You toss your own coin..

Overcome the Fear of the Unknown

First published in The Indian Fusion
Written by Abhay Maheshwari

Since the early ages of mankind competition had prevailed in life for every small necessity. As Charles Darwin correctly said “Survival of the fittest”

In itself explains the need of competition in life, but along with it moves the fear of losing behind and that of not getting what we desire but happens the other way round. In order to move ahead and achieve more, we have to compete, with others, society and “’ourselves” all of which begins with conquering our fears. Strictly speaking, only those who dare to conquer their fears can compete and succeed in whatever field they work in, as very truly said,

“Fear keeps people small..
Embrace them.
On the other side of your fears, lies your greatest life”

When we aim at any target that we set for ourselves, many thoughts come into our mind, about the way we would progress, time, happiness of winning and the unavoidable feeling of “what if I lose?” Thus we start our progress in a positive approach. We work hard so that we compete well but if you ask yourself, your will to work hard is mostly driven by fear of losing the race. Even the most confident amongst us fears it.

“No one is ideal”

[pullquote]Imagine the world without competition. There will remain no point of living, but eventually this will lead to our own frustrations and self-destruction.[/pullquote]but this doesn’t mean ,those who lose do not deserve it. Everyone works equally hard to its capacity. One day I read a short story whose background was a fancy dress competition, and a totally unexpected result came of it.All the participants were awarded with “black and yellow ribbons” contrary to what we expected to be a single winner. A participant named Tom curiously asked his mother of the result and was disappointed to know it later. The award was a gesture to show that all are equal and to appreciate everyone’s hard work but somewhere within, this will stop the child to compete in future.

All his hard work, will power, excitement goes in vain and he would stop his “hard work” which slowly with time becomes his “fear of losing”

But one shall remember that fears are meant to conquered as some say that rules are meant to be broken and only those who learn from their mistakes, succeed in whatever they compete for.

“success is just a matter of hanging on, when others have given up”

We must be motivated from our fears rather than to get depressed and consider competition to be an integral part of life which will be with us like our shadow. We should always keep in mind that the happiness or enjoyment we get after achieving our goals is nothing in front of making mistakes, learning from them, correcting and then winning the race.

“Those who said that they never failed, had never tried anything new in their life”
One encounters failures only when we fear it to happen. Therefore, fear is necessary in order to move ahead. Now let us consider a situation in which a shop opens in an alley, so he fixes the price as per his wish, but what if another comes, selling goods at half less than prev. purchase rate. Older shopkeeper “fears” of losing his sale, he adjust rate and quality better than new one i.e. he “competes” and what we observe is that his sale increases so he “succeeds” in his effort and this process goes on. At one time, when the customers are fixed ,then one of them is ruled out from the market. This is called “survival of the fittest”.

What I present to you is at a very large scale and not an alley. Even actors and performers believe that they perform their best when they fear of giving a bad one. What we observe in nature is Darwin’s theory. But point comes what about the shopkeeper, who is ruled away, even he needs to feed his family? That my friend is the harsh side of competition which is proved by our history that for one civilisation to survive, other has to fall down; else we won’t be able to move ahead.
Most of decisions are led by “fear”, when we try to remove them we “compete” and when we are free, we are “successful.”

Imagine the world without competition. There will remain no point of living, but eventually this will lead to our own frustrations and self-destruction.

At the end I say, that fear and competition are the 2 sides of the same coin. Just like newton’s 3rd law, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction; for every zeal to succeed, there is rise of fear and later its suppression by our efforts. Don’t be scared, just work hard.

Bonne Chance!!

Courtesy The Indian Fusion 

ARB Team
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