Let faith lead the way

Sometimes I wonder how our previous generations pulled through difficult times and always managed to move forward in times of seemingly impossible odds and adversity. Their world was not as connected as ours, technology was not as widespread and everything was always a waiting game or an inevitable rush to wait anyway.

In my own reflection, I find that we are in fortunate times despite being challenged with maybe even more complex problems that faced our parents and grandparents. Why fortunate you may ask? How is it that having more complex issues would put us in a place of being more fortunate than before? How is it that the rising cost and inflation at this time and age could have been harder than what our forefathers faced when they could barely put food on the table? I find that the one thing they had a lot more than us is this powerful thing called faith

Faith is a powerful thing and some like me, would call it the opposite of fear. In a time where negative news and controversies dominate the headlines of so many news outlets, it is not unsurprising that fear has become so entrenched in our society that it has also shaped the way we think and act. This fear I believe prevents many of us from achieving our goals. Something is always too difficult, too painful, requires too much time and we begin making excuses for why we weren’t made in a certain way. That’s fear talking and it has a strange way of eating into the very soul of our construct, shaping us to speak and act in negative ways that prevent us from achieving our goals. That’s what fear does, it makes us question ourselves, sometimes unfairly so and in most cases, gives us a reason to sought a course of action that is easier but may not be what we want in life.

All of this doesn’t mean we can choose to live without fear. To live without fear would mean to make safe choices all the time and this paradox requires a fine balance. Great leaders and achievers instead choose to face their fears and overcome them rather than allowing it to dictate who they should become. This is where the concept of faith comes to play and as the anti-thesis of fear, fuels positivity and allows us to engrave our names into the headstones of greatness.

Great companies, CEOs, philosophers, artists, thought leaders and so many others would not exist if they did not have their fears and choose to embrace and face them instead of bowing down. If fear is the obstacle that stops us from reaching greater heights, faith is then the catalyst for us to act and the fuel for our engines to get past these obstacles regardless how long the battle might be. Courage, determination, perseverance and other accompanying traits stem from the presence of faith, an energy so powerful that it activates all the influencing positive traits that we possess. Giving in to fear will activate all the negative traits such as pessimism, procrastination, self pity among others in a reinforcing loop.

I used to be afraid. Very afraid. Fear was my constant companion throughout my journey and for so many years I allowed it to dictate the way I behaved around people and performed in my competitions. I used to think that shutting out the fear would be the answer to these issues but that was purely a symptomatic solution that barely scratched the tip of the iceberg. In order to fight fear, we first have to embrace it and understand it’s necessary presence. It serves as a reminder to us of our humanity and in a new perspective, is a catalyst for us to embrace faith as the counter force. Instead of allowing fear to activate its loop of negativity, choosing to activate the positive loop of faith though more difficult will allow us to stay the course of what we want to achieve.

In a world where negativity spreads so much faster and prevalently compared to positivity, partly due to the presence of digital and social media, we are often bombarded with fear, some of which are not even our own. There is no fighting against the prevalence of this negativity but in embracing faith can we truly find new meaning in this new age. Only in embracing faith can we strike a balance with fear because one cannot exist without the other. But we can choose to let faith lead the way.

Onward.