DONT TAKE CONSEL OF YOUR FEARS

• By: Louis Ochiel
• Date: November 10, 2022

General George Patton, the hell-for-leather, “Old Blood and Guts” general of World War II fame, was once asked if he ever experienced fear before a battle. Yes, he said, he often experienced fear just before an important engagement and sometimes during a battle, but, he added, “I never take counsel of my fears.” If you do experience negative failure feelings -fear and anxiety- before an important undertaking, as everyone does from time to time, it should not be taken as a “sure sign” that you will fail. It all depends on how you react to them, and what attitude you take toward them. If you listen to them, obey them, and “take counsel” of them, you will probably perform badly. But this need not be true.

First of all, it is important to understand that failure feelings -fear, anxiety, lack of self-confidence- do not spring from some heavenly oracle. They are not written in the stars. They are not holy gospel. Nor are they intimations of a set and decided “fate” that means that failure is decreed and decided. They originate from your own mind. They are indicative only of attitudes of mind within you -not of external facts that are rigged against you. They mean only that you are underestimating your own abilities, overestimating the nature of the difficulty before you, and that you are reactivating memories of past failures rather than memories of past successes. That is all that they mean and all that they signify. They do not pertain to or represent the truth concerning future events, but only your own mental attitude about the future event.

Knowing this, you are free to accept or reject these negative failure feelings; to obey them and take counsel of them, or to ignore their advice and go ahead. Moreover, you are in a position to use them to your own benefit.