Fear and Action

I was rereading The Magic of Thinking Big recently. If you are a business owner, salesperson, or aspiring executive and haven’t read this book, go get a copy asap.

There’s a chapter about overcoming fear by taking action. The quote is, “Action cures fear.” How true it is, as long as it’s the right action.

If you’re afraid of swimming, I don’t think the answer is to just jump in the deep end and ‘figure it out.’ It’s easier to walk in the shallow end of an in-ground pool, down the steps, and with the help of a trusted friend. Notice I did say trusted. If you have the same friends I do you probably can thing of one or two that would just mess with you and in the process multiply our fears.

Another plus is having the knowledge behind action. Let me explain. You’re afraid of a certain type of bug, but after researching about it you find that the type of bug you were seeing is totally harmless. Now, you probably won’t start trying to find them and collect them as pets, but you won’t run away in fear either.

I used to be very fearful of bees when I was younger. I think it was probably because I was young when the movie My Girl came out, where one of the characters dies due to his allergic reaction to tons of bee stings. Nonetheless, when a bee was near I was running in the other direction swatting my arms and screaming like a sissy. Then someone told me the fact that if a bee stings you, it later dies. I thought of the trade-off. I hurt for a little bit, and that sucker dies! Ha! Bring em on! I just didn’t care anymore, because I knew if I got stung the bee would be worse off.

This is probably an outrageous example, but you get my point. Knowledge is power. Action cures fear. The right knowledge can multiply the effectiveness of the action.