Peur et Courage (Fear and Courage)

The last 24 hours have been most interesting - not because of any events, just following my train of thought.

My committment to run for MCP has caused two reactions in me - one of extreme fear (thoughts of dying cause me no fear - it is fear of failure which seems to be my greatest fear), and the other of courage.

When occupied by fear, my mental voice says 'What the hell are you doing, committing to something you are not ready for? What if you win and you screw it all up? There are people better than you for the task. You're a dishonest jerk, how dare you commit to something like that when you know you can't do it. You're not only deceiving yourself, but deceiving the country.'

But then the other voice says, 'Well, no you've committed to this direction, there's no backing out, you may as well make yourself ready for it.' And it has already begun to push me in the right direction...while I am generally a person of self-analysis, I have never been one to quickly act on that self-analysis. Not only have I specified exactly what is holding me back, but I have started doing something about it...

I now know that I have certain fears which prevent me from achieving extraordinary things...they are listed below:
- Fear of physical exercise
- Fear of academic work
- Fear of planning and effective time management
- Fear of action/failure

AIESEC talk might call some of these things 'skills' or even 'competencies' (yes, I hate that word too), but I know these are areas that I have deeply rooted fears. I know how to do all of the things above, but yet I do not, making excuses not to do them. Why?

- Fear of physical exercise. I'm not lazy at all - I walk to university every day here, and that is a good 30 minute walk each way. The reason for that is that my stinginess in catching the bus easily outweighs any factors against it. As a consequence of this walking, and of eating very healthily, I am much fitter than I was when I left Sydney.

But I know I want to be a lot fitter still, through things like back stretches, situps, pushups, morning cycle rides, etc., but I can't bring myself to do this 'unnecessary' exercise (i.e. exercise for the sake of exercise, not for other objectives like getting to and from uni). Why? I have a fear that I won't keep it going; that I'll start and stop a day or two later. Why? I used to be very unfit when I was younger, and this has lead to a form of subconscious insecurity about my physical condition.

How to defeat this? Commands to action which override habit and fear (coming from the urgency of running for MCP in 10 months), and more importantly, continually imagining myself exercising a lot. The latter action will rewrite the recurring thoughts in my brain to something more positive than what's currently there.

- Fear of academic work. This is one of the most bizarre fears I have, yet one of the most easily explainable. It is bizarre because I used to be a very dedicated student. I would not think twice, or even once for that matter, before studying like crazy for an examination or test. This was before the days when I questioned the direction I was taking in life - my parents and my schools had drilled a mammoth academic work ethic into my brain, and it just seemed to be the way to go, no questions asked. Then in the final years of high school, I began to ask those questions...I began to question whether this kind of pure academia was the way to go. Without resolutions to these questions, doing academic work became increasingly difficult, but at the same time and pushing me the other way was the increasing proximity of the HSC (the final high school examinations in Year 12 in NSW). By Year 12 I was in no position to do any kind of academic work, yet I had no choice but to succeed beyond any successes I had in the past. I bowed to the pressure, and worked EXCEPTIONALLY hard...ripping my brain in half in the process. To give an often-cited example of my Year 12 work ethic, the 3 unit history project where we were required to study a number of sources on a particular historical subject. The most ambitious people would use 12-15 sources...I lost my mind and used 90.

I did well enough in Year 12, but since then my brain revulses when it comes to anything academic. This isn't healthy when you're studying law. AIESEC's massive practicality and use of mindless jargon confused me even further - is the 'practical way' the way to go? These questions, along with all other questions, continued to pile up without resolution. It's only in the last two months, since coming to France, that I've begun to find the answers I'm looking for.

How to defeat this fear? The same way as the fear above. I know that I will not be an effective MCP if I have this fear lingering in the back of my mind, even if I am not directly applying myself to academic work during the term. Being an effective leader requires a complete absence of fear - it is just something which cannot exist in our minds in any shape or form. So this urgency is pushing me to defeat this fear. I am using my imagination - imagining myself once again as the hardworking student I used to be, who loves knowledge, mind maps and deep thinking - to rewire my subconscious.

- Fear of planning/effective time management. This comes from ingrained habit...since I only ever had one true obsession in the past, academic work, time management simply was not a necessity. Time management becomes necessary when you have more than one thing which you are working on...which is most definitely the case now.

The solution is once again the same two as before. I guess a pattern is starting to emerge, yes? But without creating the urgency in my mind, change would be close to impossible.

- Fear of action/failure. Obviously part of my fear of action comes from a fear of failure, but a much stronger reason is my self-stereotype as a 'thinker', because of the fact that I used to be so academic. This has lead me to believe that not taking action is ok, because that is not my role. Rubbish. If I want to be an effective leader, action comes first on the list...time for a mental rewiring.

How do I know that it is possible to change our thinking? Because it has been done before by many great people...M.K. Gandhi was once a very shy man, believe it or not.

Also, because the human brain is essentially infinite, and to pessimistically impose limits on it is to be guilty of extreme ignorance. One neuron (brain cell) is capable of producing 2 possible states - 'on' or 'off', depending if there is a current flowing through it or not respectively. Two neurons are capable of producing 4 possible states based on the combinations 'on, on', 'on, off', 'off, on' and 'off, off'. The adult human brain has between 20 billion and 50 billion neurons. The number of possible states that exist is more than there are subatomic particles in the entire universe. In other words, unless we begin to find other universes, start living for 1000s of years and remember EVERYTHING that we have ever done, seen or read, then our minds are totally infinite.