photo credit: stuant63

“Fears are noth­ing more than a state of mind” ~ Napoleon Hill

This past week­end pro­vided us with a few last gor­geous autumn days this year.  And a great oppor­tu­nity to get out­side and do some work around the house before the upcom­ing win­ter.  That meant things like rak­ing leaves, putting away sum­mer items, tak­ing down Hal­loween dec­o­ra­tions, and clean­ing out the rain gut­ters on our house.

Fear.

The whole idea of clean­ing out our rain gut­ters means that I have to get up on the roof to clear the leaves that have fallen into them.  And I have this unhealthy fear of heights.  Oh, I’ve got­ten bet­ter over the years.  It’s helped that I’ve chal­lenged myself in this area.  But still, the fear remains.  I’ve got­ten much bet­ter at being on the lower level of our roof.  How­ever, the sec­ond level is still very “scary” to me.

I climb up very care­fully, and then I only sit and scoot along as I clean out these gut­ters high in the air.  This fear I have holds me back from stand­ing up, from walk­ing, from feel­ing at ease.  Until recently, I used to have my father (thanks, Dad!) do this job when­ever he vis­ited — any­thing to get out of going up there where I felt unsure of myself.  Up where fear over­came me — and held me back.

Fear.

Does fear hold you back?  Are there fears in your life that keep you from doing cer­tain things with your life?

Think for a minute about being a child, and being afraid of the dark.  Why were we afraid of the dark?  Because we couldn’t see.  And that’s not unlike many of the fears we have today as well.  Maybe we fear fail­ing — and don’t try some­thing new — because we don’t know what the end result will look like (we can’t see it in our minds).  Or maybe we fear the unknown (we can’t see what we don’t know).  Maybe the idea of suc­cess, as Ari dis­cusses, is a very real fear for us.  Some­times our fears come about because of every­thing we hear in our world (media, pol­i­tics, friends, cowork­ers, etc), as CK Reyes dis­cusses.  Or what­ever it is that we fear.

It’s nor­mal to have some of these fears.  Nobody lives their life with­out some fear from time to time.  It’s nor­mal, but that doesn’t mean we have to just accept these fears in our life.  The key is to real­ize that many of these fears are a state of our mind.  And our mind — we can change!  It may not be easy or hap­pen overnight (my fear of heights, for instance).  It may cre­ate new fears as we try to resolve what holds us back.  It might make us feel uneasy as we take those ini­tial steps to over­com­ing what it is that holds us back from our great potential.

It might be any num­ber of these things.  How­ever, in con­quer­ing our fears, we can take our­selves to new heights (not like the roof exam­ple!).  New heights as we over­come some of the stum­bling blocks, the fears, that keep us from reach­ing our great poten­tial we have within us.

It’s there, in all of you!  Great­ness.  You — every one of you — have within you the awe­some power to be great!  Great in your own spe­cial way.  And to reach this great­ness that is within each of you — you have to over­come the fears that hold you back from reach­ing this awe­some poten­tial within.

Take big bold steps, take baby steps — do what­ever works for you to begin to turn these fears into pos­i­tives in your life.  Do this, and you will soar!  Your great­ness is wait­ing to be released!

I have a guest post up over at Sim­ple Sapien, for every­one to read.  The arti­cle is “What’s Your Best Effort?”.   Stop over and check it out:

Jack, over at Sim­ple Sapien, writes about liv­ing a sim­pler life, and becom­ing a bet­ter per­son along the way.  Stop by and check out the arti­cle I’ve included, and all the other fine works Jack has written.