“Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”

Why did Franklin D. Roosevelt make that statement in his inaugural address?  Did he really mean to say that or was it something his speech writers just put in because it sounded good?

Perhaps it is because fear is the cornerstone of all our problems, imagined or real.

In the pre-historic era man needed to have his fear mechanism (his amygdala) kick in whenever danger was approaching.  Those were real fears.  In our modern day society, most of our fears are imagined and pose no danger to us unless we let them.

Right now the economy is in a downward spiral and it may get a lot worse before we begin to climb out of our mess.  Think for a moment: What is the worst that can happen to us?  We may have to disconnect our TVs (hmmm… that may be a good thing).  We may have to give up our cell phones.  At least we will no longer need to worry about radiation from the phones turning our brains to mush.

Yes, there are many families struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.  Perhaps selling off all of our non-necessary stuff and eating more healthfully could turn out to be a good thing.  We may even loose our car(s) and have to resort to bicycles.

My point is, the only real worst thing that could happen to us is that we pass on from this life.  The chances of that happening are slim provided we manage our fears.

So how do we go about managing our fears?  I read a lot about people trying to convince us that it is not our fault that we are in the situation we are in and I have difficulty with those types of statements.  True, it is not our fault for the many bad things happening around us.  However, how we react to those happenings is totally under our control which means we can do something about how we react to outside forces.

There are many action steps we can take to deal with our fears.  Two resources I have found are at http://Fx3.ExperienceHappinessNow.com and at http://heartmath.org/destresskit.  Both are free to use.

The people who lived in FDR’s time and made it through the first Great Depression somehow learned to cope.  However, I feel that today there is much greater stress on us and our fears may just be more real which is why it is so important for us to stay focused on the good, smile and be happy in each and every moment.
 

This entry was posted on 22. September 2009 at 19:15 pm and is filed under Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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