Here’s an interesting citation from William Walker Atkinson:
“The great negative note in the lives of most people is Fear. Fear is the mother of all the negative emotions, and her brood is found clustering very closely around her.
Worry, Lack of Confidence, Bashfulness, Irresolution, Timidity, Depression, and all the rest of the negative brood of feelings and emotions are the progeny of Fear.
Without Fear none of these minor emotions or feelings would exist. By killing off the parent of this possible brood of mental vampires, you escape the entire coming generations of negative thoughts, and thus keep your Mental Attitude garden free from these pests and nuisances.
The worst thing about Fear and Worry is that while they exhaust a great part of the energy of the average person, they give nothing good in return. Nobody ever accomplished a single thing by reason of Fear and Worry. Fear and Worry never helped one along a single inch on the road to Success. And they never will, because their whole tendency is to retard progress, and not to advance it.
The majority of things that we fear and worry about never come to pass at all, and the few that do actually materialize are never as bad as we feared they would be. It is not the cares, trials and troubles of to-day that unnerve us and break us down—it is the troubles that we fear may come some time in the future.
Everyone is able to bear the burdens of today, but when he heaps on the burdens of tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that, he is doing his mind an injustice, and it is no wonder that after a bit he heaps on the last straw that breaks the back of the mental camel.
The energy, work, activity and thought that we expend on these imaginary “maybe” troubles of the future would enable us to master and conquer the troubles of each day as they arise.
Nature gives each of us a reserve supply of strength and energy upon which to draw and oppose unexpected troubles and problems as they come upon us each day. But we poor, silly mortals draw upon this reserve force and dissipate it in combating the imaginary troubles of next week, or next year, the majority of which never really put in an appearance — and when we have need of the force to oppose some real trouble of the day we find ourselves bankrupt of power and energy, and are apt to go down in defeat, or else be compelled to beat an inglorious retreat.”
Such is the power of Fear in your life. We’re all guilty of giving in to fear in one situation or another.
The most pressing problem is when it runs your life. It’s when you allow the Fear to dictate your decisions for you.
Being a willful, courageous person, isn’t about NOT having fear. It’s about doing it DESPITE the fear.
And it’s possible!
That’s what we work on doing in the 10 Steps to Inner Power.