confronting it or getting over it/overcoming it. I for instance have always had the fear of water – it has always been a goal of mine to learn swimming but I haven’t been able to build the confidence to go through with it. Similarly, some people have fear of heights, some people fear the airplane, some fear spiders/lizards/cockroaches – there are all type of fears and phobias but this “fear factor” wont last long if we gear up and face the music.
Thinking about it, we’re in contact with our fear all the time. I for instance take a bath every day – is that too hard for me! Of course not. Then why can’t I go in a swimming pool and learn swimming, it’s just a mental state and the continuous fear circle inside me that makes me think that NO – no way at all am I going to be able to learn swimming.
The greatest friend of fear is “giving up”. Yes. Giving up on your fear is the worst possible case scenario that one can map out. If you’ve fear of something, at least have the motivation to say that yes – some of these days I’m going to overcome it and build yourself the confidence to do it. I for instance know the fact that some of these days I will get over the fear of water and will definitely learn swimming – I do not let the thought of “NEVER” pop into my head.
I know the feeling of overcoming my fear because I did overcome one of my fears. 15 years back I had 2 fears in my life – 1) I was fearful of swimming and 2) I extremely feared driving.
Whenever I would sit with a car instructor to teach me driving, I’d always mess up one thing or the other. In fact it got so worse that one day when I gathered the guts to go out alone driving – I drove 1 KM with the clutch still locked and the smell of “burning” coming from the tires – that’s how fearful I was of driving that I even forgot to unlock the clutch but then my boss (yea, it’s one of those stories where boss is helpful) – my boss said to me “Manoj, think about yourself in 20 years from now when you’ll have a grown up son.. Would you want yourself to have a car but not know how to drive it! Can you let the luxury of driving cars slip away from your hands! Don’t let this fear get the better of you”… And that actually changed my perception.
I was deceptive of the fact that I could drive but in a BAM – the fear was over and in the next 6 months, I overcame the fear of driving. Now in fact my son has a similar fear at the age of 17 but I’m pretty definite that when I give him my boss’ speech when he turned 18, he too will #RiseAboveFear.

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