All we learn, starts at home

‘Something WILL go wrong’ is a negative thought. It will prevent you from doing anything.

‘Something CAN go wrong’ is a practical thought. it will help you prepare for the worst but still hope for the best.

Right from childhood, almost all of us have been given advice that was based on a ‘negative’ rather than a ‘positive’. Our goals were set to ‘not fail’ rather than ‘to succeed’. 

How often we have heard things like:

‘If you don’t study you will fail. Then you won’t get a job and you will fail in life too.’

‘If you eat too much you will become fat’

‘If you go in the dark, ghosts will catch you’

With the intention to protect their child parents often set limiting boundaries for the young child that remains for the rest of their life. Then it becomes a lot more difficult to remove such an incepted fear later in life.

Look at these statements:

‘If you study well, you will sharpen your intellect which will let you achieve anything in life’

‘If you eat healthy, your body will be healthy and you will feel good’

‘If you have to go in the dark then carry a torch so that you can see well’

Aren't these statements more objective and constructive? They have a lasting positive impact on the child’s mind and actually helps them to think logically and see the positive side of any situation.

Every action has an outcome and that outcome has a probability of turning out positive or negative, based on various factors. And only logic must be applied to determine the probability rather than emotion. The problem starts when we attach a higher probability to a negative outcome of our action, when that truly need not be the case, based on our emotional view of things. We often try to predict the outcome of an action even before performing that action. And based on how our mind is conditioned, we even delay that action if we fear a negative outcome. All of us continue to be afraid of exams or tests for this very reason: the fear of failure.

We have to condition our mind to not think of outcomes from an emotional tangent and rather apply logic where an outcome has to be predicted. Else, it is best to avoid thinking too much about the outcome even before the action is performed.

Just as lessons start at home, fear starts there too and lasts a lifetime.