Name calling could be seen as a way to avoid your fear of being seen as wrong. No right or wrong here. Understanding how a person avoids fear is the trick, I think?
Seriously, I just find this stuff interesting. Coping with fear, confronting, avoidance, or acceptance.
Fear is a wall. It prevents those without the moral strength to overcome an emotion from obtaining or feeling the things in life that can truly define a person while allowing those with the aptitude to confront it in to a world with no boundaries, only possibilities.
Also, I would not label everyone who lives in fear a coward, to me a coward will always and only be a person who consciously runs from fear. However, it is my opinion that much of the world is almost as bad as cowards, they are apathetic, they are aware that they are living in fear, they do not run, they do not attack, they simply accept.
Three fundamentals of every extreme skier, total disregard for personal saftey, amphetamines, and lots and lots of malt liquor......-jack handy
Yeah, since fear is irrational, gauging it accurately is more difficult, and only mastered by putting yourself in constant touch with it.
Public speaking seems to be biggest fear of most according to statistics.
With practice, comes confidence, and the fear disappears.
Fear, in this instance is not the fear which others claims keeps you alive.
It's simply a state of mind, and an unhealthy one at that.
Nice.
789
There's nothing better than sliding down snow, flying through the air
And then there are those times when you sack up and just huck it.....
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heh..funny you mention this.
I have to present and speak in front of audiences quite a bit, been doing it for years. sometimes there's a lot riding on what me and my colleagues present (i.e. multi-million dollar contracts or projects). Typically, as we go through our bid defense in front of the project team I'm nervous as hell and usually sweatin it no matter how many times I've done it or rehearsed or prepared. ( I guess its more anxiousness than fear, but still. ) And you know what calms me right down? I sit there and drone out what's going on and visualize standing on top of a cliff I may have hit in the past. I can visualize it so well that my palms get sweaty and I can induce a little kick of adrenaline that surges through me as I sit there pretending to scribble notes down and still nod at all the right the times as if I'm actually paying attention. I visualize it up to the point of pushing off, feeling that brief instant of weightlessness (like riding the roller coaster to the top of the first big hill and then jumping out of the car to the other side), seeing that landing way the fuck down there and remembering how I thought 'holy FUCK this is high, but there's the landing, and I got it, just keep it tight". And then I think, "well shit, if I did that...why the fuck am I so nervous about standing up in front of these peeps are talking. this is nothing. this is easy." And then I go up, talk my ass off, and stomp the shit out of that presentation.
Conquering your fear in one aspect of your life can make it easier to conquer fears in other areas.
Oldie but goodie:
"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear." Mark Twain
and
"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared." ~Edward Vernon Rickenbacker
I guess I'm just a spineless pussy. The fear of enduring another very painful and very expensive surgery has kept me from doing things on skis that I didn't used to be afraid of.
...Some will fall in love with life and drink it from a fountain that is pouring like an avalanche coming down the mountain...
"I enjoy skinny skiing, bullfights on acid..." - Lacy Underalls
The problems we face will not be solved by the minds that created them.
I can talk crap for hours to any audience but then I am a bit of a gob-shite.
Fear isn't always irrational. There are times when you are genuinely and appropriately in fear of harm (or harm to others) but you have to distunguish which fear is in response to genuine threat and which you must overcome. That requires clarity of thought under stress and not everyone can do that.
Last edited by Mrs Roo; 08-17-2007 at 03:06 AM.
Monty Python's version of the cougar phenomenon:
"This is a frightened city. Over these houses, over these streets hangs a pall of fear. Fear of a new kind of violence which is terrorizing the city. Yes, gangs of old ladies attacking defenseless, fit young men".
When I was a young horny virgin, my girlfriend at the time, also a young horny virgin, drank a little wine with friends. She showed up knocking on my parents front door. she was ready to be deflowered. took her to my room, put my hand in her pants. she stunk up my whole room. it was scary. pure fear. at the end of that I was still a virgin. maybe this belongs on the douche thread?
"Fear in me so deep it gets the best of me,
In the fear I fall, here it comes face to face with me,
Here I stand hold back so no one can see,
I feel these wounds, step down, step down,
step down"
-Downfall by Trust Company
"Can't vouch for him, though he seems normal via email."
According to the research I have seen, public speaking is indeed way up there - social humiliation is high on the list of anxiety producers. But at the top of the list is the Unknown.
What sucks most about the fear of the unknown is that, although we can face it, we can never escape the unknown. The boundaries of the unknown are always out there at the limits of our experience, and no matter what we do to expand those limits, the unknown still waits out there for us. Licking its chops.
one thing most people do is build up fear the closer you get to an upsetting situation, then back off or avoid it; but most people will find out if they'll face the fear down; it was usually nowhere near as big as they made it to be.
i often ask myself very loud when i'm avoid an issue, "Bbi Budetee Kouchka ?, Net, Ya Ney Budu Kouchka !"
which is a lose Russian translation that amounts to "are you going to be a pussy ? no, i am not a pussy" then, i take on whatever the issue is.
okay, feel free to start making comings about myself and my pussy.
TGR forums cannot handle SkiCougar !
So "kouchka" is Russ for "pussy"? Good to know.
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