TRACEY TISCHLER BEAUTIFUL YOU . . .
Do the thing you fear the most and the death of fear is certain, Mark Twain said.
Fear stops a lot of us from doing so many things. Many clients are drawn to coaching to help them inch their way towards facing their fears. Coaching can help the client set goals each week to build up courage towards facing a fear and the coach can also be a form of encouragement from a neutral, nonjudgmental party that the client needs to push through their fear.
Fear is defined as
a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid. Synonyms: foreboding, apprehension, consternation, dismay, dread, terror, fright, panic, horror, trepidation, qualm. Antonyms: courage, security, calm, intrepidity.
The one thing that amazes me most about fear is that it can be imagined. Meaning that we can have fear that isn’t causing a threat at this moment, or may never cause an actual threat, but can stop a lot of us dead in our tracks and prevent us from following our dreams! On the other hand is courage, which is an antonym of fear. Courage is defined as
the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.
Both definitions (fear and courage) come from the same reference, but there would be a disagreement with the definition of courage. Just because we do something brave or face a difficulty, we never really face it without an element or some form of fear. We do it in spite of the fear and, in fact, it wouldn’t be a courageous act if there wasn’t fear.
We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear. Martin Luther King, Jr.
This is a passage from A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson which addresses the fear that we all share:
A lot of us know we have what it takes – the looks, the education, the talent, the credentials. But in certain areas, we’re paralyzed. We’re not being stopped by something on the outside, but by something on the inside. Our oppression is internal. The government isn’t holding us back, or hunger or poverty. We’re not afraid we’ll get sent toSiberia. We’re just afraid, period. Our fear is free-floating. We’re afraid this isn’t the right relationship or we’re afraid it is. We’re afraid they won’t like us or we’re afraid they will. We’re afraid of failure or we’re afraid of success. We’re afraid of dying young or we’re afraid of growing old. We’re more afraid of life than we are of death.
You would think we would have some compassion for ourselves, bound up in emotional chains the way we are, but we don’t. We’re disgusted with ourselves, because we think we should be better by now. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking other people don’t have as much fear as we do, which only makes us more afraid. Maybe they know something we don’t know. Maybe we’re missing a chromosome.
The job of a Coach is to help their clients face their fears in order to move forward.