“Many of our fears are tissue paper thin and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them”. - Brendan Francis

I like this quote by playwright Brendan Francis because it reminds me of just how big of a role fear, in all of its many forms, tends to play in our lives. If you have ever done anything in life that you deem important then you know the feeling of fear’s tendrils on your heart and you’ve sensed its shadow on your mind.

I never have a hard time finding information about fear. For one, there are thousands of quotes about fear and how it can freeze us into inaction in pursuing our goals in life. And there are hundreds of books on this subject too. But what can be hard to find is discovering the source of that fear.

Here's the tricky part about fear: How do you know if your fear is tissue paper thin or if it’s a Beast to be greatly considered and requiring more than one courageous step to defeat? To me, the most important thing in defeating fear is knowing its source.

There are some things we should be afraid of for sure. We should be afraid of becoming broke (or in my case more broke!) or of our kids being deprived as a result of our decisions in life. And we should be afraid of making major life decisions such as getting married or divorced with too-little information. But what if the thing you’re afraid of isn’t really that critical, yet you’re still afraid as though it were?

Maybe we can look at the symptoms to determine the kind of fear we’re suffering. It seems that if you’re thinking clearly and your heart is at peace, then your plans and goals are in-line with your values and will succeed. So here, the fear could simply be of the unknown. It’s a fear that is nagging but isn’t paralyzing, rather it’s shallow and pesky. It is this fear that I suspect our quote speaks of.

Maybe you’ve decided on doing something big in your life such as getting a new job or moving to a new town. Feeling some fear in this situation is normal I would think, even if that fear is deeper than being pesky. Here, the decision is bigger and so the fear is bigger.

But there is another kind of fear that comes with some of our decisions and it’s different and when you feel it you know it’s different. This is the paralyzing fear. The fear that keeps you awake at night and makes you feel sick. And this kind of fear can come with the seemingly smallest of circumstances!

But you know what? Maybe there’s more at work than meets the eye. Maybe your fear is telling you that you have more work to do, more preparation, more planning. “We think in generalities, but we live in detail,” Alfred North Whitehead once said. Maybe your fear is telling you that there are details that need more attention.

If you’ve done all of the planning and the details are tended to and you still feel an overwhelming fear then perhaps you should think more on your decision before acting. But if you know everything’s taken care of, then by all means take one courageous step and carry yourself clear through.