(credit to this above amazing photo to my lovely girl! She’s a great photo taker!!!)
Hope and fear, are more similar than you think. Many of us navigate life with a crazy balance of living with hope and fear. Some are plagued with fear, some lie desperate with hope.
The belief that hope can get you through anything is extremely powerful. It can even give you the will to survive during times of danger. You could be going through personal issues and your hope can bring you to a healthy point.
With fear, it can bring you motivation to confront it or avoid it all together. Could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing depending on what the situation is. You create your own beliefs. Your mind could convince you of an outcome that hasn’t yet arrived.
-both are emotions
-both create anticipation
-both have consequences
-both can be motivational
-both can be consuming
-both are a choice
“Fear: False Evidence Appearing Real.”
-Donald Walsch
You can fear something so much that you want to avoid it all cost which in some cases could be a good thing. On the other hand, you could spend so much of your life fearing that something would happen that you completely miss out on what’s presently in front of you.
Hope can have so much of an impact that it could even be a very powerful tool for survival. We hear stories all the time of people who have survived extended periods of time in the wilderness, injured and without food overcoming the odds. They should have died, but their belief helped them get through. They said that they tried to not think bad thoughts.
Hope is the Kryptonite to fear. Which is great but there needs to be action on your part for it to come true. You must put in the effort. The brain power and the will must align. Hope as a survival tool may have evolutionary origins that may be shared with fear.
To me, this means that having a healthy dose of both may get you where you need to go. Sounds weird to say that fear can motivate you, right?! Well, if you overcame something how bad can it be? “I don’t want to fail.” That is a fear. That fear could motivate me to create an action so I do not fail. It is ok to fail though and I also believe that failing is healthy for us.
We need to understand how we work. Failing can become a gauge of where we are. Hope can inspire us to get back on track. Again, I believe there needs to be action in there. We can’t just lay there and die.
bonus: Courage
We need to develop the courage to have hope. Once we do develop the courage and we have hope we need to start putting action with it to accomplish something. Whether it’s psychological or physical or both combined, we must do our very best to get through it. Have faith, let go, but always keep one hand on the wheel!
Conclusion
Hope and fear could consume you in ways that you absolutely do nothing about your immediate circumstances or potentially worse by making it a lifelong characteristic trait. Please don’t do that. Balance Young Jedi! Go in Peace!
Question
Are you consumed by either of the above? If so, which and what are you planning on doing about it?
I also believe that you can’t have hope without fear. We sometimes need the fear in order for us to hope for something else…something better. I feel that fear can make us stronger. And without hope, we would have nothing to fear. Hope takes us to places and things that we may fear, but hope is what gets us through that fear.
This exactly what I was hoping to convey in the post, but I believe you said it much better! Thank you for your insight!