Fear part 2 - Fear as a life direction determinant

I read an interesting article about overcoming fear by Brian Tracey yesterday (via stevepavlina.com) and I think he really hit the mark. While Steve highlighted the part "the more you seek security, the less you have of it" in order to show the importance of controlling fear, I got more out of his three part self-questionnaire.

First, Identify a fear, then ask yourself these 3 questions:

1) How does this fear hold me back in life
2) How does this fear HELP me
3) What would my payoff be for eliminating this fear

#1 and #3 seem a little too obvious to me, but #2 was the real bright shining star here. Not many people are willing to accept that their fear actually has helped them. The general consensus in the world, or so it seems, is that fear is a bad thing - "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." But perhaps fear defines us more than any other emotion.

When we look at how fear has driven us, helped us, and defined us through our life we can make see some shocking results:

My driving fears are the fear of rejection and the fear of failure, which are the two most common fears according to Tracey. The fear of rejection tells me "I have to, I have to" and the fear of failure tells me "I can't, I can't," equating to "I have to but I can't." This creates much worry and stress in my life.

1) The fear of rejection makes me afraid to take my own path. People have things they expect of me and so I feel that "I have to" do those things, even when my heart might tell me otherwise. Fear of rejection also keeps me from doing certain things. I am afraid of quitting my job. This fear runs so deep that I feel that I have to become the best at everything or I won't be accepted by people, or in other words this way I'm most likely to be accepted by the most people. I have become obsessed with perfection not for myself, but for others." Keeping up with the Joneses" has become the subtext of my life and it comes with a lot of stress.

My fear of failure also makes me afraid to take my own path. I'm afraid what failure means in life, that perhaps I am not who I think I am or can be. I'm also afraid of failure because that will lead to rejection - a tie between these two fears that I feel is very strong. I'm afraid to leave my job because I might fail in finding something better. I'm afraid that if I leave I won't have anything to put on my resume and it will doom my career. This fear goes so deep that I fight almost anything, even if it's not even that important. I will fight over what time it is and whether or not it will rain. I can't allow myself to be wrong - ever.

2) My fear of rejection has actually done a lot of good in my life. While it makes me obsessed with being the best, it also makes me work harder than most people. I constantly am looking for ways to outsmart and outwork others (which may actually be a negative sometimes). I never let my life stagnate, because stagnation to me means failure. If I'm not constantly on the run, then I'm not keeping up and getting ahead, which means I'm failing and being rejected.
This extended farther than I could have imagined. While perhaps not the only reason, my fear of rejection and failure branched out to the international. I got it in my head that if I don't become the absolute best - the president of the US or better - then I will be a failure. I figured that I needed to learn multiple foreign languages, because I will have to be the best president our country has ever seen and that means international expertise. One underlying reason behind my drive to move to China was to master international relations, which starts with understanding language and people.
It's possible that even my choice to go to college at UCSD was based on fear of rejection. Going back even further, even doing well in school was based on this. I used to do terrible in school and not care up until about the same point that I started doing poorly in baseball. I wanted to please my parents, my teachers, and gain the attention and affection of other students, so I figured that I had to go into the honors program. When I got there I found that I was way behind everyone else and that was very embarrassing. I worked extremely hard and caught up in the end, even passing many of them.
I was tired of school and wasn't sure that I wanted to go to college just yet. I was considering moving abroad or doing something crazy and exciting; however I knew that there were too many people expecting "better" things of me and everyone was going to college somewhere. If I was going to college I wanted to go to the best - Stanford. I got the application, but then I was too afraid to do it for fear of what that rejection letter would mean.

3) As shown above, I might not be the same person I am today without fear - a college graduate, multi-lingual, and driven to work so hard. I wouldn't eliminate these fears even if I could. Fear is human, so I think this question is worded poorly. I think he should say "how would your life change if you could harness your fear into a positive: control it."
If I could harness my fear I would continue to be motivated and strive for perfection, but it wouldn't be devastating to me if I don't reach it - I would focus on the path more than the result, which leads to a happier life. Losing - my biggest problem - would be gone, and I would be more willing to take failures and turn them into learning tools for future success. There are many situations in which fear holds me back, keeps me from acting on things that I should be acting on - all of these things I will be able to do without thinking at all. This will relieve a lot of stress in my life. If I can harness this fear I will stop looking for security pockets where I can lay low away from from fear, and instead look for opportunities out in the open. I would throw the ball through the fear and the butterflies without a second thought.

While I know that fear isn't the ultimate deciding factor in my life, I have to recognize its power. Fear is a powerful tool and even more powerful when one masters it. It is not a one-sided destructive force, but actually very creative in its own right. Freedom, however, is only found when we do finally master fear and are free to make choices against animal instinct to hide in the dark but rather run toward the light.

The funniest thing about this is that my fears caused my drive for perfection, which lead me to personal development as I know that without fixing problems inside I will never have what it takes to become the best on the outside. Personal development lead me to examining my fears, which hopefully will lead to me overcoming my fears. Fear leads to overcoming fear. Wrap your brain around that one!