Fear makes it difficult for you to tap into your innate gift and foster your winning attitude.
Fear is focused on the past and the future. With fear, you freeze and choke before you start, eliminating all chances of success. Osho, the mystic, described fear by giving the example of the bird that would never fly if it feared the unbounded skies, thus missing out on all the beauty.
When you face your fears, you can convert a frightening experience into a moving and fulfilling one.
Fear stems from ego! When the goal is about self, fear creeps in. When the goal is beyond self, you become fearless! Thus no ego, no fear!
One of the biggest challenges you will face in overcoming fear is the battle to overcome the self (ego). Ego takes you away from your innate gift. It focuses more on the outward and external power instead of the power within.
When we become sufficiently present that we are always observing our own ego, the light of that “awareness” starts to starve the ego. Only when the ego is starved of negativity, gossip, and blame, does it start to dissolve and disintegrate.
If ego is darkness and awareness is light, the existence of one implies the absence of the other.
Sufi Inayat Khan states, “All great musicians – Beethoven, Wagner, and many others who have left the world a work that will always be treasured, would not have been able to do so if they had not forgotten themselves in their work.” These people were able to transform themselves, as a caterpillar’s metamorphoses into a butterfly.
Self-transformation happens through the annihilation of the ego, from which the magnificent new form emerges.
When you are consumed by ego, you become defensive, fearful and self-centered. You cease to be a team player. You are closed-minded and no longer objective.
Selflessness is power; selfishness is a weakness.
However, most people don’t see it this way, and even those who claim they see it, often do not behave in alignment with this message. Self-glorification appears powerful and feeds the ego. However, this is an illusion, a fleeting feeling that does not last, but rather keeps needing more and more glorification in order to find peace. In the end, the more you have, the less it appears to be, and the more you want to obtain. All the while, peace has been dwelling inside you.
Nature has a lot to teach you. A flower acts as a symbol of beauty, elegance, and openness. The flower gives beautiful fragrance to every passerby, unasked. When you have substance from within, you have positive pride and you let your good qualities do the talking for you (giving fragrance, in the flower’s case). Positive pride is when you look at your life and gifts as blessings and utilize them to make a meaningful difference to those who cross your path.
With positive pride and a goal larger than self, fear has no room to creep in.