Within me lies my soul. My soul is in a fetal position in the dark cubical. Something was cradling my soul; it was fear. Fear bigger than me. One of the biggest limitations one would ever have to success or growth in life is fear. As simple or common as this may sound, the truth is that it has been the reason behind most stunted growth we see in people out there. People who are afraid don't allow themselves to venture into something they believe is risky. These people are afraid of taking risks. When one becomes afraid of taking risks, one may never grow past a particular stage in life.

There is hardly any stage in life with no certain risks attached to them. You must be able to conquer the fear that would try to hold you down from taking those risks for you to be able to start getting assurance of going to the next level. Let's take business as an example; people who own businesses went into business with the primary aim of making a profit. No one goes into a business they know they wouldn't be getting some profit from, perhaps only in a few cases when it was meant for charity. Now, it is true that people do business to make a profit; apart from making a profit, there is another thing that people who do business wish for: growth. Every business aspires to grow. No business would like to remain the same way they were when it started after they might have been in existence for so many years. The fact that every business expects to be making a profit didn't mean that every business expects to be making the same profit they were making around when they came into an establishment, after probably ten years of existence. They want more profit. One of the few things that would bring a change in the margin of profit is growth. Growth for this business means doing more things than before, getting more hands to join in doing those things, making a series of expansions in different angels, and many more. These, in turn, lead to an increase in the business's profit margin. For this growth to happen, there has to be a change; something needs to be done, something perhaps different from how it used to be done in the past. This is where one might have to battle with fear. One would need to battle the fear of failing. It is clear that there are always two sides to every business transaction. It is either one failure or one gain. As a result of this fear of failing, some people might decide not to make any move; they might decide to remain where they had been, making them not grow. Those who can conquer that fear end up becoming successful. Business is not the only place where fear can restrict one from embracing growth.

Marriage is said to be filled with many issues. Many people go into marriage with laughter and later come out with really very sad looks on their faces. Some people were very happy before they got married, they were expected to be happy when married, but after they got married, things didn't really go as expected, instead of them having more laughter on their faces, they rather became very sad, they continued going through real issues in their marriages that some people start saying that they were happier before they got married than the way they were after they had gotten married. We hear many stories about what happens in marriages, and many of them don't sound good. Some people become victims of very aggressive domestic violence while in their marriages, and others get killed in their marriages. There are just a lot of stories out there about marriage that make the marriage become scary for some people to go into. Some people are just afraid of the whole thing. They probably were products of an unhappy marriage. They see and hear about people entangled in an unhappy marriage; they become scared of getting involved in marriage so they don't end up having those bitter experiences they have heard about. Still, the fact that so many marriages had turned sour doesn't mean that there are no sweet marriages out there. It doesn't mean that some people are not happy in their marriages. It doesn't change the fact that some people are out there making the best fun out of their marriages, but it is a risk. Marriage is a risk. It could turn out sweet, it could turn out sour, but you have to beat the fear of failing in it to be able to go into it and build a happy marriage. Among most kids going to school today, there is always this big fear that has gradually come to become their reality. Their parents might not even be aware of this fear because some kids might never speak about it, probably because of the fear of what would happen to them if they ended up speaking about it. This is the fear of being bullied in school by kids who are older than them. Some kids get bullied on an almost daily basis in their schools.

Still, they don't get to say anything about it because they get threatened by those bullying them, that they would do very mean things to them if they ever said what they were doing to them to anybody older or their parents. Being bullied becomes a big problem in the kid's life that always had to be going through it in school. There is a lot of fear going on in this kid's mind. The first one is the fear of speaking out. This kid wants to speak out and report the bullying to people who might take action, but this kid is afraid of what might happen after reporting the bullying. They fear that they would be dealt with mercilessly, or they might be made not to be a part of their fellow kids in school. This fear makes them keep everything to themselves. Another fear is that they fear going to school. They fear going to school because they know what they would have to face whenever they go to school, but they have come to learn that they have no option other than going to school. So, they would always conquer their fear and go to school no matter what. They might continue being victims of bullying, but they would continue going to school irrespective of everything, and in the end, they would end up becoming very successful people; why? Because they were able to conquer their fears. Some of them even go ahead to report the bullying, and those bullying them get punished, and the bullying eventually stops. They conquered their fear; they were able to gain more heights in life. People who fail to conquer their fear become slaves to their fear. Whatever you are afraid of, you end up becoming a slave to it. When you see a wrestler that is afraid of a particular wrestler, this wrestler always runs away whenever they see this particular wrestler whom they are afraid of; whenever a challenge comes from this wrestler whom they are afraid of, they would rather hide their face, and never take the challenge because they are afraid of this particular wrestler.

This wrestler whom they are afraid of would always take advantage of them because they are afraid of him. He would always do things to their disadvantage and would always stand in their way of achieving growth, and they couldn't do anything about it because they were afraid of this wrestler; they would never dare do anything that would make them come to face with this wrestler so that they wouldn't end up getting beaten. This particular wrestler they are afraid of would continue being like a limitation to their life and growth until they can break out from their fear and challenge this wrestler. When they challenge this wrestler, they might end up winning this wrestler, and it is only after they win this wrestler that they would be able to achieve that very growth that they had been limited to over those moments that they had avoided because of this particular wrestler whom they had been afraid of. Some people don't know that they can win over a particular obstacle that is standing as a challenge before them; they don't know they have enough strength that would give them victory; they continue to run until one day they decide to give it a try, they end up discovering that they had been running from something they had the capacity of defeating. Sometimes, the issue is only with trying, but one has to be very courageous enough to be able to try. It is only when you give it a try that you will be able to overcome it; it is only then you might be able to know that you have the capacity to win over that very obstacle. This is perhaps why they say that a journey of a thousand miles starts with just making a step forward.

I was conquered by fear. Fear that was bigger than me had its arms wrapped tightly around me. The thorns on the arms of fear were piercing into my skin, making me bleed. Fear damages one's life gradually, and some people don't get to know that their life is being damaged gradually. You end up losing a lot of opportunities to fear and being restricted to a particular area for over a long time because you allowed yourself to be confined by your fear. This was the state that I found myself in. My skin was bleeding within my soul. Arms are the negative words everyone threw at me; these words held tightly in their embrace.