Be Your Own Hero

Living with fear, anxiety, and uncertainty can be miserable. It robs us of opportunities to seize the special moments in our lives. It leads us to regrettable decisions, and even worse, to not make a decision when one must be made. Negative emotions are as powerful as injecting a toxin into your body. It can shut down your immune system. It can alter your body chemistry. It can cause you to get sick. So it is important that we study how to combat negative emotions by curing them, not brushing them under the rug.

Most of our basic fears sprung roots when we were small, most likely between the ages of two and six. We have carried them with us our entire lives, most of the time subconsciously. So every time something happens that strikes that old root, we respond the same way we did when we were young. We run and hide. We don’t act. We wait for someone to do it for us.

Here is a quick example: Jimmy is 5 years old and playing on a baseball team. In a big game, Jimmy is playing in the outfield, and suddenly, with the crack of a bat, a pop fly enters his territory. Jimmy focuses very hard on catching the ball, but to no avail. The ball hits his glove, and bounces to the floor. The runners score, the game is over, and Jimmy feels as though he is to blame. Even worse, one or two of his teammates tell Jimmy that he blew the game for them.

In this example, it is easy to see that Jimmy is upset, but what Jimmy doesn’t realize is that his subconscious has now made a decision to never be responsible for the big “stuff” in life again because he already failed once at it, and he hated how that felt. To protect himself from that awful feeling, Jimmy will avoid those opportunities for the rest of his life so he doesn’t have to feel that kind of pain again.

Do you really want to spend your life reacting to a fear that was created decades ago? Probably not. The first step is to identify what it is that scares you. What is it that keeps you from reaching your dreams? It’s not the fear of dropping the baseball; it’s the fear of letting others down. The next step is to sit with it for a while. It might make you mad, it might make you cry, but you must sit with it. The final step is to dig your heels in the ground and take some kind of an action that will directly connect you with that fear and give you the opportunity to let it go. Remember, it is not the action that scares us, it’s how we feel. The action is nothing more than a vehicle of opportunity to shift what must be shifted.

When you accomplish this, you set yourself free. You are your own hero. You save yourself.
Tang Soo Do is a great way to address this process because it consistently gives students an opportunity to practice awareness, to overcome fears using courage, and to practice the self-discipline necessary to change.

You have that super power; you just have to choose to use it, no matter how scared you are.

All the best,
David Alvas