Having phobia for a particular thing is not a problem, the real problem lies in allowing the fear to dominate our life. A life lived in fear will mostly not achieve anything tangible, neither will such life hit goals or purpose; in fact, such life don’t usually have goals or purpose to follow or pursue, which makes the life an ordinary one. Phobia comes in different forms and for different reasons; they result as a product of what we’ve heard, what we’ve seen, what we are hearing, what we saw, what we read, and what we were told, whether it’s the truth or not.
There are some who developed a phobia for driving just because they witness the loss of a loved one through it. Some do not dare to travel by air or by water, owing to the unfortunate news they kept hearing about plane crashes and boat capsizing as the case may be.
In as much as these phobias may be a normal reaction of our mental sensitivity to activities around us, we are not subjected to it. As a human, we can control our thought and overcome every one of our fears. It becomes witchcraft when our fear deliberately hinders our progress in life, and it has been established that the fastest way to conquering a specific phobia is by taking the bull by its horn.
This means we can overcome any form of phobia by doing that which we are scared to do. For example, a person scared of driving should take on driving, although in the presence of a good driver. By the time the person drive for three or four times with supervision and some other times without supervision, the person would have overcome more than seventy percent of the problem. If the person would not stop, it is certain the person would overcome the phobia without even remembering he/she once had such phobia.
I once had a phobia for climbing and anything height. I never wanted to have anything to do with mountains or rocks, owing to the fact that I lost my grandfather to it and also the fact a close friend of mine lost one of his arms to it. They had both fell while trying to achieve a feat in rock climbing. My friend was lucky the height was not that much as he landed on his left arm thereby condemning the arm entirely.
The doctors affirmed he would still use his arm perfectly but will take a longer time and multiple surgeries before the feat could be achieved. My grandfather was not so lucky because he fell from a higher height onto a not so friendly ground. He was on a professional expedition with his team of seven members. They had almost reached the top of the mountain when one of them slipped thereby forcing their looped climbing rope to stay afloat, moving in pendulum in the air with five of them on the free end.
After many swings, while the rope friction again a sharp end of the rock, the rope eventually cut and the five of them hanging were left at the mercy of gravity until they hit the ground. Three of them died instantly, and my grandfather died in the hospital after three days while the person closest to the ground among them survived the fall with broken legs and arm. Every time there’s a mention of climbing, the scenarios (even though I was not the there when it happened) would replay on my mind thereby increasing my phobia for height.
However, my love for adventure totally contradicts the phobia I had for height. I knew I had to overcome my phobia for climbing and for heights if I’m to make it big in adventure. I had put off many adventure expedition involving heights because of the phobia, and this made me lose many great opportunities to turn my talent, skill, and interest into money. I particularly lost sponsorship and cost my team a fortune for refusing to go for the last expedition which was to be televised as a part of a documentary concerning the mountain. My team members cajoled me and made me see a reason to try the expedition even though the job had been given to another team.
I knew I had to overcome my fears if I am not to disappoint them and this made me determined to take the bull by its horn. The sponsoring company agreed to sponsor us but only after we’ve completed the task with video proof. This means we would have to complete the task with somebody recording our movement on the rocks. This seemed like a hard work to do because the companies and the broadcasting stations would have ordinarily provided us with good cameramen and a helicopter in order to capture every movement no matter the height.
Drones Can Film Us
After much deliberation among each other, we resolved that the only way we could achieve such without having professionals covering us was to settle for drone cameras. Since drones can also cover the heights as we are moving, it’ll come in hand in achieving the feat, and of course, it’ll cost less.
We employed the service of three of our friends who are not mountaineers but are good with drones, to cover us for the period we used in climbing the rocks. We had a total of three camera drones covering us from three different angles as we climb. The fact that we were many and the sweet words of encouragement that kept coming from my teammates kept me going without thinking about incidents that birth the phobia I had for height.
The expedition was a success, and I could not believe it when we got to the top of the hill. It was fun throughout, and it was then I realized what I’ve been missing a lot by allowing my phobia for height to dictate the way I live my life. This made me overcome the phobia faster than I thought and watching the video recording taken by the drones elevates my heart. I never knew I was that good and was really proud of my teammates.
We won the sponsorship and even got more than we lost simply because of the originality attached to the fact that we recorded it ourselves. The viewers were more appreciative of the originality even though the recording was not as professional and this gave the sponsoring company an idea to always include at least one drone recording, because of its portrait of originality which pulls more crowd and because it’s of course cheaper.
If you’ve got phobia like I used to, I’ll advise you look for friends or loved ones to help you take the bull by its horn. Teamwork really helps a lot, and don’t forget it’s not fun to have your life occupied by the fear of what could have brought you joy.