Do What Matters
The need for GAIN, for more, for better, for growth, seems to be part of human DNA and as such inescapable.
However these desires are in fact driven by FEAR and thus can be hacked.
You might think wanting more is great for motivation, and it can be if controlled, but it can also be the cause of great pain and suffering.
Check out our spirituality guide below for more about rising above the uncontrollable need for GAIN.
For more about self-improvement, click here.
Fear and fearfulness can be a real disabler, stopping you dead in your tracks and keeping you from pursuing your dreams and goals.
Fear manifests in the form of…
These behaviours come from some underlying fear, it could be fear of failure, fear of… coming to harm, even death, embarrassment, vulnerability, loss, poverty, change, uncertainty, discomfort, rejection… the list goes on.
Fear is a mind-construct and comes from working through scenarios of what might happen in the future, but because it’s thought-based it inevitably will be biased towards self-preservation and minimising risk and uncertainty where possible, because that’s what thoughts are conditioned to do.
Doing anything new, moving away from your comfort zone, will cause a fear reaction. It does so for everybody to some degree. The difference between those that act and those that don’t is confidence and risk-tolerance.
Some people naturally believe more in themselves or have been brought up to have confidence in themselves and are prepared to tackle uncertainty and risk, because they feel they will find a way through to a successful conclusion, no matter what.
Others have been conditioned to believe risk is dangerous and to play safe and/or have been brought up in such a way as to have their confidence eroded to the point that they just don’t want to take a chance.
Confidence is often built-up or demolished in childhood years, and the beliefs about ourselves, that are subsequently formed, follow us into adulthood.
We should increase self-awareness and truly challenge any limiting-beliefs, because often they are more likely to be reflection of the self-doubt of the very people who discouraged us from taking risks, dealing with uncertainty and change, rather than of us, as individuals.
Discouragement and warnings of what might go wrong, may have been made with the best intentions of keeping us safe, but result in a self-imposed prison.
Because they may be long-standing beliefs, it may take some time to break out of the groove they have imprinted on our minds and patterns of thinking, but bringing them into AWARENESS and challenging them is often the all important first step.
Repetition of a new empowering belief will form a new neural pathway through the power of habit. Put simply, replace bad habitual thinking patterns with good ones.
The old saying, “NEWS SELLS” isn’t exactly accurate, rather fear and drama sell.
This is important to understand when thinking about the mainstream media (companies such as BBC, ITV, Sky), because they all need to justify their very existence by achieving high viewing stats, without which, they would lose funding such as sponsorships, advertising spend, TV licence and subscriber fees etc.
You could also include the tabloid press, who additionally, are also heavily biased towards their owners political agendas, are biased in their reporting and don’t try to pretend to be impartial or true to the full facts. However when writing this post I was mainly thinking about TV based mainstream media, however newspapers have the same commercial needs and employ many of the same tactics for keeping readers interested.
So, how do they ensure they get these all important viewing figures? Well, simply presenting the news, the facts, just isn’t going to cut it. Facts are boring, they can be communicated in a matter of minutes. That won’t do, that won’t keep people viewing. The news, containing just the facts is a commodity after all, it is the same wherever it is communicated.
Sure there is some merit in uncovering a buried story and shining a light on it. But that’s hard, requires talented journalism, it takes work, time and detection skills, and such stories are hard to come by, at least sufficiently enough to fill the necessary air time.
On the other hand, drama and fear is easy, a emotive narrative can extend a news piece indefinitely. You have the facts, but you present them in such a way as to keep viewers attention. If you can tell the story more dramatically than anyone else, you’re onto a winner, you’ve differentiated yourself from the competition, the news is no longer a commodity.
How do you keep attention? You take a event, and you create a narrative around it, making it into a dramatic story. For this to work and for it to be dramatic enough you have add fear and uncertainty, that’s what make stories interesting.
Let’s use something current to illustrate the point, the recent general election;
Conservative Party
Labour Party
Now you create a narrative. Okay the Tory party won, but they were hoping for a majority and they didn’t get it, expectations weren’t met, so this can be characterised as a defeat, no, a disaster of epic proportions.
You then get the other parties to give their view of the result, and because they lost, they will naturally want to deflect any attention and criticism away from their shortcomings, and will inevitably play along with the Tory’s election disaster narrative.
How can we develop the narrative to maximise fear, uncertainty and drama? We can speculate about the inevitable P.M.s resignation. Wow this could go on for weeks, and so it goes on.
Let’s just look at a couple of different possible narratives..
Theresa May and the Conservatives were hoping for a greater majority than they originally had, but it didn’t work out. She’s now going to find it more difficult getting policies through parliament and will need to recruit help from other parties. This is going to be much more difficult particularly if the other parties don’t agree with those policies.
This keeps true to the Facts, it doesn’t add emotive language, it doesn’t particular fire up emotion.
Mays plan to steamroller the opposition has failed disastrously. Her intention to force through a hard Brexit and get mandate to run the country have been firmly rejected. She has lost all credibility and can’t possibly survive the growing division within her own party. And with the Labour party ready to step in and form a government should a new election be necessary, it is only a matter of time before she is forced out.
This narrative is designed to evoke emotion and moves away from the facts and adds speculation into the mix (increases uncertainty and fear). If anything, this is rather underplaying the media narrative, but you can see the difference between these two possible narratives.
Well it’s creative, it’s clever but it’s also manipulative, it’s fear mongering. It upsets, divides and causes pain and suffering in viewers who believe the BS. More scary than that, it also influences the actual events themselves. Political parties often react to what the media is saying, and position themselves to restrict the publicity damage.
Mainstream TV channels such as the BBC aren’t as obviously biased as the tabloid press, although I’m sure they are at times, when it serves them. They will more generally take any position that provides the greatest dramatic effect. They have done it to the Labour party and Corbyn in particular. They don’t discriminate in that way, their main agenda is simply to keep eyeballs on their channel, fear and drama works.
Don’t let the media fool you. To protect against this callous media manipulation….
For more about the acquisition of knowledge.
I recently created a couple of graphics around the idea that fear of being nothing drives us to get and thus be more. The first graphic was designed from a spiritual perspective and says:
“The FEAR of HAVING and thus BEING nothing drives our appetite to get and thus be more and more and more and more and more. In reality, we can never be nothing because we are everything.”
The second was designed from a motivational perspective, with almost the same wording and can be seen at the top of this post.
This got me thinking about how, effectively the same subject, can be viewed as a negative and a positive, depending how you choose to frame it.
What both of these graphics are saying is true, the seeming contradiction comes about because of the intent behind how “THE FEAR OF HAVING AND THUS BEING NOTHING” is used.
If we psychologically lose ourselves in this fear, being fully identified with it, it becomes a negative because we are a slave to it. It controls us, rather than the other way round.
If we use it as a technique to get us to the next level, and to grow, without fully identifying with it, it can be a good thing that positively motivates us. This is a subtle but skillful difference, which is difficult to distinguish between. However the contrast is as different as day and night.
The Fear of Change is really the fear of a possible future devaluation in our “sense of self” otherwise known as the “Ego”. It’s the fear of the unknown and sense of uncertainty about the future and what dangers that future might hold for us.
The only way to make things better than they are at present, is to make a change – change the way we think and how we do certain things. Failing to change, often results in stagnation and a sense of getting left behind, because everything around us is constantly changing whether we like it or not.
We falsely think that keeping the status quo is the safest thing to do because it’s familiar and we know we can cope with things as they are “Better the devil you know” as the saying goes. This is an illusion. Change is the only reality, so embrace it and be excited by all the possibilities that exist because of it.
The negative things we fear aren’t real, they are only imagined. We can’t deal with future threats, because they are mind projections, which we play, rather like a movie, over and over. We simulate these experiences as if they were real. We feel the sense of danger, our bodies feel the stress as if the experience was actually happening to us. It’s important to know the difference between the bear in your mind that is going to eat you and the actual bear in real life that is going to eat you. Our mind will always gravitate to the “worst case scenario”, because it’s designed to keep us alive. But many modern day situations are not life or death.
Ask yourself “What is really the worst that could happen if things don’t work out, will you die?” How many times have you dreaded a future event, only to find the reality was far less scary than you thought it would be?
I embrace change, I find it exciting. It is the only way to live in our modern world. Doors will open for you, while others may close but the journey is what life is about, not the destination. So enjoy the ride. Open your heart, open your mind. Jim Carey said it best. “Open the door in your mind and when the door opens in real life just walk through it”.
For more information regarding motivation, check out our motivational guide.
“If you insist on holding onto EXPECTATIONS, then expect the future to bring CHANGE, and you won’t be disappointed.”
“CHANGE brings with it OPPORTUNITIES, stop focusing on the RISKS and look for the CHANCES.”
“Why we resist change – CHANGE = UNCERTAINTY = RISK = LOSS. In reality it also provides OPPORTUNITY. But we fear LOSS more than we value gain. So we focus on that.”
“There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love. There’s only scarcity of resolve to make it happen.” – Dr Wayne Dyer
“Nothing changes if nothing changes”.
“When you reach a fork in the road, TAKE IT.” – Yogi Berra
“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.” – Dr Wayne Dyer
“The only way to make sense out of CHANGE is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance.” – Alan Watts
“We can have more than we’ve got, because we can become more than we are.” – Jim Rohn
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading”. – Lao Tzu
“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance”. – Alan Watts
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”- John F. Kennedy
“The key to change, is to let go of fear.” – Rosanne Cash
“Strive for progress not perfection.”
“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” –George Bernard Shaw
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” –Frederick Douglass
“Goals seem impossible only when you are not heading toward them.” – Mike Hawkins
“Everyday is a second chance.”
“If you don’t take risks, you will always work for someone who does.”
“Your life does not get better by chance it gets better by change.”
“I already know what giving up feels like. I want to see what happens if I don’t.”
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
“Run when you can, walk when you have to, crawl if you must, just never give up.”
“You create your own reality.”
“The distance between dreams and reality is action.”
“You create your own reality.”
“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” – Tim Notke.
“Dont make excuses, make improvements.” – tyra banks
“Are your excuses more important than your dreams?”
“Make things happen.” – getresults.org.uk
“Decide – commit – succeed.”
“If it is important to you, you will find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.”
“Let’s not regret what we did not do, rather everyday is an opportunity to do the things we will never regret.”
Fear results from a perceived devaluation of self, which also includes anything we’re attached to, such as ideas, beliefs, people, memories, our body’s, even our favourite football team etc. Fear is an evolutionary emotion that triggers our fight or flight response to keep our “self” alive (preserve life).
Although we can still face life threatening situations, they are less common than they were when we fighting sabre tooth tigers.
Because we absorb things we value into our “sense of self”, we can feel the same fear that we experience when our life may actually be threatened, in none life threatening situations, such as talking in public, and watching our favourite team participating in a penalty shoot out.
In life, fear can hold us back from pursuing our Goals by fooling us into thinking, we won’t be good enough, or we’ll be happier staying where we are.
In business, fear of taking action can be a result of a perceived devaluation of our sense of self:
• Failing, and not being as capable as we would like to believe we are (feel bad due devalued “sense of self”)
• Not being able to cope with the demands of our success (devaluation of “control” due to loss of control, “harmony” and devaluation to “family life”)
• Having to spend all our time working (devaluation of “family” and “leisure time”)
• Fear of the unknown (possible devaluation of “harmony” or “comfort zone”)
Manage FEAR and conflicts by identifying them, acknowledging and working through them to resolution. If your goal doesn’t accommodate what you fear you will lose in achieving it, you will remain torn.
There is always a way to achieving a goal and resolving any fears you may have in the acquisition of that goal, which are, after all, only real in your mind.
Jim Carey said it best
“There is a huge difference between a dog that is going to eat you in your mind and an actual dog that is GOING TO EAT YOU”.
Check out iamspirituality.com for more information about how your emotions work, and listen to Jim Carey’s speech below for some inspiration in following your goals. Choose Love over Fear.
If you would like to read more articles focused on FEAR, click here.
For more about MOTIVATION.