Be Inspired: Fear is a bad imaginary enemy

Tuesday morning I was driving and I had a bit of a revelation that I wanted to share with my friends as well as put into writing so that I could be mindful of this at a later date. Fear is an imaginary enemy.

I have spent a great deal of my private time in a state of fear which has created an insurmountable anxiety at times. Sometimes, I reach into the root of that fear and determine what is real and what is not but the truth is that in the absence of a life threatening event, fear is not necessarily real. In the case of a life threatening event our instincts for survival take over. Does this in effect mean that all other fears are self-inflicted? They may stem from our desire for egocentric self-preservation or from our need to be accepted by others. We do many things because we are "afraid" of the alternative outcome if we do not act or participate in this world on the level of everyone else. Does this really need to be the case? I am a strong believer in the power of words as well as how verbal dichotomies continually shape our society. From a post-modern perspective we can change our mindset about a particular situation simply by changing the vocabulary around it.

For example, I recall in the early 90's following the end of the Cold War that there were media terms floating around like "ethnic-cleansing". Most of us weren't quite certain what that meant initially until it surfaced that it was genocide. The UN also went on Peace Keeping Missions in responses to the global outrage. Soon they became Peace Making Missions which was really armed humanitarianism with warfare. It is not uncommon for our minds to piece together words that sound pleasant and assume that they are indeed acts of goodness while all the time, it is quite the opposite.

With this in mind, I thought about excluding words from my vocabulary that would exacerbate my anxiety in the hope to change the way I perceive the situations in my life and ultimately react differently. Essentially, empowering myself. I thought about ways in which I can overcome my daily fears that do not help me but rather hinder me in achieving my goals. I isolated one thing that I can do as an experiment. I am choosing to eradicate words like fear, anxiety, doubt, and insecurity from my mind and vocabulary. They can be replaced with "mild concern" or "matters requiring additional thought" but I don't feel that I need to be subjected to this state of mind any more.

If you also find this valuable and choose to adopt a similar practice, please let me know if you are experiencing a sense of liberation. As I continue with this new mindset, I can only imagine that there will be a wonderful transformation that will benefit me as well as others close to me.

As FDR said in his inaugural address, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." His presidency exemplified his courage and inspired a nation to overcome a period of extreme duress and hardship. We have the potential within us each day to rise with the ideal of fortitude and act in truth and integrity without trepidation.