Everyone has to stare down fear to accomplish things of value.
This post is from my book “The Process.” Regardless of what you are trying to accomplish it applies to you. This kind of perspective cannot be reinforced enough for each new day provides a chance to face your fears.
Consider the way a child learns. Everything from learning to stand and walk and then run, to riding a bike, skiing, and skating, to reading, writing and mathematics, is a series of learning through failing. Children do not fear failure. They naturally try and try and try until they finally do the thing they are trying to do and then they try something else. They keep going because it is not in their mind that they cannot do it.
Children do not naturally fear criticism until they are criticized. When they are young their parents simply encourage them and they keep trying. As they get older and the number of influences in their life expands, this is when people start to criticize them for what they are doing. This experience is emotionally painful and they begin to attempt to avoid this. This is where fear of criticism develops.
Fear of rejection is also a purely learned response.
How many times will a child ask you for a cookie? As many times as it takes! You may say no 20 times, but they will keep asking, and eventually they will get a cookie.
All things of value in life will require having to learn and try over and over. All things of value in life will subject you to the opinions of others. These will be criticisms (although what they truly are is the other person’s ignorance and self-limitations projected on to you-so don’t be upset with them, instead feel sad for them because this is hurting their quality of life). All things of value in life will involve people and circumstances telling you no. To fear these things would mean you have not learned these lessons yet. This means that you have already missed out on many things in life because of this fear (I missed out on many things in my life before I learned this lesson). This leads to the pain of regret when you later realize that you could have done what you feared. The pain of regret lasts a lifetime. Fear goes away when you take action upon the thing that you fear. This is what I mean when I say that fear is an obstacle of the immature in life (immaturity is a wisdom issue, not an age issue in this case) because you will get nothing you desire in life if you always run from fear. The process I will teach you in this book deals with very little rejection and very little criticism, as you will see. Therefore, to fear these will be simply stopping yourself from gaining the fruit that is available for you to pick.
Fear is self-centered
One last thought on the idea of fear and it’s probably the most valuable thing I could give you. FEAR IN THIS PROCESS MEANS WE ARE BEING SELF-CENTERED. Yes, you read this over-emphasized statement correctly. You can only have fear if you are thinking about yourself. If you are worried what they might say, or what they might think about you, or if they might say no to you…these thoughts are all about you (once I grasped this truth, it made it easy to talk to people). The key to this process is that it is all about them. You are simply giving someone an opportunity to better their life. You are giving them a gift! If they choose not to do so, this is their choice and you need to respect it and understand that you have done what you are supposed to do. Therefore, if you ever feel fear when you are about to talk to someone, remember this and focus on them.
