After completing my maiden speech as part of my toastmaster's journey, I have decided to deliver a second speech for, what they term as project. So this is my speech for Presentation Mastery Level 1 Project 2:
Embracing Fear
Let me begin with a poll. How many of us here, can say without a doubt that you live a life without a single fear at all; that you are afraid of absolutely nothing? Interesting.
Before I start my speech proper, let me get all of you to do one mini exercise with me. For the next 30 seconds, I want you to either of these -- For those of you who have not experienced fear, I want you to use your imagination and try to picture yourself in a moment when fear takes over you, or overwhelms you… how would you respond to it. Would you just freeze and not do anything or would you do something else? For those of you who have experienced fear, I want you to try and think back about the feeling of fear, what you wished you had done or say during those moments. Now during this exercise, if you feel; that you are about to get triggered or you feel a little overwhelmed and you need time to step out for a breather, please feel free to do so.
Now, the reason why I had you to imagine or recall those moments of fear is because I want all of us to recognise what fear is understand that fear is an unpleasant feeling. Of course, this is very different from the feeling of thrill. In many psychological researches, thrill is placed in a different category from fear. When you take a roller coaster, or any scary rides for that matter, at the back of your mind, you are more or less assured that the ride is 99.9% safe and you take the ride to find out about the “what if”—what if I am in a ride that falls under the 0.01%? But at the end of the day, you know it is safe, otherwise, you wouldn’t want to take the ride. You are just testing out the 0.01%.
Fear on the other hand is something else. Does any of you here want to suggest or share with me your understanding of fear? Some websites that I went to indicated that FEAR is actually an acronym and it stands for Forget everything and RUN! And rightly so, right? Fear is this unpleasant feeling that may make you feel silly or look silly. It paralyses you. According to two papers – one published in the journal "Behavior Therapy" in 2015 and another in the journal "Motivation and Emotion" in 2019 showed that fear may actually lead to this phenomenon called avoidance which may then cause regrets. For example, if you are thinking of doing an investment by either buying a stock or a house or even bitcoins, and then you do your research and you found that because of the unpredictability of the economy in 2007, there is the risk of you losing your money. And because of this fear, you avoided making the investment. Then 10 years down the road, you found out that some of your friends actually invested their money and have now become millionaires. You then feel lots of regrets. And of course, there are many other examples where fear leads to avoidance and avoidance leads to regret.
Fear and regret are two emotions that are unpleasant so much so that sometimes we sometimes found ourselves wishing that we can get rid of fear. So that we won’t be so afraid. That we can be braver. In fact, I had an interesting conversation with a student the other day, and he was telling me that he wanted to eradicate fear so that everyone can live their lives freely without fear. Do you think that is true?
Well, I am here to tell you this is a misconception. The absence of fear is not bravery. The absence of fear is recklessness. Which then goes back to the question of, what is fear? According to many journals on psychological studies, fear is the natural response to whatever we perceive as dangerous or a threat. Keyword here is Natural response.
Fear helps to keep us safe and careful. For example, when we cross the roads, we tend to look left and right, because there is the fear of being knocked down by an oncoming vehicle. In fact, some psychologists believe that there are other sub-conscious fears at play here. Like consciously we are afraid of being knocked down, while sub-consciously we fear of what might happen if we get knocked down. Some of us will have the subconscious fear of what is going to happen to your family? What is going to happen to the house loans? How are your children going to live without you. This is the same exact fear that may also guide a person from doing anything reckless in their lives.
War strategists and commentators also believe that fear is the only thing that is preventing a World War 3 from happening as world leaders are concerned about the unpredictability of what may happen in the future should they decide to engage one another in another global war.
So as you can see here, fear may not necessarily be a bad thing. And as such, I am urging all of us to look at fear from a different perspective. I want us to embrace fear. One of the ways to embrace fear is to acknowledge that fear is a natural response. So, I want us to say together—fear is natural. Let’s say it again. Fear is… Natural. And the next time you experience fear, ask yourself, what is it that you’re afraid of? More importantly, analyse that moment of fear, because it will help you to identify what you deem is important in life. Like for example, if you are afraid to speak in a public setting because you’re afraid of other people’s judgement, then probably, you deem face value as something important in life. So fear helps you to identify the things that are important to you. And finally, once you are able to identify what is important to you in life, you’d be able to make wise decisions in the future.
So the next time you feel fear, I want you to change your perception—fear is not forget everything and run, fear is face everything and rise.
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