[ Pages 57 – 58]

Fear prevents learning and personal development

Our species, Homo sapiens sapiens

(Link: https://www.philipphauer.de/info/bio/evolution-mensch-sapiens-sapiens/)

is particularly geared towards learning throughout our lives on our own initiative! The driving forces behind this are, on the one hand, our curiosity and, on the other hand, our playfulness.

• However, there is one factor that prevents us from learning, and that is fear.
• Essentially, it is the fear of making mistakes.
• In order to effectively address our fears, we will first take a closer look at the causes of fear.

(1) Fear that we might suffer physical harm or lose our lives:

This primal fear dominates humans as the strongest of all fears. In today’s civilised environment, however, we are least confronted with this type of fear. Nevertheless, we are sometimes so frightened that we feel as if we are about to lose our lives or suffer physical harm.

We are increasingly encountering another situation in connection with war refugees – these people literally have the fear of losing their lives ‘breathing down their necks’. Many of them have actually suffered injuries of various kinds. Their fears in this regard were the decisive factors in their decision to flee.

(2) Fear of losing possessions:

We can view this type of fear as a warning that we are about to lose something. This allows us to react in time to secure and retain our possessions.

However, when it comes to increasing our possessions, this fear can be a hindrance. We tend to think primarily of the various risks associated with this.

(Success Principle I. 15. Feel the Fear and do it Anyway – Scale Down the Risk)

(3) The fear of negative feedback:

(Success Principle I. 19. Use Feedback to Your Advantage)

This is the fear of rejection. This type of fear is the most common.

Fears have been anchored in our unconscious/subconscious as primal fears since we came into existence and put us on ‘alert’. Back then, this was necessary for survival, but today it hinders our development.

Due to our evolutionary development, we have anchored behaviours such as the herd instinct. This instinct ensures survival insofar as staying within the herd is safer than breaking away or being excluded from the herd. We are still afraid of this!

As part of our self-directed thought process, we are now learning to examine whether these fears are justified or not.

The most common ‘substitute fear’ is the fear of making mistakes, which is actually the fear of the consequences of mistakes.

To reduce this fear, we control our thought process in such a way that we prepare ourselves for the consequences of a mistake – we think through a future situation completely and in detail and examine all eventualities very carefully. In this way, we strengthen ourselves and ensure that we act with much more self-confidence, present ourselves much better and gain charisma and strength!

So let us decide, on the basis of our personal responsibility, to examine any fears that arise in relation to the types of fear. Let us ask ourselves whether our fears are justified and resolve to deal with them actively. Let us prepare ourselves to counteract these fears vehemently!

Once we have fear under control, we are once again free to act successfully and, above all, to engage in the learning process that will accompany us throughout our lives. By freeing ourselves from fear, we lay the foundation for sustainable personal development at all levels of our lives.

[Pages 57–58]