Fear, a barrier to your success

Fear is one thing that can hinder you from fulfilling your dreams. Fear draws an unseen line that dictates what you can and cannot do. Fear simply put, is an unpleasant emotion of an impending doom.

There are various kinds of fear ranging from, fear of death, to failure, misery, rejection, ridicule, loneliness, and the worst kind if I must say is the fear of the unknown. Fear of the unknown often stops our progress and makes it difficult to discover and understand new things. Fear of the unknown is that fear that stops us from embarking on that new project, from getting married, from leaving that job and starting your own business, and from being the real you. Fear has a way of manipulating your mind, making you lose confidence in yourself and makes you do things less than you should have done it.

I am a practical example. I have always been in the choir since my childhood. Whenever I take the microphone to sing, fear always sets in. I start to shake and I get all tensed and in the end I don’t sing as am supposed to.

But whenever I sing the same song at home, it sounds so heavenly and wonderful. It got me really bothered but later in life, I tried to close my eyes and forget the people around me and it got better. So I believe we can learn to control that feeling of fear. We can subdue it. I have never been faced with any physical reason to be afraid until recently when I was in the ring with a fellow taekwondo athlete. I recently joined a taekwondo team.

I am crazy about being fit and having a good stature so I decided to join in. I had been trained on different kinds of kicks and blocks. I had jugged, stretched and done all sorts of stability work for this particular fight. To me and my coach, we were prepared for this fight. Before I got into the ring, my ‘seconder’ gave me all the kinds of encouragement I needed. She specifically told me not to be afraid. The fight ensued with an order from the referee. I looked at the belt my opponent was wearing, and it was a brown belt, while I just had a white belt.
She was three belts ahead of me. Fear started creeping in. She started bouncing in the ring and making scary noises, all of a sudden I felt a pain in my belly and that was when I realized she had kicked me in the belly. Just then, my sister and my mum’s face flashed to my mind and I heard them saying, “don’t go for this fight, they might kick your mouth and some of your teeth may fall out. Don’t get your leg broken because no man wants to marry a one legged girl.

Don’t go and get your face damaged because we cannot afford a plastic surgery. Don’t go and end your fine girl today. ” Those were the very words they told me that morning when I left the house. I couldn’t explain the kind of fear that engulfed me. I was just afraid that my ‘fine girl’ was coming to an end according to my mum. I couldn’t throw any kick, I couldn’t block, I couldn’t dodge, I was just frozen to the ground because of fear. I thought of falling and pretending to have passed out so that the fight can be cancelled at the second round but I just didn’t have the nerve to do anything. I was just receiving the kicks without dodging or receiving anyone.

I could hear my ‘seconder’ screaming “block and push, don’t give up” but it wasn’t effective because of fear. The fight ended with a 30 to nil. Strangely, I was happy because I wasn’t kicked directly to my face and mouth. I had no fractures, just the pain I felt in my stomach. My coach was disappointed of course. All the training I had went to nothing. That’s just a typical example of what fear does to a person. It makes you lose confidence in yourself. Even as a student going for an exam, you may have read so hard, and because of fear, you lose confidence in yourself, cheat in exam, get caught and eventually get expelled. Fear has a way of restricting you; it makes you less than you are. If we can conquer fear in our lives, then we will all move to that height we really are supposed to be. Whatever you do, do not let fear get the better of you; it’s a barrier to that great dream and ambition of yours.
CHINYERE OKEKE