Fear

After so many years of pretending everything was fine and dandy, it dawned on me that up till this age in my life, fear has been a focal force behind my journey—a journey that links to so many roads. Some roads were under construction while some were permanently closed. But the truth of the matter remains that fear has been a pivotal ingredient in the journey of life. Historically, fear shows up any where life exists, be it in relationships, workplaces, social settings, or just in a lonesome space, when we are alone. That is why fear is a sin qua non of life. In other words, fear is inevitable. When we start a new job, we fear how other workers will perceive us, how our boss will evaluate us the first time, and most of all, how can we be our best selves. In a relationship, we fear at the beginning what our partner would think of us, how we can make each other comfortable and fun to be around each other. In social settings, we fear how our friends will perceive us each time we embark on a new journey. In academic environment, we fear not to disappoint ourselves in such a manner noticeable to our peers and professors. This book was birth as a result of those many years of internal struggles fighting with thoughts that says “it cannot be done,” especially when I decided to embark on my academic journey, circumstances at work and financial situations suggested impossible, but that silent voice kept saying “ if you cannot do it for yourself, nobody will do it for you.” Again, silencing those negative voices brought about writing my first book: The Power of Engagement: How to Find Balance in Work and Life, and this book is evident that fearing for the right reasons could propel me to places I never imagined. With this attitude, I combined practical experiences gathered over the years from customers, clients, professors, family members, unfamiliar faces, and years of reading other people’s work and volumes of academic and professional subscriptions into sharing how, fear can work in our favor as opposed to against us. In other to give meaning to this theory of positive fear, I coined productive fears “constructive fear,” while unproductive fears are coined “destructive fears.” So throughout the text, you will notice consistently where these words were used to distinguish how they are operationalized.