Do You Dare To Dive Into The Deep End?

Fear can cripple the best of us. It affects us physiologically: mentally, physically, and emotionally. It can appear in many ways, and affect us to varying degrees of impact on our performance, and being. Fear seizes who you are, and strangles the life and creativity out of us. Fear has been described as an acronym for ‘False Evidence Appearing Real’. Fear activates our lizard brain, and engages our instincts and automatic responses.

Fear can come in various forms. Fear can come from being unprepared or ill prepared. It can show its face through selfish behavior. It can express itself in thoughts, words and deeds. I have seen the look of abject fear of participants before the Ironman swim, and it can be infectious if you allow others to spread their fear to us. It can cramp our style and weigh us down – not a good sign before a deep water swim.

When staff make our lives difficult, they may be suffering from fear; they feel threatened. They express this discomfort as useless behaviors, and they impose this fear on us thinking it will dissipate from their bodies. However, the fear may escalate when we do not behave the way they expect us to, that is, in reciprocal fear. Defensive behavior tends to be an unnatural response to somebody else’s fear.

Stay cool. Be prepared. Think through your options. Run scenarios of ‘what if’. Train for a race well. If you run competitively, train on different terrains, elevations, distance and speeds. Treat your injuries as potential weaknesses can hamper your clarity of thought. Work on your core muscles so that your strong spine keeps you centred in all sense of the word. Being strong translates to aspects of your personal strength and fortitude.

Work with your fear. Never let it possess you wholly and uncontrollably. Embrace it if you must, but you need not fear it. Take the plunge. Winston Churchill said: ‘There is nothing to fear except fear itself.


Photo-credit: Pauline of AniMIles (Was I over-prepared for the 84km run last Sunday?)