The difference between a millionaire or a successful person may only be that that person is doing what he wishes and believes is right without allowing fear to destroy his dreams. He does because he does and the consequences will be dealt with as they come. He is confidently handling challenges. It is easier to hold back and do nothing than to break the block of fear.
Diego Ruiz Duran is a Mexican lawyer who really believes that fear can hold us back. We are not talking about anything real, but thoughts that plague us until we give up. He sees plenty of this in the people he counsels, people who might have been successful, but who follow the wrong path, who give up success out of fear and take the easier route, the wrong route.
In our minds, we salute those others and honor them as in some way they are believed to have obtained a degree of success we don’t think we will ever see or ever have a chance of seeing. We don’t realize that we recently backed off from standing up to a businessman who we knew was cheating the public because that businessman made a threat. Internalizing that threat we let him continue; so backing off seemed reasonable. But following through would have gained our strength.
My husband and I owned a restaurant and I wrote a small column in a local country newspaper when I uncovered a politician had used government funds fraudulently and in the process hurt quite a number of people by defrauding them out of their land. The people were frightened of this man’s power and didn’t dare speak up. I wrote an article that landed in a large city newspaper. Immediately cars parked all along the periphery of our restaurant blocking access for customers. To our surprise, high school students and their parent’s parked elsewhere and walked in. We made money that day.
I continued. A car followed me everywhere I went. Someone broke into my home trying to steal my proof. A public meeting was held in the school calling me a liar and threatening to run me out of town. That was fear. My husband begged me to quit. The state police begged me to quit. Nope.
Who is Diego Ruiz Duran that we should listen to what he says? He is that man who we honor for his abilities and success that we don’t believe we will ever see because we take the easier route and when fear strikes hard at us, drowning us, we back off, giving up.
