Fighting Your Fear Of Downfall From “Bad Habits”

Written by: Daniel Richard

12 Comments

Download the pdf for this article

Image courtesy of beau-foto

Here’s one fear which I am certain that many of us have, and that is the fear of going on forward and being felt constrained by the “thorns of our flesh” that we face – most of the time brushing it off and generalizing them as “bad habits”.

Self-imposed restrictions (effects of personal judgment)

Ever heard someone constantly talking about how they won’t be able to achieve anything of significance that they can be proud of due to the stuffs that they faced? Some examples would be like the lack of resources, lack of formal education, lack of networks, stammering, and eventually feeling like a walking dead-on ringer for a complete failure.

Know anyone as described in the previous paragraph?

Do you also know that by saying all that as mentioned in the examples above, they too have structured up a wall of self-imposed restrictions to block themselves from going one step further to become closer to their desired dreams and goals. That is especially for those who can’t give a logical explanation to why they had thought of themselves being lack of the many things that we all could have.

However, given that the person can make full sense of his explanation on lack being a disadvantage and that he or she too have a physical setback like walking with a limp, stammering, being slightly slower in work, or even unable to count or write properly, anything else apart from that are just effects of personal judgment.

As mentioned at the very start of this article, the people as described here so far do feel constrained and here’s the bad part: in order to make themselves feel a little bit better, all those things that they face are continuously swept aside and called as their own “bad habits”.

What makes it worse is that we can spend tons of productive hours pushing the blames on mistakes or inability to find a breakthrough to improve on our quality of life onto those bad habits, and use up countless more hours to battle them – most of the time in despair, leading themselves no where further but back at square one, and then feeling bad again for having the “thorns in their flesh”.

The real “bad habits” (counter these instead)

Guess what. It would be better if we took the battle against the real “bad habits” instead. And, most of the time we would already know what they are in the first place, but didn’t take them into consideration as being another root area where if we have victory in, the rest of the stuffs that we are lacking in or our physical setbacks will have minute attention on us.

I have noticed when I talk to certain people about their problems faced, and one thing all of them have in common is that they will agree to an absolute extend that their problems are unsolvable, and acknowledge unwillingly that they can’t do anything about them. That’s not it, they too will in different ways, continuously do that in a short span of time, repeating the negative issues over and over again because it is a huge reality in their lives.

The act of continuous and repeated acknowledgment over the reasons to their difficulties is a bad habit on it’s own, and such individuals almost never consciously noticed themselves doing that at all. This act too being done so extensively had allowed themselves to be totally shut off from getting any positivity back into their lives – maybe yes, but at microscopic proportions.

At one extreme, a friend would say something good to the person, but he or she will think otherwise; “heard this, doesn’t apply to me”, “why should I listen to you”, or “I can’t have a good day with this going on in me”.

Come on. Let’s go against that bad habit of consciously agreeing and acknowledge facts that though we have areas that we are weak in, along with the untruths that those problems have diminished chances of having a better future.

To make it simple: deal with the bad habit of self-doubt.

Fear of downfall (self-doubt)

Face it. That the reason why there are people out there who have that bad habit of self-doubt is due to a fear. Let’s call it a fear of downfall.

This is rather interesting as we would not exactly know what our future will be like! We can always make plans, set goals, and think of how we are going to be like 5 years into our future, but to just prepare ahead by doing things that would be of value today and down the road.

However, the ones who have a fear of downfall – though with dreams larger than themselves and have desired for better things in life – have a strong tendency to prepare only for the normal, and talk about the worse, then spend most of their time in a vicious cycle trying to get rid of that “thorn” or channeling their energy into some other distractions.

All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.

- Benjamin Franklin

Fear of downfall is something that can be fought and won against. This is an area where despite our limitations, we too still can be built up and strengthened by defeating against such a fear.

Testimony from Daniel (winning despite having Tourette syndrome)

My story - hence the name mentioned in the sub header.

As you know, I am the one who started this blog with my friends at the beginning of this year. Prior to that, I was never sure of myself and had been disappointed many times ever since I was much younger as I have this thing, which I learned through one of my friend late last year, called Tourette syndrome.

Tourette syndrome in short, refers to a neuropsychiatric disorder that is characterized by visible motor tics such as blinking, coughing, twitching, to phonic tics such as producing involuntary sounds from time to time. This symptom is present in a small minority of people. Most cases, such as mine which visible facial tics are seen at periods of time, are considered mild and requires no medical attention.

Even though Tourette syndrome is related to neurology, people who have this have a normal life expectancy and intelligence.

But of course, being in a small minority may have its difficulties, especially when I was younger. It sure was weird feeling out of place. There too were times when people who are closer to me wanted me to be more “normal”.

It was such a repeated occurrence of discouragement and personal judgment of being not normal that got myself to step out of the uncomfortable zone and go on into a comfortable level by being out of a social circle.

The first job that I had right out of the secondary school was to be working as a data entry clerk, which only required me to sit in a back office and do the accounts and enter in the returns at the end of a work day. I recalled that I wanted to carve a career in web programming (with lesser face to face interaction with people) and had aligned my tertiary education to go for a diploma course.

And such it went on that the lesser time I get to be with people apart from my friends, the better life should be – that was what I felt.

Fortunately, things took a turn as I started to develop skills and talents in areas that I never thought could have flourished on my own strength, such as encouraging others, or writing, and even talking to people.

I never once knew that I had could have opportunities years ago, suddenly became evident as I started to have some personal milestones that I am glad to have, such as being offered jobs that was paying more than $3k even before I graduated with a diploma, being in the presence of managers to CEOs, and now having this dream of winning everyone through building one another up with encouragement, empowerment, education, and just being who I am.

More so when I have had encounters where there were people who came up to me and confessed of their wrong doings and seeking forgiveness through Christ. The interesting part was that the only time anyone would have known that I am a Christian is through this blog, and I certainly hadn’t tooted the horns to them ever before.

Of course, all of these things would not have started until I realized the fact that I was dealing against the wrong “bad habit” all the while. It was not Tourette syndrome that I should put all my energy into dealing with, but it was the other root issue that all of us have and might had ignored once a while: it is the issue of confidence!

The issue of confidence (building confidence up to fight fear of downfall)

Confidence, in this article, is defined as the belief in one’s own self. For this case, we shall be more specific and let you know the 3 simple ways to use confidence to fight against fear of downfall (which is the bad habit of self-doubting).

• 1. Creating a new habit of building your self-confidence level

  This may take sometime getting used to, but creating a new habit of increasing your self-confidence level is something that would help in the long run. The thing is that you have to take time out to actually do something valuable in enhancing the environment around you, to allow your self-confidence level to improve.

  Surround yourself with positive people… wait, let me rephrase that.

  Get into the lives of positive people, read people development blogs and books such as Winning Everyone (that would be us), and apply lessons learned and start accomplishing tiny goals that will build up your self-confidence level.

• 2. Stop “back doubting” yourself

  “Back doubting” is a term that would be defined as an act of backing up one’s doubts with more reasons – where those reasons contribute only to make the person feel worse than before.

  Time to stop all the “back doubting” and start to challenge yourself with achieving small goals that can be done given a short frame of time.

• 3. Increase your vocabulary and start encouraging others

  Build up on your vocabulary daily and straightaway applying those new words into encouraging one another. Of course, learn words that have a positive association such as, “great”, “awesome”, or “fantastic”, which you can immediately use it to praise your friends or thank God for your day.

  An increase of vocabulary will also allow you to be more specific in sharing your thoughts with one another.

  As your level of vocabulary increases, you too will definitely grow bolder and become more daring to start be a strong encouragement to people around you!

3 simple and effective points to fight against that bad habit, and grow at the same time! That’s all it takes. All one need to do now is to apply them together.

Applying them is also simpler than expected! Well, being a Christian myself I have the liberty to pray / worship to a God in private, and use those encouragement words and thank God for specific things that happened during the day. This was how I had started off in the beginning after realizing the power of encouragement working in my own life.

The new good habit of doing that led to an increase in boldness, which allowed me to freely send a text message online to friends and encouraging them through web media, and also getting to exercise verbal encouragement by speaking face-to-face with people.

That’s right. Build up your confidence and win against the fear of downfall.

As I end this article, I would like to give you a word of encouragement while battling your own personal difficulties and bad habits of self-doubt. Like how my friends too had played a huge part in building my life up with simple activities and words that helped in my breakthrough in confidence despite limitations, I am sure that you too will find your victory.

Let’s build a life with new habits and confidence – and of course, build others up while your at it!

If you liked this article, do help with a vote and share (forward) this post to your friends, and do subscribe to our RSS feeds too. Thanks for the support!

Popularity: 67% [?]

You may also like

• Your Old Men Shall See Visions, Your Young Men Shall Dream Dreams (16)
• Appreciation #1: Cheers To Our Earliest Readers and Members (16)
• Getting Things Done With a SMILE! (13)
• Fighting Your Fear Of Downfall From “Bad Habits” (12)
• Never Die Trying, Have A Spirit Of An Explorer! (12)