Fear is an extremely common human emotion. If we don’t understand and take control of our fear, it will control us.

When we are controlled by fear, we are only operating at about 10% of who we truly are.

For some people, this can be so debilitating that they become used to living in fear, and feeling anything else seems uncomfortable.

“If you feed the fear, the fear will grow, and if you feed the faith, the faith will grow.” _ Mary Moresey

 The word faith has a religious connotation, but faith is really just trust. If there were an opposite to fear, it would be faith. When there is faith, there can be no fear, and where there is fear, there can be no faith. Which one are you going to choose?

When I am in my fear, one thing that jolts me out of it is the realization that Viktor Frankl gives us:

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

He teaches us that in that space lies the ‘human choice’ that we speak of. Otherwise, our lives would become action and reaction. Our experience would become dependent on what we have. There will be no mechanism that we would be able to feel anything other than what we are being subjected to. We would be as happy, as sane, as upset as what is happening to us. We want to become familiar and conscious of that space so that we can stop having reactions and start having responses.

He teaches us that we have the power to choose how we feel about whatever it is that happens to us. Believing in that choice empowers me to feel that, although I am feeling afraid, I have a choice not to feel that way if I chose not to.

Fear is our protector, it is a part of our defense mechanism. It is not meant to be thrown away. It is there so it can show up and we can create a very positive, workable relationship with it. I hope you will also push yourself more towards testing your limits and seeing how much you can challenge your fear so that it does not control you so that you can come to a place where you can control it.