Living Without Crutches by Samuel Ufot Ekekere - HTML preview

CHAPTER FIVE

THE FEAR CRUTCHES

One crutch that I have battled with through my life is this crutch. There is a natural tendency towards fear. Fear always tends to pull us away from that action we should have boldly taken and acted upon towards a useful result. We tend to hang on to fear and this limits our perspective about life.

We are often afraid to make risky decisions because we think that it’s not going to work anyway or it’s too difficult to even try so why risk it. I used to have that fear factor every time I wanted to make major decisions in my life. It had this gripping effect that it seemed whatever I feared just happened as I feared it would. I actually lived my fears. I had fears that became true because I dwelled on them to make decisions.

I knew though that I needed to do something different. I needed to break away from the fear crutch. I just needed to be brave enough to challenge life and make serious decisions. It was tough though developing the bravery I required.

I had discovered that fear

• Forgets my capacity however huge and celebrates mediocrity and failure
• Edifies my failure and makes them seem like very large mountains I must succumb to
• Accentuates mediocrity and promotes it’s lifestyle when indeed I can achieve and live an excellent life
• Rains down hypothetical rocks that stands  as stumbling to my moving ahead

The fear crutch always seems so huge that we just can’t seem to do without it. It’s like when one tries to make an independent decision, fear tells you, well, I’m here, and you can’t run. Sadly many persons accept the verdict of fear when in reality the verdict is only a smoke screen, a hypothetical crutch, a mirage. Fear only comes to existence when we agree to it and it pokes its head. If we pretend it’s not there, it’s not there. It’s a mindset.

Fear actually makes you feel like you can’t and you actually cant. You can break barriers, you can climb mountains, you can cross seas, yet you won’t because fear comes along and says, hang around me and trust me you can’t.

The moment we allow fear grip us, it is certain and very certain that faith (which spurs us to act) disappears. We will see one dependable crutch called faith in subsequent chapters but here fear dangles peanuts and says Charlie don’t go there. Ah! Don’t climb that stairs with the fear that you are going to fall when it’s only just a three step stairway. Fear crutches makes a hundred meters seem like a kilometer and makes a small gutter seem like a very wide river.

That thing that is hanging around you that makes you doubt the next major decision you should take is a fear crutch you just have to learn to do without.

What fear does is to make you

• Feel worried about every action even when you seem to be making the best decision
• Expect negative results when you’ve put in substantial positive inputs that should produce positive results.
• Align with failure every time even when you have the qualities to achieve much more than you are doing now
• Restrict your thinking faculty to only the things that makes you look small.

If you have no fears, you may be lying. However strong and self-confident one is, there is some degree of fear existing around. As we develop ourselves in faith though, we find fear giving way. We learn to manage fear by adopting faith.

We manage fear by

• Freeing our minds from depressing crutches by developing an open mind and creative ways through which we interrelate with our challenges.
• Expressing the fears. It’s always best to express any fears or doubts about an action to people who we think know better who can also offer positive advice.
• Activating the well of possibilities inside you by standing up to who you are. There is a well of possibilities that only comes as a result of pushing fear off.
• Reaching towards positivity, always seeing light in every darkness, hope in every hopelessness and joy in every sadness.

So many great achievements have being destroyed because the bearers allowed the fear crutch hang around them every time. They depended on Mr. Fear to progress. Mr. Fear is retrogressive. You cannot afford to be another statistic of those who have failed to become who and what they could have being. Just throw the fear crutches off and live life to the fullest.