So is fear an in-nie or an out-tie? You know like belly buttons. Is it within us or is it an external force? My opinion is both. If you don’t agree don’t get your shiz in a nizzle. Just my opinion, but it is based on my experience. Fear is both a spiritual force and an emotion. One is external and one is internal. So there are really two arenas that this fight must be encountered. Good news is that the solution for beating either one is really the same thing.
To separate and identify the two, consider a time when you are scared. You are short of breath and your heart is racing. Perhaps you are in a dark alley and alone. You feel threatened not by anything that you can see, but just in general. You begin to think irrational thoughts and are looking for something bad with every turn. The hair on your arms and neck stand at full attention. This is a spiritual force of fear. If you believe in a spiritual realm (I do), fear is an active and thinking being. It has an agenda. In the Bible it says that God did not give us a spirit of fear. Here a spirit is not simply an embodiment of certain character traits. Read more and you’ll see that spirits had thoughts, strategies and agendas.
On the other hand, internal fear is generally expressed as timidity. Underachievement, passivity, inactivity, withdrawing, etc., These are all signs of someone who has taken on fear as part of their identity. They are scared emotionally, and it affects every aspect of their life. When I was embroiled in this, I could accomplish NOTHING productive in my professional pursuits because I was completely Afraid of being rejected. SO I would take no risks, OR take insurmountable risks, to look brave, when in fact there was no chance of success. I would take huge business risks that made me look like I knew what I was doing. The chance of success was nil, but I looked super brave because no one else was stepping up. No! No-one else was stupid. Everyone else was being responsible and doing the right thing. I was not and overcompensated by doing the wrong things in HUGE fashion.
This is like going to Vegas and throwing all of your money down on one number at the roulette table. People assume you are loaded if you can afford to do that. Hey this guy knows what he is doing. When in fact, this guy is an idiot and wants people to think he has it going on.
For more on my professional blunders and what it takes to overcome them, follow my blog and look for the upcoming release of JumpAfraid. Next time we will get into how to overcome in-nie and out-tie fear. As I said the strategies are the same. You really only need one trick to do it. Stay tuned.