Feb
04

Fear Defies Reasoning

Categories:

Fear

February 4, 2008

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
-Marcus Aurelius

Fear is the anti-inspiration. Inspiration is perpetuated by love: love of life, ourselves, each other, God, etc. And, fear is the opposite of love. If we find that inspiration is fleeting in our lives it may be that fear is robbing it from us.

To face and eliminate fear is to give rise to inspiration. It is inevitable that when fear is gone, inspiration will take its place.

Fear, however, presents us with an immense challenge. First, it is elusive. It masks itself as anger, arrogance, apathy and many other things. Secondly, it is irrational. No amount of reasoning can make fear go away.

How Fear is Irrational

Many of us have the same reactions to public speaking, airplane flights, insects and dental tools that we would have standing face to face with the grim reaper. At the same time, we may be willing to risk life and limb to drive home faster after work.

Clearly, fear does not always correlate with real risk. It is irrational.

If we are afraid to fly on an airplane, we might attempt to reassure ourselves with facts and statistics that flying is safe. But, fear does not care about facts and statistics. It defies reasoning.

Additionally, we know intellectually that getting close to another person can be painful if things don’t go well. But it is much more painful be lonely. Drifting away from someone you love, or being married for years and feeling as though you live with a stranger is much riskier than working to strengthen your relationship. Still, fear persists.

Fear is conditioned subconsciously and can not be conquered with conscious rationale.

Conquering Fear

To conquer fear and experience pure inspiration, we must first face these two challenges: uncover fear’s mask (see 5 Faces of Fear), then re-condition ourselves by facing those fears. These two major steps will be the focus of the this series on fear and relationships.

When fear is uncovered and faced, it’s power disappears, life is transformed and the impossible becomes possible.

About the author

Danny

I am Danny Kohn, writer and designer for this site and owner, software engineer and consultant for Inspirations Software Design. My three greatest passions in life are sharing time with my family, software design and sharing inspiration with others. I have the incredible privilege of being able to spend a significant amount of time every day doing each of those three things. I am a single father of Tristen, our 6 year old son. It has been such an incredible joy to watch him grow up and learn so much. Everything he does and says overwhelms me with adoration. We have a wonderful evening ritual of reading books together in a beanbag chair. Nearly every night, we have a laughing attack together. I smile and giggle constantly in his presence and feel truly inspired.

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2 comments

1 ping

Mike says:

February 4, 2008 at 3:41 pm (UTC -5 )

Reply

I try to do something that is scary to me now and then. This way, I keep myself conditioned to feel more at ease facing fears. It doesn’t necessarily make the fear go away, but it does make me feel more confident about trying new things.
Danny says:

February 5, 2008 at 7:23 am (UTC -5 )

Reply

Thanks for the great suggestion, Mike. That really is the key to re-conditioning fear.