2013高中英语阅读素材：勇敢生活：如何征服对生活的恐惧.docVIP

勇敢生活：如何征服对生活的恐惧 Fear of something bad happening in the future is one of the things that make us human. Animals might fear an immediate danger, that is happening right now, but only we fear something that might happen, that isn’t happening now, that isn’t even showing its ugly face at the moment. This fear, some might say, is necessary … it stops us from doing something stupid. But I’ve found most of these fears to be unnecessary, to be baseless, to be holding us back from achieving something. I recently asked my Twitter friends: “What fear is holding you back?” Their responses included: * failure * abandonment/rejection * intimacy * success * being broke * not being good enough I think the last one — not being good enough — is actually at the root of all the others. We fear we’ll fail because we’re not good enough. We fear we’ll lose our relationships, that we’ll be abandoned, that we’ll be rejected … because we’re not good enough. We fear intimacy for the very same reason — we might get rejected because we’re not good enough. Even the fear of success is based on the worry that we’re not good enough. Do you have this fear? That you’re not good enough? I have, for all my life, and I still have it today. But here’s the thing: having the fear is natural. Letting it stop you from going after your dreams is a tragedy. I did this, for well over a decade of my adult life. I let the fear of not being good enough stop me from even trying, from even daring to dream. It turned out that my fears were baseless. I am good enough. I’m not perfect, but who is? When I was able to overcome this fear of not being good enough, this fear of failure and rejection, and put myself out there in the world, I succeeded. I found out that I was good enough. And I still have this same fear — I still worry that I’m not good enough, that I’ll fail and flop on my face in front of 100,000 people … but I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. Even the most successful people — Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Paul M