Link4Change - Chris Ogle

What are you full of fear of? That's a slightly different question isn't it, but maybe it helps to re-arrange the words and place the emphasis differently.

Many of us wouldn't identify with being fearful of that much nowadays; except the usual, spiders, snakes et al. In reality though fear is often right at the centre of our lives and decision making.

As it turns out there is quite a lot we can be fearful of.......

Fearful about what people will think?
This is at the root of a huge number of issues in society today, and is getting worse by the year. This is becoming an epidemic that is stifling and goes right back to our own beliefs about ourselves. Much of the time we're wearing a kind of mask that we're happy to be seen in public with. If operates as a kind of shield that we operate behind. We share ourselves in accordance with the mask as this is a safe accepted place and we can't get into much harm behind there.

People expect us to behave in a certain way …

This blog post has been prompted by Brené Brown's book Rising Strong. In this book Brené discusses that we all need to need, and we all need to be needed. At first sight this is a bit of a mouthful to get your head around, however here goes...

From my youth and growing up with my parents I have countless examples of where my father would extol the benefits of being Independent. Don't rely on anyone, the more you can do yourself the better. It seemed like good sense to me, dad was decorating, gardening, wiring, building things, making things with wood... with a friend of his he put in central heating, with his bother he built a conservatory, and, on his own landscaped the entire garden... As a role model for a young kid growing up, he was definitely walking his own talk. Independence it is then I reasoned!

So for a good few years that's the way I played it... you could actually see his younger version in me as I proceeded to become a capable decorator, gardener, even wiring…