A Message To Fellow Dreamers (Part 4)

Dec 20, 2024

“There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.” Andre Gide

If you’ve made it this far in the series, you should feel some sort of accomplishment and connection to me, and that’s a great thing. It means this series is speaking to you that you’re most certainly a dreamer meant to do more. The ‘more’ part—the what, when and why—is up to you, and it’s the fun part.

So now that I’ve got you, let’s tackle what holds all of us dreamers back, and that’s fear; it’s the biggest dream killer we face, so if we are to become Dream Chasers, we must know how to deal with it.

If you’re jumping into the series with this article, you can catch up first here:

A Message to Fellow Dreamers (Part 1)

A Message to Fellow Dreamers (Part 2)

A Message to Fellow Dreamers (Part 3)

FEAR

Fear is our greatest enemy. It has a way of paralyzing our future. Our minds seem to cling to fear and be wired for preservation by way of risk aversion. Many claim that our fear is rooted in our prehistoric evolution; whether it is or not, we should question fear, inspect it for what it truly is, and look at unhealthy fear as our enemy.
Our fears are much more numerous than our actual dangers. Think about the preceding statement for a minute, and ask if it is true. For me, the statement is true. When was the last time you were in serious or even grave danger? For most, the answer is never. For me, I have only been in grave danger a handful of times in my lifetime, but still, fear has a way of trying to buckle us to a version of life that is riddled with danger. It’s not until we begin to push back against our fears and categorize them accurately, that we are able to experience freedom.
Fear is much different than danger, and because of this, we should do our best to look at fear as objectively as possible and view it as something foreign. Fear’s main objective is to box us into a corner and keep us from living free: its greatest measure of success is keeping us from attaining our desires in life. Think back to when you were young—wild at heart and full of imagination. Did you dream of being someone great? Did you dream of being larger than life? As life progressed, what happened to those dreams? Most likely, fear crept in through a backdoor and found a way to kill your dreams, snuffing them out, starving them of life. As we age, societal pressures set in, expectations from ourselves and others begin to mold us, and fear begins to place a stranglehold on our dreams and ambitions.
Fear can be understood as a state of chemical and emotional reaction in response to external or internal stimuli, better known as a threat. It is possible the stimuli are real threats, but most often, these fear producing stimuli are nonthreatening, things like loud noises, prime-time news segments, and most things in the dark. These stimuli produce stress in the brain, and the end result is a biological state of fear. But here’s the crux of the matter—both real and perceived threats cause fear.
Let me explain with a common fear my family members face, arachnophobia. My wife and kids hate spiders. Every time one is spotted in my house, it creates a real fear, and they call me to extinguish the fear-inducing eight-legged critter. Just the other day, I rushed downstairs because my family was yelling, ‘Tarantula!’ I arrived at the scene and met my family's threatening enemy, a furry brown half-dollar-sized violin spider. It was positioned next to the wall, close to the back of the couch. My son handed me my weapon, a sandal, and I went to work whacking it, until finally it resembled a creamy brown substance more than it did a spider.
A very similar experience happened just a few weeks prior when my wife was doing some yard work; she discovered a copperhead snake in our backyard. Her shrill call for help beckoned me to her side. After sizing up the creature, I proceeded to decapitate the venom-toting intruder. Both the spider and the snake were very real threats. One may argue against our actions, but in our minds, they needed to go. The problem with fear, however, is that it has a spreading effect. It can become pandemic if not stopped in its tracks and extinguished.
A few weeks after the snake discovery, my wife explained she did not want to go to the area of the yard the snake was found in because of a lingering fear that one of its legless friends may be there. Similarly, every time I pass the area where I killed the violin spider, I wonder if its thirty cousins are behind the couch planning a counterstrike. These effects fear have are what professionals call a recency and proximity effect. Weeks after a snake sighting, my wife is worried another is lurking, and every time I go near the site where I extinguished the big spider, I wonder if a few more are close by.
When fear goes unchecked, it spreads like a wildfire. A fear of spiders can quickly become a fear of any place a spider could be, then multiply to include any place that is dark and unknown in a home, inside a cabinet, behind the couch, or inside every wall! The lines between real and perceived threats morph and multiply without evidence or rationale. Fear can run rampant in one’s life if it is not caught, quarantined, and exposed for what it really is––most of the time––just a perceived threat. Our job then, if we want to live free, is to continually recognize and confront our fears.
The day I confronted fear is so vividly locked into my memory, I can almost recount it perfectly. I was twenty years old and had just landed in Kuwait in preparation to invade Iraq. At the time I was a corpsman in the United States Navy stationed with the Marines. Shortly after our plane landed, we loaded onto a bus and were driven through a big city to our base. While on the drive through the city, I saw men holding automatic weapons and wearing Middle Eastern garb–turbans (hijabs), burqas, and Muslim symbols on their clothing; I immediately thought to myself … ‘we are in some serious danger.’ I began to associate the people I was seeing with danger––I was experiencing an association fear and a proximity fear.
Up until that point, the only men I had seen dressed similarly, some holding weapons, were terrorists, the ones the news outlets flashed up constantly while covering the 9/11 attacks. A replay of the Twin Towers crashing down in flames replayed in my mind as soon as I saw the Kuwaiti militants, who were in fact, at the time, allies of U.S. military forces. But because of my experience, these men became threats; when I saw them, I imagined them as bearded men, wearing turbans and hijacking planes, ultimately taking the lives of thousands of innocent people. It did not help that we were heading into a hostile war zone; I was struck with fear, fear of impending doom.
Something else happened that day, and I am not sure why, but I am grateful for it. When I checked into my unit in Kuwait, I remember thinking to myself, ‘I will probably die over here,’ and for some strange reason, I accepted the possibility. I made a decision to release any false control I had over my life. I made a mental agreement with myself—I was no longer going to fear death, and only then was I able to live with a little freedom. Up until that point I was trying to live and simultaneously control the infinite potential dangers that surrounded me. Fear had me in its clutches, it had a stranglehold on me and was preventing me from living.
Perceived danger can very quickly turn into real fear if we do not take time to analyze the source of the danger and try to understand where the root of the fear is coming from. Only then can we make a decision if the threat is a real or perceived threat we are dealing with. When analyzing and determining if a fear is real or perceived, we can ask ourselves a few questions that will help us confront the reality of our threats.
‘Can the fear-producing stimuli be seen, touched, smelled, heard, or recognized by another sense?’ If the answer to the question is no, there is a high possibility that we are experiencing fear rather than danger.
‘Have I incorrectly associated a fear with my current reality?’ An example might be associating a fear of tarantulas with dark areas because of a past incident that included both tarantulas and dark areas.
I tell you this story because most of the time what holds us back in life is fear, not danger. If we can make an agreement with ourselves that we will no longer let fear hold us back, we can truly begin to live. Even after we make this agreement, we will still wrestle with fear, but we can win the battle by confronting our fears.
When fear begins to rear its ugly face in my life, I often remind myself of a quote from Anaïs Nin:

“Life expands and contracts in proportion to one's courage.”

Before we can chase our dreams, we have to conquer our fears.

Everything we’ve been taught is backward. Work a job you may not even like for eighty percent of your life to try and retire and enjoy the last twenty percent. Would you trade this idea in to enjoy your life one hundred percent of the time, even if you had to work your entire life?

This is the worst-case scenario if you chase your dreams. End up working your entire life doing something you love, something that brings you to life. It will take a little courage, but it’s worth it. Trust me.

Time to tackle the tough question. What dream is fear holding you back from?

Once you have identified what that fear is, you can set it aside and begin truly living, then start to chase your dreams.

Continue building your toolkit.

Do you have a life mission, purpose and vision yet? If not, here is the book I used to design mine—it was an eye-opening exercise—I highly recognize having a life mission, purpose and vision to help guide you.

Get The Book Here

The writing on FEAR above came from All My Best, a small book I wrote to help encourage people. It can be used as a nightstand book or a morning reader. The chapters are small but mighty, tackling everything that holds us back from our dreams.