Fear: Low Self Esteem a Barrier to Good Thinking 1.1. Introduction 1.2. Understanding the Basic Concepts (Fear, Self Esteem, Thinking) 1.3.Fear as a Deficient to Self 1.4.Fear as Propaedeutic to Poor Self Esteem 1.5.Fear as a Prolegomenon to Inefficient Thinking 1.6.Fear as Failure 1.7. Conclusion 1.1 Introduction Man is a bundle of possibilities asserts Heidegger. This assertion more or less tends to portray the open ended nature of man. His various capacities, potentialities and capabilities. Thus, the history of human civilization is replete with many instances of men and women who conquered all obstacles, fears, trials, and temptations to achieve their essence and existence in the universe. But alongside these noble individuals are those of greater majority who out of fear of the unknown have remained stagnant and so achieved little or nothing throughout their years of being in the universe. Unfortunately, many such great numbers of people abound in our world today. Due to fear, such people have developed a passive attitude towards life and have fallen into the degenerating effects of poor self esteem which has in turn led them to delimiting the human essence of rationality, and so failed to achieve their purpose of being in the world. What a loss to humanity! What an ungrateful and unfruitful return to the maker who gave ‘man power and dominion over all other creatures’. So, it is high time we help this brother and sisters of ours to banish fear out of their lives, develop a good sense of self esteem and make adequate use of this gift of rationality bestowed on man which makes man above other creatures. With this in view, this chapter titled fear : poor self esteem a barrier to good thinking cuts across philosophical, psychological and even spiritual approaches to exposing the effects of this ‘demon’ fear and proffer ways one can curb this delimiting dragon called fear. 1.2 Understanding the Basic Concepts (Fear; Self Esteem; Thinking) Fear: one can ask like M.K Guputa: what is this dragon called fear? Fear is really the anticipation of loss or harm to ones sense of ‘I-ness’ or ego. This loss or harm may be physical but more often it is psychological. It may involve the person himself or other persons or objects to whom he is emotionally attached and identified such as his family, friends, house, car, job, status, name, fame etc. So fears are tied with perceived uncertainties associated with loss agony and pain.[1] Fear comes with its subordinates like: anxiety, nervousness, worry and worst still phobias. Fears always appear in those gray areas of our lives that we feel inadequate or incompetent about. For instances, a student who feels incapable of facing an examination will have fear of examination, a traveller may have fear of accident or death, a wealthy person may have fear of being kidnapped, robbed attacked or even killed, a young girl may have fear of being molested, raped, insulted or even rejected by peers, a job seeker may be afraid of interviews, speaking in public or self incompetence, a parent may fear for his/her children future or their education, a factory worker may be afraid of leakage of harmful gases, radioactivity, radiations or nuclear installation, a young boy may have fear of being punished for doing an immoral act, a singer may be afraid of singing or acting on a stage, some people have fear of ghosts and black magic, a business man may have fear of losses, a lady may have fear of getting the right bridegroom, a man may fear of getting the right bride or fear of sexual inadequacy, people living in terrorist countries may have fear of bomb blast or of being murdered by a terrorist or an enemy. All these fears stems up from one thing namely: feeling of inadequacy and ignorance of realities of life. Fear gains its momentum and strength to delimit us once we bear in our mind a feeling of inadequacy, coupled with a poor and unenlightened view of the realities of life. So it is the leitmotif of this book to explicate the disastrous effects of fear especially as it pertains to poor self esteem and improper thinking and show how one can overcome fear and unlock his/her hidden potentials by seeking enlightenment and making good use of the human rational soul which may have been hitherto made inactive by fear. Self Esteem: The concept of self esteem is a big concept and so to treat it adequately is beyond the scope of this book, but leaving it altogether will not do it good either. The Socratic dictum ‘man know thyself’ is a fundamental question that touches the deepest part of one’s being. It calls for introspection, a desire and longing to know the true person within by the actions and inaction of the person without. Our sense of self consists primarily of the various roles we play and the various qualities of character. So self esteem consists in the degree of value or worth one places on oneself. Self esteem simply put is an answer to the question what am I worth? It consists on how one thinks and evaluates himself/herself in relation to other people and his or her environment. Thus self esteem is the image one makes of himself in his subconscious mind coming as a result of the interaction between what one really wish to be and what one actually is. It is on this ground that everyone evaluates himself/herself, his/her weaknesses and strength in the light of his ideal self from which his self esteem emerges. From this explication, it can be seen that self esteem can be negative or positive, poor or healthy depending on one’s evaluation of himself/herself. A person with positive sense of self esteem fully trusts in their capacity to solve problem and overcome difficulties without fear. They do not hesitate after failures or manipulation but instead ask for help in any area he/she needed it. On the contrary, a person with poor self esteem sees himself/herself unworthy of anything and operates out of fear of rejection, shying away from responsibilities and challenges. This is exactly what fear causes to self esteem. Fear makes an individual think poorly of himself/herself and to see everything from the dark side (pessimism) and always to recoil in his or her own shell for fear of criticisms and failure. Thinking: Thinking is an immanent activity whereby the thinker (the subject) tries to decipher or understand through reason a particular thing or group of things (the object). Thinking is a conscious act; the thinking subject knows that he is thinking. Even when Rene Descartes a French philosopher and mathematician doubted everything initially in his meditation including his existence but found it unable to doubt that he was thinking (corgito ergo sum) ‘I think therefore I am’ Thinking is inextricably linking with imagination and reasoning particularly in human beings. Man as a rational animal has the capacity and potentiality to think, to reason and imagine even if his thoughts does not correspond with reality. The human development and growth have been as a result of people adequate use of their thinking powers to decipher the hidden essences of things. But when fear is applied to thinking, either it results in creating a dreadful picture of a thing in our imagination and makes a mountain out of a molehill or that it delimits thinking to mediocre things. This seems to be what Francis Bacon has in mind in his idols of the tribe when he said that man bringing his fears, impatience and prejudices to things affect our understanding of them.[2] In order words our fears, prejudices and impatience delimits our thinking and obscures our knowledge of reality. 1.3. Fear as a Deficient of Self In our definition of fear, we define fear as an anticipation of loss or harm to ones sense of ‘I-ness’ or ego. This loss or harm may be physical but more often it is psychological. Fear makes us afraid to confront life realities, fear make people to feel inadequate of themselves always upset and never to move out of their comfort zones to challenge situations as they present themselves. It makes one to feel sorry for oneself, thus positing a poor self image. Fear makes one to develop negativities in life and so become unable to live authentic lives. Fear limits us to mediocrity and unauthenticity and to this effect; one goes through life unhappily without enjoying or reaping the benefits of life. In life, the fearsome someone give less, play less, laugh less, love less and worst still live less. They live their lives everyday never measuring up to expectation an always remain at the bottom of the ladder of success. Their thoughts are locked in the matrix of fear, their language communicate fear, their actions are filled with fear, in fact every of their being radiates fear. They fearsome person impose limit to his/her mind and tends to attach superstitious tendency to every natural event. They failed in their bid in live and every project is subjected to irrational scrutiny and criticism against this kind of person Theodore Roosevelt said: “it is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of great deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat”.[3] For us to live life to the full, we must combat fear. We must live boldly and not be frightened or intimidated in anything by opponents, adversaries or situations, for with such constancy and fearlessness, we will defeat and overcome every circumstance or situation that dare threatens our existence. 1.4. Fear as Propadeutic to Poor Self Esteem Aside delimiting one to mediocrity of self, fear makes one to look at himself/herself with inferiority complex. Fear makes us not to recognise our true worth and to fall into the danger of subverting our nature and not living up to expectation as people made in the image and likeness of God. Fear makes one to always take a negative view of his or her abilities thereby leading to a sense of poor self esteem. The fearsome man is a pessimistic person as against the courageous man who is a man of optimism. J. Maurus contrasts the attitudes of a pessimist (fearsome person) with that of an optimist (courageous person). A pessimist and an optimist both bald, were washing in the bathroom. The optimist said, “It is good we are bald, we don’t have to bother about combing hair.” “Oh”, said the pessimist, “but we have so much more face to wash.” The pessimist says of rain “it will make mud”, the optimist says “it will lay dust.” The optimist says “I am better today”, the pessimist says “I am worse yesterday.” The optimist when he sees a bee says “there is honey maker”; the pessimist says “there goes a stinging bee.” The optimist says I am glad that I am alive”, the pessimist says “I am sorry I must die.” The optimist says I am glad I am no worse”, the pessimist says “I am sorry I am not better.” The optimist discovers good in evil; the pessimist discovers evil in good.[4] The pessimist in the above analogy represents the man of fear. Even in weaknesses or failures, that a normal person would easily shove aside and begin another time more intelligently; the person of fear magnifies his/her weakness, enlarges it in his mind and so prepare the fertile ground for failure right in his/her mind. Just like Ben Okwu Eboh rightly affirmed when he said "whatever happens to a man happens to him in his mind". The fearsome person having failed in his mind appears only on the outer realm to manifest such failure. To increase our sense of self esteem therefore, we must necessarily destroy the activities of this demon called fear in our mind. We must accept our abilities, strength and weaknesses with a sense of serenity. We must seek to overcome our weaknesses and shortcomings with courage and happiness, knowing that it is in our weaknesses that God's grace is manifested more. Accepting our weaknesses does not presuppose an attitude of supineness or passive compliance with them. It is a positive and dynamic disposition towards them resulting from having quashed fear out of our lives and combating them with God's grace to overcome them and so increase our sense of self esteem. 1.5. Fear as a prolegomena to inefficient thinking Fear is said to be "the darkroom from where we develop negative thoughts". Fears limit our imagination ability and confine us to projecting unreal images of failure, confusion and destruction. Enlightened people have proved after facing all sorts of situations that existence of fear is in the mind only. It has no concrete existence anywhere other than your mind. Fear induces in us wrong conception and beliefs about realities of life. It weakens the mind and makes us timid and embedded with confusion in the face of little things that could be solved with little application of reason. Any desire held constantly in one's mind sooner than latter seeks expression through some practical means. So it is with fear when held consistently in the mind, one's actions and inactions' will be filled with fear. This is more so because whatever fills your mind controls your life. To combat fear, one demands an intellectual courage. Begin to think of risks as opportunities not dangers as stepping stone not stumbling block. To combat fear properly, you have to fight it out from your mind first. It is more of internal than external combat. Seek always to know the reality behind the phenomenon you are afraid of. Seek enlightenment on the subject matter of your fear and fear will immediately disappear once the light of true knowledge of things comes to your mind. It is our wrong beliefs and ignorance about the realities of life which give so much power and momentum to these fears to destroy us intellectually. Once the true knowledge dawns and consciousness awakens from its deep slumber in us, fear melts away on their own. Fear cannot stand up against an enlightened or awakened rational soul. Ken Oguejiofor was of this view when he wrote: ‘Each time you seek out the features of fear you find out that it has a face behind the face. Eventually, you are led to the truth, and it is only the truth that can liberate you from the shackles of fear. Courage is the strength of the mind which enables people to be firm and resolute in the face of dangers or adverse circumstances without giving way to fear. Real courage does not mean never being afraid. It means doing what has to be done in spite of being afraid.’[5] 1.6. Fear as failure Everyone desires success but only few people dare venture into the risks involved and strenuous work contained therein in the concept called success. Many out of fear run back to their cave of inactivism when confronted by the basic requirements of success which is strictness, rigour and hardworking. Psychologists use the term “snail complex" to describe the fearsome person who is intimidated even by the smallest challenge. Such a person fears the knocks of life may deal him and withdraws into his shell because the weather is stormy outside. If the world becomes threatening in any degree, he retracts every bit of himself into his shell. There he may stay inordinately long even after the danger has passed[6]. Thus fear presupposes failure, failure of having not lived life to the full. The real failure of life is not failing in your trials but in the fear of daring to try. Many talents and potentials have remained latent as a result of fear. Many lives have been lost because of fear, fear of facing the risks involved in life. Life’s situation does not make one a failure but manifest only that which is in the inner mind. While the courageous person turns every situation to success, the fearsome man turns every life situation to a state of failure. The fearsome man is contented with mediocrity focusing on the unimportant things of life while neglecting in a great deal the basic and important needs of life which involves risk. He/she invents one thousand and one reasons why he ought not to perform a simple task. Thus in order to exterminate fear out of our lives, we must be willing to take chances and to expose ourselves to the very thing we fear most. We must take the risk of life and combat those seemingly impossible situations with rationality. Pragmatically, to achieve anything worthwhile in life involves risk taking which involves risk of failure or risk of being rejected by stern faced critics. To learn a trade, one must take the risk of juggling, hustling and bustling in the market arena; to learn how to play football one must take the risk of undergoing strenuous training and sometimes injuries in order to be professional; to get a job, one must face the risk of failing an interview. Anything gotten through sacrifices and risks remains the most cherished, most enduring and the sweetest to enjoy. 1.7.Conclusion In this chapter, we focused on the disastrous effects of fear on self esteem and the attendant effect on thinking. We equally pointed out ways to exterminate them and to develop good sense of self esteem, so as to maximize the use of our reason to achieve success in life. It is the suggestion of this chapter that for one to develop a good sense of self esteem and apply reason properly to life situation; one must be willing to take risk and seek to know the truth behind events and phenomena that we fear. For truth fears no trial; truth survives the crucible of any test. It is our ignorance of life realities that induces fear in our minds and limits us to mediocrity or failure. Fears look for residence only in unenlightened mind only. Fear can dare stand against a strong and awakened mind.[7] With an awakened and rational mind we can venture into any risk and overcome it without fear. This seems to be what Nancy O’Connor had in mind when she talks about the import of taking risks in life: To dare: To laugh is to risk appearing a fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach for another is to risk involvement. To exposé your ideas, your dreams before a crowd is to risk their loss To love is to risk not being loved in return. To live is to risk dying. To believe is to risk future. But risk must be taken, Because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The people, who risk nothing, do nothing Have nothing, are nothing. They may avoid suffering and sorrow, But they cannot learn, feel, grow, love, and live. Chained by their attitudes, they are slaves: They have forfeited their freedom. Only a person who risks is free.[8]
[1] Shri M.K Guputa, How to Overcome Fear. (New Delhi: Pustak Mahal 2010) p.12 [2] Samuel Enoch Stumpf, Socrates to Satre: A History of Philosophy, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company 1982)pp. 214-215 [3] Theodore Roosevelt: 26th president of the United States [4] J Maurus, How to Use Your Complexes (Bandra, Bombay: Better Yourself Books, 1993)p.227 [5] Ken Oguejiofor, Pondering on the Word ( Enugu: Real Images, 2014)p.277 [6] Ken Oguejiofor, Pondering on the Word. P.289 [7] Shri M.K Guputa, How to Overcome Fear p.20. [8] Nancy O’Connor, How to Grow up When You’re Grown Up: Achieving Balance in Adulthood (Bandra: Better Yourself Books, 2008)p.14. |
