Not so long ago,
I had a patient in my clinic of around 7-8 years of age. He seemed fine as he
sat down on the dental chair to get examined. But as soon as I got to start
with my treatment procedure, he panicked and pushed my hands away. He jumped
off the chair and stood near the door. His mom who was standing nearby tried
coaxing him to get the treatment done; but he was too scared to let me touch
him. I asked the mother, “Why is he so scared? Has he been to some other dentist
before?” And she replied, “Yes, doctor. When he was much younger, we had been
to a dentist who forcefully treated him because he was scared and there was a
bit of blood too. He has never allowed treatment from any dentist ever since!”
What causes them
to back out? They had a bad experience which led to fear.
Fear is
something we’ve all struggled with at some point in our lives. Everyone
has had some or the other fears. For example, Peter the Great, the tsar of
Russia had a fear of crossing bridges: when he had to cross, he would tremble
and cry. Julius Caesar had a fear of thunder: every time there was thunder he
would run into a cave till it was over.
In the
early days of the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his
Inaugural Address, "The only thing
we have to fear is fear itself."
Everyone has
fears: some of them are crazy fears while some are justified. There are
different kinds of fears too but what really is of concern is of the fear that
comes from bad experiences.
We have all been
in situations where we’ve experienced failure, pain, sorrow or hurts. For some
of us, we carry some of these situations in our hearts and minds and the fear
of going through it again has us paralysed in our tracks. We call them ‘bad
experiences’ and tell ourselves, “Never again!”
Isn’t it true
that in life, one or two bad experiences creates a sense of distrust, fear and
holds us back from moving forward in
that direction? The end result might be fulfilling
but fear keeps us from even thinking towards it.
Leadership
Expert and author John Maxwell says, “Seldom do we do the thing that we fear,
so we seldom discover whether or not our projection of disaster was accurate.
In fact, when we don’t do the things that we are afraid of, we breathe a sigh of
relief as though it actually would have taken place. “That was a close one!” we
say, even though we never actually got close to anything but a string of our
own negative thoughts.”
Too often we put
together our bad experiences with negative assumptions of what might have been
or could’ve taken place. Bad Experiences with negative assumptions is a
terrible combination!
Sure, it’s
happened once. That doesn’t mean that it has to happen again. We want to assume
that it will. We are not willing to take the risk that it won’t. We even forget
why we started out on attempting it in the first place. Perhaps the only reason
we ventured down that path was because we knew that there was something
worthwhile and fulfilling at the end of it. But now we want to give it up.
But what if the
stakes were much higher and the end result was a worthy pursuit despite all the
bad experiences we’ve had? What would happen if we were to muster courage and
decide to go ahead despite the fears that we have?
Think about
those opportunities we’ve lost possibly because fear held us back. Could we
have missed out on some of the best in our lives because we held on to fear?
I believe that
if we could replace the thoughts of fear in our minds with the thoughts of
opportunity then it would change our perspective giving us the courage to move
forward.
At the beginning
of this year, I had a complete health check up done and most of my levels were
border line. I still remember sitting at the doctor’s office that day thinking
to myself that if I don’t put money into exercise now, I would have to put
money into medicines later on! At that time, many of my friends were getting
into cycling and so I decided to get into it too.
It was quite fun
in the beginning. I enjoyed cycling early mornings and needless to say, I began
to lose weight in the first couple of weeks. Everything went well till
something happened that one day.
One morning as I
was cycling on my usual route, a stray dog from across the street started
barking and began to run towards me. At first, I didn’t panic as such but then
two other dogs came out of nowhere and followed suit. Then almost immediately
from ahead another two dogs on hearing the other dogs joined in. Before I knew
it, I had 5 dogs all around my cycle! I didn’t know what to do; whether to stop
or to keep cycling. They kept barking at me. I just kept cycling however and
after around 200 meters they stopped and went their way. It was quite a
harrowing experience.
For the next few
weeks I completely avoided that route. The very thought of what happened that
day kept playing on my mind. My friends kept telling me that you just have to stop
and then they will stop; that if I kept cycling they would continue chasing. It
took me a while but I decided that I wanted to overcome the fear of dogs so
that I could continue to cycle without developing a mental block. I took the
route again and this time two dogs came by. But I just stopped and looked at
them. Surprisingly they stopped as well and went their way. I was relieved!
This happened for a few days and I finally overcame my fear of dogs!
A few months later, there was an event that they called ‘brevet’. It was a long distance 200km endurance run cycling event. What stood out about this event was that for the first time it was going to be on all night. I decided to go and for a moment I began to think of the dogs that could come charging at you at night. But it didn’t create fear in me anymore. I took part in the event and completed it! It was probably one of the best experiences I’ve ever had cycling!
When I look back at it today, I don’t know if I would’ve even considered the event at all if I hadn’t overcome my fear of dogs. But everything changed when I decided to go ahead and face my fears.
Have you had a
bad experience that has developed into fear? Would you be willing to risk that
fear to move forward?
