happiness help: What’s stopping you? - Help.com

fear though, is caused by love too.
so love makes the world go round and it stops it too.

just a tool in the hands of whatever supreme being, or primordial programing to make us do what we are supposed to.

which gives you a rough idea of what were here for.

but fear gives you purpose. fear creates sadness anger and lonliness. without these, there would be no happiness, joy or love.

Chava_Jax_beat-it! wrote:
but fear gives you purpose. fear creates sadness anger and lonliness. without these, there would be no happiness, joy or love.

if you wouldn’t love anything, you wouldn’t fear anything.
you only fear for the things you love.
hence - fear is an outcome of love and not vice versa.

grbghp wrote:

Chava_Jax_beat-it! wrote:
but fear gives you purpose. fear creates sadness anger and lonliness. without these, there would be no happiness, joy or love.

if you wouldn’t love anything, you wouldn’t fear anything.
you only fear for the things you love.
hence - fear is an outcome of love and not vice versa.

maybe… but then again, an orphan who has never had love can still be afraid and love later. a stray dog can be terrified of cars before ever being adopted into a loving family.

but then again, your point is valid…

maybe its a paradox?

hang on, i dont ONLY fear for the things i love. i’m nervous of heights but i hate being stuck on the ground, i’d love to be able to sprout wings a fly.

but then, paradox: as much as i wish i could fly i’m nervous of heights.

AND fear is primal. Love is secondary in nature. Our sentimentality as humans makes us beleive love is the strongest but we only think so because we have the capacity too. A bear doesnt defend her cubs because she loves them, it’s a survival instinct. Thats the same reason why a male lion does not defend his cubs from opposing lions; they arent’s interested in love for their offspring, only instinct for keeping a bloodline. Male lions only defend their harem.

Instinct comes from the repetitive fear and releif cycles that some from dangerous and safe situations. Safety is the most basic part of survival. Survival always comes before emotion, since the dawn of time. Thus, love is, indeed, secondary.

Though, love is definately my favorite emotion. :)

Richard Cor de Lyon wrote:
I’ll give you that fear and love are opposites… even more so, then love and hate. But I’ll argue that fear and love are connected. Love builds, grows, expands, heals, and much more on the positive side of things.

Fear however does not of that… fear hinders, tears down, collapses, contracts.. fear stops us. Any motivation that fear produces, and it can motivate, is a form of motivation that does not have the same sort of staying power as motivation brought about through trust, honor, integrity and love.

Perhaps I titled this post incorrectly. The thrust of this message is not about fear and love. Both are emotions that are necessary for a balanced universe, there is no argument there from me… no, this post is about the fear of failure, and just how ironic it is. When we can actually see the irony, perhaps that can help us move through that fear, which can ‘paralyze’, to achieve better things.

but we do not move on in our lives for the sake of love we do it for the sake of fear and survival. its the most basic thing on this earth. we think ourselves different from animals only because of our brain capacity and our ability to render concepts. but our primal being is just like every other animal on earth. a wolf doesnt hunt because it loves the taste of meat, or because it loves to be full, but because it fears for its survival. even a disperseral (lone) wolf hunts, so one can’t even assume its love for their pack.

ust basic, primal, instinct.

plus, the earth rotates on axis due to gravitational force, the emotions of it’s inhabitant have no effect.

and stopping the earth’s rotation is hardly a balance to the universe. in fact, it would only be a negitive effect within our galaxy, whatever happens in our minds have no effect on anything in the world other than our own wars. we humans are very conceited to think he have claim on such universal laws.

fear is that emotion that maybe u a human without fear we cant go on the same as love our life circules around phobia we are human beings and it is a natural state. sometimes fear catches you from falling sometimes it is beneficial

Richard Cor de Lyon wrote:
Your argument starts off by saying we are different from animals, but then you continue by using an animal for an example; that doesn’t wash. You are right, we are different from animals. Yes, fear can motivate, but that is not healthy motivation. How would you feel if your boss came to you and told you, “if you don’t finish this job today, you will be fired.” Yes, that would motivate you, but I’m willing to bet it would make you feel pretty lousy by the end of the day. Now what if he said; “If you can finish this job the the end of the day you’ll get a promotion and raise” Would that motivate you just as much? And how then would you feel by the end of the day? But I’m really not talking about just fear in this post (please don’t hijack this post). I’m talking specifically about the fear of failure. The fear of failure is a huge issues, and many of us don’t even know it’s the issue. But it is the fear of failure that keeps us trapped where we are so many times. We hear it here all the time… “I’m afraid to ask the boy (or girl)”…. It is the fear of failure that has a huge impact on our self esteem. We don’t feel good about ourselves because we don’t do things outside of the box… and we don’t do things outside of the box because of fear of failure. But as mentioned in the post… this is ironic… There is already an element of failure present, so what is there really to fear? In other words; if you’ve already failed in a sense, why be afraid to fail?

this is a very interesting debate, you make excellent points!

what i’m saying by animals vs our likeness or lack of to them, is this|:

i explain that we are no different in our primal instinct.
i then explain why we think like this, why we’re having this very debate. we think we have superiority for the same reasont hat we have sentimentality that fsvours love: we just have a larger cortex to body ratio than any other animal on earth.

these are scientific explainations fromw hich i branch off from, just to cklear up ay confusion.

as for motivation, again, in primitive situations it is danger vs safety. danger will always include fear, while safety only ever includes love as a seconday “bonus” is certain cases (example, wolf pack vs lone wolf etc).

the motivation of danger and safety is indeed, exactly equal in the average case (let us stick with averages for simplicity’s sake, or thing will indeed be biased and favoured in fear and thats not helpful i dont think… is it? anyway:) the point here is,
lets say you are a primitive being with no relations, thus no love. you have two bowls. one is green representing safety, and one is red representing danger. each bowl is the exact same size, shape, capacity, etc. in every situation in wich we must make a decision no matter how small (thus all things occuring) puts one apple in each bowl. now lets pretend you are still the primal being, but you now have a mate and offspring. now, with every decision, an apple goes into the red bowl, and and apple goes into the green bowl, but now the green bowl gets and extra slice of apple. this is an inclination towards the drive for releif, which we could label as happiness, or yes, love, or any other positive emotion. this extra slice comes from the fact that we now have more to look after than ourselves.

now, this is all primal. wild animals and the basic instincts of domesticated animals, including us.

the differeece i oftem point out is, we often favour the green bowl because istead of seeing motivation, we have the brain capacity to also see the extra slice f apple, so it’s more appealing to us. we have to ability to actualy SEE and REALIZE it’s there, while the animals with a smaller brain to body ratio can not.

because we can do this, we make it into a great big deal that spirals into the cliches like “love makes the world go round.” we beleive these things in moderation, because we CAN. but if we stripped away the extra, uneccisary bits and pieces of our evolved brains, we’d see nothing but equal motives, just like everything else.

as for self image, thats a purely human concept that has no place in either bowl, and this makes us unfortunate creatures. sucks to be human huh? but, point remains, no matter how much motivation, its set equally in each bowl of safety and danger, and that extra slice we can call love changes neither bowl, jut it’s contents.

ever heard of the Pygmalion effect?
that pretty much sums it up.

Richard Cor de Lyon wrote:
And how does this connect with the immobilizing fear of failure? (which is what the post is about). Thank you for your input, but I’m very interested to hear your comments regarding the fear of failure.

its motivation, did you not gather that from the bowl analogy?

faliur IS a fear, which is in the danger bowl.

hmm, sorry about that, it was clear to me… (i do that when writing too, i just assume people know what i;m talking about and i leave out details. my bad!)

grbghp wrote:
ever heard of the Pygmalion effect?
that pretty much sums it up.

what’s the Pygmalion effect? sounds interesting!

Failure hurts. We feel defeated and that makes us feel disappointed and disappointment corrodes our personality. No one wants to lose. We want to be successful, yet we learn more from failure than from success. Fear of failure is really a feeling of fear of the unknown. We don’t know the expectations or the outcome and we think we can’t succeed it or know it and feel we will fail. When this feeling is so strong that we brood on it, it will eventually grow into something worse like feeling alienated or vengeful too. Interesting subject Richard.

I’m not sure that my problems stem from fear of failure. It seems to me I get in the most trouble by ignoring that feeling. But I’ll do this time and again because I can’t get anywhere by doing nothing…

http://blog.ted.com/2009/04/hang_in_t…

This talk well illustrates that if your mind is focusing on the fear and the failure, it doesn’t have it’s full capacity to focus on what is needed to be done in order to succeed. the talk however does fail in the respect that it doesn’t point out that the mind noticing the consequences of failure is great programming.

One of my adventuring heroes was asked if he ever thought he was going to die on one of his adventures. He said “before you leave, when deciding to go or not, that is when you think about dieing. Once you are out there, you think about what you need to do in order to live”

Is the mind becomes overwhelmed with irrational fear, or keeps trying to do something without accepting the possible consequences, it can cripple it’s self.

As yoda says “do or do not do”

I think the fear of failure is a useful feature of the mind.

The thing I think that needs to change is the stigma that comes from failing. If you challenge yourself, you are at some point going to fail. There isn’t anyone I admire that hasn’t at some point. Seeing failure as an acceptable but non optimal outcome is freeing. It helps set the goals you aim for.

Fear like any emotion has its uses. wihtout healthy fear we would more than likely end up dead or worse. but like anything in this world too much of a good thing is very harmful. having suffered from panic attacks I can tell you first hand how nuch of a grip fear can have on you. like fdr said we dont have anything to fear but fear itself and that 100 percent true !! we are our own jailers constructing prisons with no bars, no walls, and no guards. Yet these prisons of the intangible are far more effective than any physical prison of this earth. we can wall ourselves in so deep that there is no hope of escape. what’s worse is fear is a breeding ground for other emotions and states of mind such as ignorance etc. fear also can pervert other emotions that are normally healthy and twist them into something far more darker, selfish and self serving.
fear of failure is a very real thing and its very crippling. you asked if it makes sense it makes perfect sense. I have suffered from fear of failure many times. I give up before I even start and you get that voice telling you that you are not worthy and that you cannot succeed. the odds are just too slim so why try. I have not applied for certain jobs because I have told myself I couldnt do it. with this fear you have given up and been defeated before you have even started. but you failed to address the opposite end of the coin fear of success if you will. this is just as bad self sabotage for fear of succeeding you think that is real I beliebe its real

I’m looking failure full in the face, staring it down, stepping over the line it drew in the dust. It’s a cowardly little bastard that will flinch at the last moment.

“I’m not ready for that job, I’m not good enough, It’s not the right time”

Are you saying that these are always invalid fears?

simply put:
imagine a waiter holding a tray loaded with dishes.
one says to him “be careful so it won’t fall down”
once he’s been told that, he would most likely drop it -
imagining the tray falling - then focusing on making it not fall instead of focusing on his job - fails him before he even tried.

you could call that fear - but it is just the pygmalion effect
things make themselves become into your expectations - especially people.
and most commonly people do that to themselves -
imagining failure cause you to fail.
it works the opposite as well -
you would tell that waiter - “your doing a great job”
and he would handle the tray a lot better - as to live out to your expectations.
imagining himself serving successfully and getting fat tip.

Richard Cor de Lyon wrote:
Well, again (blah) I’ve used the wrong word: “invalid”. I wouldn’t want to invalidate anyone emotions. These words however when used to justify the fear of failure are in some way “illogical” (might be a better word?). If we are in the position that we want to move on, than usually we are feeling stuck with where we are. To me, that stuck feeling also comes with some feelings of failure. “OMG, I don’t like this job, I know I’m better than this, but this just isn’t the right time”. WHEN this scenario is the case, (and I think it is often the case), the fear of failure is ironic (illogical) because being in a place of failure, fearing failure just seems ironic to me. I’m not saying it is not possible, hell it happens ALL THE TIME. I’m saying if we can see the irony in it, then it may prove to be more of a motivator than to demotivate.

I glad I asked as this answer I can use :-)