You must tame your fears

30 Oct, 2016 - 00:10 0 Views
You must tame your fears

The Sunday Mail

Milton Kamwendo Hunt for Greatness —
There are times when the future looks uncertain. Your heart is gripped by fear, doubt, endless questions and apprehension. It is tempting and challenging. We live in times that are volatile, uncertain, complex and filled with ambiguity. These are sometimes called VUCA times.

The past is not coming, stop living there because that would be fairy-land. You cannot recreate the past, and what you are going through is the new normal. You might as well learn to live on the edge because if you are not, you are leaving too much space. Whatever is happening, never think from the podium of fear.

Do not fly out of the window.  When you act out of fear, you are bound to make irrational decisions and do mad things. Trying times are not best met with madness. Meeting chaos with insanity just breeds more confusion for you. Whatever you think is going on is not all that is going on.

There are other narratives that are at play. Think long term, engage the gear of faith and see that the future is bright, exciting and filled with endless possibilities. The chaos happening outside you must be met with a grounded faith-filled-heart and a resolute mind.

When you know your true source, you cannot be moved or flustered. Whatever happens, you will do more than survive. You will thrive. It is not just a blind dive into a beehive. It is a choice that you make to live on different terms. Confront fear with faith.  Do not just forget everything and run, or find excuses and reasons. Fear not!

FEAR: Finding Excuses and Reasons
In times of change, do not fear. Stop finding excuses and reasons for failure, fear and frustrations. Worry is like sitting on a rocking chair. You feel you are doing something but remain in the same place. Every season has its opportunities, just like every cloud has a silver lining.

Stop being overwhelmed by the huge cloud of despair and apprehension. Focus on finding the silver linings that are there in every cloud. There are opportunities that are being made available now that will never come again. Seize them and move forward.
Instead of manufacturing excuses for failure, dream up opportunities and possibilities. Stop exchanging fear-notes and start dialoguing around this ever-widening canvas of opportunity.

FEAR: False Experiences Appearing Real
I read a story about a man who was accidentally locked up inside a refrigerated railway wagon.  It was dark and cold. Obviously no one would hear his cries for help or his banging on the walls of the wagon. He was trapped and knew what his destiny was. When he saw that he had no way out, he started freezing, and just before dying, he scribbled on the wall: “Here I am, freezing to death.”
After about a few hours, the wagon was opened and he was found dead, having frozen to death.

However, another surprising discovery was also made: It was that the refrigeration of the wagon was not working and there was enough oxygen for him to have still been alive. He did not die because of the cold but the thoughts of freezing. His false emotions appeared real. The experiences in his mind were too real.

Stop finding excuses for your demise and death. Life is full of possibilities. The bad times you go through are just positioning you for the good times you will have. Stop dreaming up your death and making death wishes. Position yourself to live and thrive. The future is brighter than you think.

FEAR: Frantic Effort to Avoid Reality
I am not urging you to behave like an ostrich that buries its head in the sand as a solution. Do not fear. Do not make frantic efforts to avoid reality. Learn everything you have to about the current situation and conditions. However, take a neutral view to facts and events.

Stop looking at what is happening from the basis of negative commentary. Instead of using events and facts against yourself, use them to bolster your faith. Armed with the facts, start scouting for possibilities. There are too many possibilities for you to use up in one lifetime. Never let short-term problems and situations make permanent faulty conclusions about the future. When you are blind to opportunity, do not think that everyone is blind.

The future is bright, exciting and filled with possibilities.  Believe that as first base. When many people are negative, you have awesome opportunities, advantage and a wider canvas of opportunities.  When others are moaning, groaning and complaining, that is when you should be planning, strategising and moving forward.

Stop using other people’s fears as inerrant and absolute prophecy. Confront reality with faith and creativity. It is when architects are faced with limitations that they make the most creative of designs. Limitations force you to think creatively and find solutions.
You cannot let this moment of awesome and creative opportunity pass you by while you are in a dreamy state of despair.
You will never make history when you are stuck to history.

FEAR: Failure Expected And Received
Your life will always wade forward towards the direction of your most dominant thoughts and expectations. When you expect failure, you position yourself for failure. Change your expectations and start painting pictures of hope. When you look at the present moment and compare it with the brightness of the future, this moment is a mere footnote.

Your expectation is the seed that stimulate faith or fear. You do not afford the luxury of a negative thought. Expect great things to happen and you will start seeing them everywhere. Expect opportunity and ideas. You will start seeing them everywhere. There are more opportunities awaiting you than failure.

Think differently and you will have different experiences. Be grateful and have empathy for negative people – they de-congest the road to greatness. Never join the choir of bitter, disaffected, complaining, grumbling, hopeless, lamenting and remonstrating people.  Rather than being part of the problem, work to be part of the solution. Complaining without a solution makes you an empty armchair critic.

FEAR: Forget Everything and Remember
Do not fear. Do not be disheartened by the critic and the despondent fearful fool. In any environment there are those who are stagnant and others that are moving forward. Choose to be a member of the progressives. It is better to move slowly forward than to stop moving. There will always be critics and doers. Choose to be a doer and possibility thinker. Do not let other people’s fears become your reality.

Hot-wire your mind for greatness. Be radical in your thinking but gentle in your actions. This is time for opportunity, amazing opportunity and overtures of grace. Forget everything that you have been picking up that is negative and remember the following words.

Theodore Roosevelt delivered these immortal words: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

The forgoing is worth re-reading until it burns in your mind. Forget everything and remember to put your best foot forward and do your best. Your destiny and birthright is not with the timid and cold souls that know neither victor or defeat. It is better to fail trying than to fail to try.

Trying times are not the times to stop trying. Stop having false expectations about reality.

Milton Kamwendo is an international transformational and inspirational speaker, author and coach. He is a cutting strategy, innovation, team-building and leadership facilitator. Feedback: [email protected], Twitter @MiltonKamwendo or WhatsApp +263772422634

Share This:

Survey


We value your opinion! Take a moment to complete our survey

This will close in 20 seconds