What’s holding you back?

                                                                       Fear

                                                     What’s holding you back?

We are all afraid of something. Snakes, basements, elevators, heights or spiders. Some people are so scared of things that they can’t go out of their house or apartment. Fear and dying and fear of dying are the common threads that link all humans together. But what is fear really?

Fear is a feeling that something bad might happen to us if something else happens, like a snake bites us or we get trapped in the elevator. But fear is also the feeling that we might lose something we value or not get something that we really want. The good news about fear is that it is almost always about the future. The bad news about fear is that it holds us back from acting in the present.

Some one once said that FEAR stands for Feeling Emotional As if it were Real. We feel that something bad will happen so we freeze and sometimes literally can’t take that next step. Once we discover that the fear is not real, like the monster in the closet, we can then take action.

To get over, around or through a fear we have to face it. It is a real feeling, but it is not real. Then despite the feeling we have to take that first step towards the fear. It may be terrifying but once you take that step, touch the snake, you will never be afraid of that thing again.

Fear. What’s holding you back?

Mike Martin is the author of The Walker on the Cape, a Sgt. Windflower mystery.

www.walkeronthecape.com