What do you fear?
Are your fears holding you back?
Petting a majestic tiger was always on my bucket list. Part of my adventure while I was in Thailand involved a trip to a tiger sanctuary to fulfill my wish to pet a tiger.
There were many tigers residing there of various sizes. There were small tigers at the sanctuary who appeared to be barely a couple of months old, and others that were obviously full grown.
The full grown ones were easily over 400 pounds, that’s over 180 kilograms for those of you on the metric system. The tigers were laying down on the ground, some on their sides, while others were on their bellies with their heads held high. They were very much awake.
There were many tigers at this sanctuary for our bonding pleasure. I knelt down beside one of the large tigers with his head held high, and got a great photo with us both facing the camera. There was nothing to fear from that tiger.
Then an unfortunate incident happened with one of the tigers that was laying on its side. I knelt down behind it, and reached over to pet it, but then the tiger lifted up his head and turned to look me in the eye.
He let out an aggressive growl, roar is probably a better term, causing the trainer to hit him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. The trainer then told me to get up, and move.
It was slightly intimidating, but I thought if the tiger was going to attack anybody it would be the trainer who struck it with a newspaper, or so I hoped… luckily the tiger just put his head back down.
Fear overcame me during a different situation however.
I live in a condo on the thirtieth floor in Bangkok, Thailand. My condo has a balcony overlooking the city. It has an amazing view of the city. It also has a railing that only comes up to my belly button, and a floor made of tile.
To say this floor is slippery when wet is an understatement.
One evening I found out just how slippery it is when wet, and just how precarious a railing at stomach level truly is. It was raining heavy one evening, and I decided to watch it rain from my balcony.
I gleefully hopped over the area separating my main living area from the balcony, and as soon as my leading foot hit the tile floor of my balcony I slid like I was on ice right into the railing.
My stomach hit the railing hard causing both of my feet to lift up off of the floor. Luckily I thought to grab ahold of the railing as this action put me in a planking position. I had a completely different view from my balcony in that position.
I am afraid of heights to begin with, almost going over the railing from the thirtieth floor definitely pushed my fear factor. This event was much scarier than the tiger incident.
What do you fear the most?
We all have fears, and we allow our fears to control our actions. Most often these fears prevent us from doing the things that we believe will bring us happiness, or even prevent us from performing objectives we need to accomplish.
If we allow our fears to control our actions we will be a prisoner of our own minds.
We allow our anxieties to hold us back in life. We worry about failure, and even worse we worry about being criticized for our failure. Our past mistakes are also a determining factor in our fear to take action.
If we try being mindful of the present moment, we will not worry about the future, and we will let go of our past mistakes. If we face our fears and move forward they cannot hold us back.
Don’t let your fears hold you back. Go over them, or blast right through them!
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Are you still holding onto Anger?
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