In his book 'Think and Grow Rich', author Napoleon Hill talks about 6 fears that impede a lot of smart people from achieving their full potential. The book provides 13 rules of success and stresses that to prepare to receive the full benefits of the contents of the book, one has to be aware and overcome the six basic fears.
The three enemies of success and riches are indecision, doubts and fear. These are blended together. Indecision breeds doubts and lead to fear. The blending process is slow. They germinate and growt without their presence being observed.
The six basic fears are:
- Fear of poverty
- Fear of criticism
- Fear of ill health
- Fear of loss of love
- Fear of old age
- Fear of death
Anything that is created physically has to be first conceived in mind. The corollary to this is that any thought impulse in mind will be immediately translated into their physical equivalent, where the thoughts are voluntary or involuntary. This means that a 'Lucky' person is one Who is always thinking positive thoughts that are translating into positive outcomes. This also means that you cannot continue thing poverty and fear and expect prosperity and success outcomes.
Fear of poverty
The first fear is the fear of poverty. This is the most destructive fear since it is a state of mind. This fear paralyzes the faculty of reason, destroy the faculty of imagination, kills-off self-reliance, undermines enthusiasm, discourages initiative, leads to uncertainty of purpose and encourages procrastination.
This is the fear that is most difficult to master. Fear of failure is an offshoot of fear of poverty. You start off any initiative with the assumption that you don't have it in you to succeed in your initiative. In other words, you are 'poor' of the ability to handle the challenges. Since you fear that you don't have it in you (fear of poverty), you fear failure.
Symptoms of fear of poverty are:
- Indifference: Commonly expressed through lack of ambition, willingness to tolerate poverty, acceptance of whatever compensation life may offer without protest, mental and physical laziness, lack of initiative, imagination, enthusiasm and self-control
- Indecision
- Doubt: Providing alibis and excuses for failure
- Worry: Spending beyond income, neglecting personal appearance, intemperance, lack of poise etc
- Over-caution: Knowing all that can go wrong, lack of execution, pessimism etc
- Procrastination: Habit of putting off till tomorrow what should have been done last year. Reflected by willingness to compromise, planning for failures, intellectual laziness etc
Fear of criticism:
This fear robs people of their initiative and discourage use of imagination. Symptoms are:
- Self-consciousness: Expressed through nervousness, timidity, shifting of eyes etc.
- Lack of poise: Lack of voice control, nervousness in the presence of others etc
- Personality: Lacking in firmness of decision. Lacking in ability to express opinion freely. Agreeing with others for the sake of pleasing them
- Inferiority complex
- Extravagance: Trying to keep up with Jonesses
- Lack of initiative: Failure to embrace opportunities, Fear to express opinions, Lack of confidence in one's ideas etc
- Lack of ambition: Mental and physical laziness, lack of self-assertion, slowness in reaching decisions, lack of tactfulness of manner and speech etc.
Fear of ill health:
The symptoms of this fear are:
- Auto-suggestion: Habit of giving negative internal suggestions about health. Always thinking 'Am I healthy', 'Why am I having stomach upset regularly', 'Why am I having pains and aches in various parts of the body' etc
- Lack of exercise: This exacerbates the problem.
- Susceptibility to ill health
- Self-cuddling: Looking for sympathy
- Intemperance: Taking too many medicines
Fear of Loss of Love:
Symptoms of this fear are:
- Jealousy
- Gambling
- Finding faults with others
Fear of Old Age:
Symptoms of this fear are:
- Fear of poverty
- Fear of ill health
- Fear of loss of freedom and independence
- Tendency to slow down
- Consistently referring to oneself as 'Old'
- Habit of killing off imagination, initiative and self-reliance
Fear of death:
Symptoms are:
- Habit of thinking about dying and not making most of life
- Lack of purpose
- This fear is closely associated with fear of poverty.
