Fear: Summing It Up

As Rich Schefren recently noted, we are always just one obstacle away from our dreams. I thought about it for a while, looked around at people I know or knew in a past, and looked at myself... Guess what? As far as I can see, he's right.

What I disagree with, though, is the way Rich "handles" this obstacle. He kind of says, Ok, you are one obstacle away from your dream. Now, go figure out what it is.

After I read his Entrepreneurial Emergency, I spent a few hours trying to figure out what my obstacles are. I came up with four of them, while still not being sure whether those were my true obstacles or the derivatives of them. There was nothing to check them against. It didn't seem to be very logical not to have clear guidelines to such an important matter.

And then I had an "Aha" moment. When I say "then" I don't mean "right then". The "Aha" happened a couple of months later, but it was like the final piece in a puzzle. Suddenly everything became clear and logical. THERE ARE ONLY TWO CANDIDATES FOR THE POSITION OF AN OBSTACLE: HOW WE THINK and WHAT WE FEAR. Sometimes it's a combination of both, but always one of them is dominant. And the rest of what might look like obstacles are just the resulting effects of either one or the other.


There could be numerous ways of erroneous thinking (some of them are listed on the chart here), but there are only two basic things we fear. Think about it: no matter what object or situation we are afraid of -- public speaking, failure, spiders, etc. -- it always comes to two basic things -- fear of pain (physical, mental, emotional) or fear of death.

So, there you have it:

There is only one main obstacle that stays in a way of your dream. And it's either mental in a form of erroneous thinking or emotional in a form of fear.

As fear of death is rather unlikely to become an obstacle to building an internet business, there is only one other fear that could get in a way of fulfilling an entrepreneurial dream -- fear of pain.

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Photo: basic.ru