Anonymous Fears

November 8th, 2011

No news is so good that the fear merchants can’t find some way to put their worrisome (and profitable) spin on it.

Take the recent drop in the price of a gallon of gasoline. The local news yesterday announced that the average price of a gallon of gasoline was down 12 cents compared to the previous week. It was celebrated as good news for drivers.

But don’t get too comfortable. The news segment ended with the announcement that so-called “economic analysts” predict that gas prices could return to the $4.00 per gallon level in the next few months.

The anonymous expert is a frequent source of fear programming for the fear merchants. There is no accountability required for the anonymous expert. There is no way to dispute such a prediction, so it takes on the mantel of indisputable fact.

Using the anonymous expert sustains the belief that the good times can’t last, that our fears for the future should be respected, that someone knows better about how we should feel than we do.

In this instance (and in so many others like it), is this news? Is this a report of the facts, or speculation without accountability?

Is the purpose of that kind of prediction to keep us informed, or to keep us worried (and tuning it)?

What can we do about such a prediction? The answer is … nothing, except worry and keep tuning in to the fear merchants who treat the future — and our feelings about it — as their own private plaything.

Or … we can fire the fears they are selling.

Fire Your Fears! Get Rid of the Fears that Are Holding You Back is available now at Amazon.

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Posted in Beware the Fear Merchants | No Comments »

Fear’s Fondness for Indifference

October 20th, 2011

From Fire Your Fears: Get Rid of the Fears That Are Holding You Back*

Fear is the great promoter of personal indifference.

The less you care, about yourself and others, the less fear needs to do to compete for your attention. And for your future.

So fear chastises you at every opportunity for caring, for dreaming, for daring to believe that what you want may be more important than avoiding pain.

As if all your decisions came down to only two choices: safety or pain.

Fear loves to divide the world into functional contrasts: safety versus pain, good versus bad, black versus white.

Me versus you.

Dualities imply threats. Fear thrives on threats.

Focus on the threats, fear tells us.

Don’t focus on each other (except as threats).

And the defense that fear offers against those threats?

There are many, actually.

One of the most effective – from fear’s perspective – is indifference.

Fear’s fondness for indifference is what creates abuse, and racism.

It’s what encourages us to cheat and lie and harm.

(“It doesn’t matter,” fear whispers. “All the others … they’re not worthy. They’re not you. Protect yourself. Nothing matters more than your protection.”)

So we harm and abuse with actions and words. Fear is fulfilled.

The real problem is not indifference.

It’s misdirection.

It’s not me versus you.

It’s us versus fear.

Thousands of little fears that surround us with indifference.

Shall we have a mass firing?

*Available now at Amazon.

Posted in What's Really Behind that Fear? | No Comments »

When Fear Works

October 18th, 2011

From Fire Your Fears: Get Rid of the Fears that Are Holding You Back*

Look out the window. Turn on the tube. Boot up the Web.

When fear works, we all find ourselves doing hard time.

Fear is at work wherever self-acceptance gives way to the need to be protected from the unknown.

It’s good work. Steady work. And, in most cases, very profitable.

Where would we be without it?

Let’s find out.

*Available now at Amazon.

Posted in What's Really Behind that Fear? | No Comments »

What John Kennedy Knew About Fear

October 13th, 2011

From Fire Your Fears: Get Rid of the Fears that Are Holding You Back*

Before he became President, John Kennedy wrote a book on courage. A best seller.

I remember reading it when I was a youngster. I don’t remember any of the details now. But I do remember that it was inspiring. I wanted to be as courageous as the people he described in the book.

John Kennedy - Fear meister, or liberator?

Courage was a quality that a lot of people applied to John Kennedy. The media told us about his heroism during the Second World War, about the lives he saved when he was commander of a PT boat.

The message: Don’t let your fears stop you from doing something great. Overcome them. Be bigger than your fears.

Sound good? Here’s my problem with that.

To me, that’s fear talking. Justifying itself.

If there were no fears, there could be no courage. There would be no need for courage. And there would be no great, heroic achievements born out of courage. But you still need courage. Miss Hatchetface in the eighth grade insisted it was so.

Courage was a good thing, she said.

We all need courage, don’t we, class? And the class nodded in agreement.

If I were sitting in her class today, I would keep my mouth shut, but I wouldn’t agree. (Thinking back, I guess I did a lot of that in Miss Hatchetface’s class.)

To me, needing courage in our lives is kind of like keeping a horse around because you need something to pull the wagon when it’s time to cart off the horse manure.

I don’t want to be courageous. I don’t want to have to be.

I don’t want my children to see me as courageous and think that’s what they have to be. I want them to see me happy and funny and playful and gentle.

Not courageous.

I want them to enjoy every moment, not a precious few available only when they find the courage to overcome fear.

Enjoy every moment? Ridiculous! That’s just not possible! That’s fear talking – in the shrill voice of Miss Hatchetface.

God bless Miss Hatchetface. I’m sure she was proud of John Kennedy. And admired his courage. And I’m sure, if she had lived, that she would have been distressed to learn about the “bad little boy” behavior that was also part of John Kennedy and came to light years later.

That was fearless behavior that had nothing to do with courage. That was the part of John Kennedy I happen to like best.

Thank you, John Kennedy, for finding real fun in a world that says it honors courage but really worships fear.

Sorry Miss Hatchetface – you’re fired.

*Available now at Amazon.

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Posted in General, What's Really Behind that Fear? | 2 Comments »

Who Hired This Idea, Anyway?

October 10th, 2011

From Fire Your Fears: Get Rid of the Fears that Are Holding You Back*

It seems like there has to be somebody to blame for all of these fears.

Sorry, there isn’t anybody.

The only fears you can deal with are the ones working for you.

Not your parents. Not your teachers. Not your friends.

They’re just as much victims of fear as you are.

They’re just as helpless in the grip of fear as you have been … until now.

The only fears you can deal with are the ones working for you.

You hired them. You fire them.

Now before you start firing, there’s one other aspect of fear that you need to be aware of. A big one.

Fear isn’t just a one-on-one epidemic. It’s pervasive in nearly all of the social institutions that touch our lives every day.

You can’t fire the institutions. And don’t need to.

But you need to know what they’re up to and why. And then fire the fears they’re peddling.

You don’t want the business of your life to be a revolving door for fears.

*Available now from Amazon.

Posted in Why "Fire" Fears? | 2 Comments »

Ivy-Covered Portals of Fear

October 6th, 2011

From Fire Your Fears: Get Rid of the Fears that Are Holding You Back*

Our public education system has always been driven by fear and threats. From elementary school all the way through college.

Whose learning agenda are we expected to follow?

The fear of failing.

The fear of being left behind.

The fear of being left out. (Either by expulsion or what we used to refer to as “flunking out.”)

The fear of being beaten down with “not good enough” (one of fear’s most powerful hammers).

That one certainly motivated me to learn things I didn’t really care about.

School teaches you how to adopt others’ agendas.

Genuine personal choice is rarely an option in school. (“If you want my ‘A,’ do it my way.”)

School teaches you expedience. It dulls your ability to trust your own instincts when the best agenda for you (in the school’s opinion) has already been spelled out and doesn’t need tampering.

All this fits right into the fear agenda. And into the agenda of the fear merchants.

Let me turn the tables – again – on fear and its merchants:

What if schools were dedicated solely to engendering a love of learning rather than higher test scores?

What if schools were more concerned with instilling appetite and affection for a subject rather than jack-hammering content into heads?

What if schools approached students as precious individuals, with individual learning needs and styles, seeking to preserve those individuals rather than meld them into the social unit?

I can hear fear’s response now: “No, no, no. Silly boy, that’s not why schools are there.”

Exactly.

Are there schools out there like that? I’m sure there are, and I applaud them.

Regrettably, most of us never attended them.

Most of us were shuttled through schools where fear and protection were the twin poles of learning.

Does it have to be that way? I think not.

To education’s fear merchants, past and present, my response is short and sweet:

I heard the warnings in your lessons, but …

That’s not me.

And any fears you’re selling … they’re fired!

*Available now from Amazon.

Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Why Firing Your Fears Is Easier Than Ignoring Them.

October 3rd, 2011

From Fire Your Fears: Get Rid of the Fears that Are Holding You Back*

That’s easy.

You can’t ignore them.

They’re too prevalent.

And too powerful.

I wish it were otherwise, but it isn’t.

Firing them is easier.

And more fun.

And more effective.

*Available now from Amazon.

Posted in General, Why "Fire" Fears? | 2 Comments »

The Most Powerful Force on Earth

September 29th, 2011

From Fire Your Fears: Get Rid of the Fears that Are Holding You Back*

Why even mess with doing something about your fears?

I think the title of this blog answers that.

Fears fortify inertia.

More human activities are driven – or dampered – by fears than by any other condition.

Likewise, nothing will ever be more challenging – or more rewarding – than taking control of your fears. By firing them.

That’s because your fears amplify the challenge of any change you attempt. Fears fortify inertia. What they do best is keep you where you are. By doing that, they consistently compromise you into less than you can imagine or become.

Haven’t we all had enough of that?

*Available now from Amazon.

Posted in General, Why "Fire" Fears? | 2 Comments »

The Fear of People Who Aren’t Like You

September 22nd, 2011

From Fire Your Fears: Get Rid of the Fears that Are Holding You Back*

This one’s probably #2 on the line-up of most powerful fears.

Like all fears, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny in the light of common sense.

It assumes that there are people like you.

That you are going to be safer and more comfortable around those people – the people like you.

That people who look like you and think like you are smarter and more reasonable than others.

That’s fear talking.

Fear likes to divide us into arbitrary groups and then question the validity of those who dwell outside “our” group.

It likes to simplify our decisions with prejudice and superstition, and then convince us that its lies are logical and its obsessions are profoundly obvious.

Who would deny those differences? Love would.

Remember love, that state where fear is totally absent?

That place where you feel good about what you are doing. That place where you don’t have to settle for the uneasy comfort of having narrowly escaped potential pain.

Yeah, that love.

Love laughs and says, What differences? Look at yourselves. You’re all perfect individuals. None of you is like any of the others.

Why does love see each of us as perfect?

Because love understands that a one-of-a-kind anything has nothing to compare itself to and therefore has to be perfect.

Love also appreciates that there is no better example of you than the you that exists as you are right now.

Anything else would not be you.

There is no other you to compare yourself to right now. In this moment, the you that you are now is the only reality that matters.

In fact, according to love, the only thing the bunch of us has in common is our susceptibility to fear.

In that one area we tend to be pretty much alike.

Otherwise we are unique individuals with a few shared superficialities.

Fear is indeed a great bonder of humanity. And we can’t even appreciate that aspect of each other with so many fears in the way.

Love can.

That’s why love doesn’t fight fear. It accepts fear to death. That’s why I accept my fears.

I appreciate all they have done for me.

I can even appreciate all the more they would like to do for me.

But …

Sorry, fears. I’m taking my business (my life) in another direction.

No hard feelings. But it’s time to take back control of my business (my life).

Nothing to worry about. My pink-slipped fears will find gainful employment somewhere else.

Yours will too.

*Available now at Amazon.

Posted in General | 2 Comments »

New Age Fears

September 19th, 2011

From Fire Your Fears: Get Rid of the Fears that Are Holding You Back*

Nothing to fear, or something to fire?

Mind control.

Angels and shadow people.

Alien visitation (with covert influence over our lives and our DNA).

Government conspiracies.

Planet X heading our way (the date of arrival still to be determined).

Herbal salvation from pharmaceutical poisons.

Earthquakes and pole shifts and other signs of Nature’s Day of Reckoning.

And on and on.

Are any of these valid? I don’t really know. And don’t really care. If they aren’t part of my immediate world, why invest any fear in them right now?

I can have fun with these explorations, just as I can be entertained by movies featuring cops and robbers and vampires and rogue heavenly bodies bearing down on our destruction. Just don’t expect me to take your fears or anyone else’s to heart.

Here’s what I say to the new age fear merchants:

I hear your warnings, but that’s not me.

And any fears you’re selling … they’re fired!

*Available now at Amazon.

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Posted in What's Really Behind that Fear? | 2 Comments »

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