The Alchemy of Fear
“Fear is a fact of life just as nighttime is a fact of reality.”
Is fear truly bad?
Fear is the opposite of faith just as darkness is the opposite of light. The duality of life is everywhere and it represents the powerful unification and interdependent nature of reality. How can we say that these things are bad if they are the very components that make goodness significant? So we must ask… Is fear truly bad?
Because fear is a fact of reality and a byproduct of human nature I believe it is our duty to learn and understand how to most effectively leverage it. You see without night one would never be able to appreciate the day, without pain it would be impossible to appreciate pleasure and without the darkness it would be impossible to define and understand the light. Therefore I think it is most important that we become well acquainted with the human emotion and component of fear in order to most effectively leverage it.
So what is the alchemy of fear, how can we transmute something that is so powerful and responsible for so much negativity into a positive force within our lives?
I talk so much about the fearless approach to life and doing the things you fear until the death of fear is certain but the truth is that I’m also very afraid. I’m afraid that I’m going to fail. I’m afraid that by not doing and being my best I won’t reach my own potential and giving a gift to the world that can do so much good for so many other people. I’m afraid that my time on this earth may run out before I figure out my own personal combination to success in many areas. I’m afraid that I might die before my life truly matters in the ways that I want it to and I’m afraid that I might die before providing the quality of life to my family that I know they truly deserve.
I feel that in order to be a man, live the fearless approach to life and achieve these ends, I must face my fears daily and so I fight!
What I find truly interesting however is that it is my fear that causes me to face my fear every single day. It is the fact that I am more afraid of living a life that is the result of bondage to fear than I am of facing the pain and short term fear that i must overcome in my current situation.
There is a principle spoken about by the legendary SUN TZU in his timeless book the Art of war called “death ground.” This is a strategy used by commanders to get their troops to fight harder by placing their own fighting force up against a terrain feature like a cliff that forces them to face the enemy or die. It is said in the book that putting your troops in this position causes them to fight many times more vigorously and viciously which can amplify the effectiveness of your fighting force greatly.
In order to achieve the Alchemy of fear you must find that thing that in truth is much scarier than the thing that you fear in the short term that is right in front of you. It all comes down to controlling your focus and the vision you can see in your mind. Every single day that you are given on this planet, you must realize that you are already on death ground because you cannot retrieve or relive one moment of it. The only thing that matters then is to make every second you can count for something you love if you are not doing this you are experiencing a slow death.
When I think about what I truly want for my life and I contrast it with how hard I was working just to get by and to do something I didn’t really love, all of a sudden my lifestyle didn’t make sense which is why I made the change, faced my fears head-on, found my purpose and now I live to pay it forward by helping others cultivate the same mentality that helped me make a switch that saved my life.
The fearless approach to life or the alchemy of fear is to turn fear in on to itself in a way that motivates you positively. Let your fears motivate you away from them and into your greater destiny, purpose and future through shifting your perception, that is the philosopher’s stone of this principle.