Making fear work for you.
You’re terrified. It’s ok, so am I.
Much of my life has been governed by fear. Fear of failure, fear of making the wrong choice, fear of shame and embarrassment, fear of some imagined catastrophic outcome that will ruin my life. Sounds horrible doesn’t it? Well, it depends. Because your life has probably also been governed by fear, you just don’t realise it.
Let me explain what I mean when I say ‘much of my life’. I don’t mean spending my waking hours in a perpetual state of dread and terror, that would be awful and crippling. What I’m talking about are the decisions and actions that are seemingly benign but have been influenced, even dominated, by fear. Often, these manifest in the forms of unconscious non-decisions: I won’t do X because Y might happen, so I’ll stick with Z (of course, sticking with Z is also a decision, and driven by fear of the alternatives).
Starting to sound familiar?
This fear leads to inaction, paths not taken, opportunities missed and ultimately, living a life of perceived comfort and insulation, rather than finding our better, or even best, selves. This is where real security lies (more on that later).
What is fear?
Fear, in simple terms, is an emotional response to a perceived threat. If we see a car speeding towards us, we’ll feel in danger and we’ll move out of the way, and our brains are wired to do so. The keyword here is ‘perceived’ — whilst our brains are world-class at spotting potentially dangerous things, this doesn’t work in every context.
Human brains effectively have two mechanisms that control fear. The first is one of the oldest parts of the brain that you’ll probably have heard of, the amygdala, which reacts automatically to risks. The second mechanism is the neocortex, a newer and more complex part of the brain, that is used to analyse risks where the response isn’t automatic. So, at a basic level, the amygdala spots and reacts to short-term or simple risks and the neocortex analyses more complex, longer-term risks.
We’re terrible at measuring complex risks
The problem with the neocortex is that it’s still a fairly new piece of software in our brains and is still evolving. It’s actually not that great at measuring risks, particularly those where the impact on us is abstract or played out over a long time period. It’s one of the reasons, for instance, that we’re failing to act on climate change and, at a lesser level, why some people persist with activities like smoking and poor diet that shorten their life expectancy — the outcomes of our actions today are too far away in the future for us to make sense of them or feel a need to change.
Our amygdala, meanwhile, is a much more powerful engine that will spot and react to risks, often overpowering the more complex neocortex. If climate change manifested in the form of a falling piano, our amygdala would get us out of the way and we’d do something about the root cause of falling pianos.
Human amygdalas evolved to save our ancestors from genuine existential threats like dangerous animals and extreme conditions, risks that most of us don’t face in our modern lives. This response is the same reason we’re easily distracted by modern technology — our eyes are trained to spot tiny changes in our field of vision that could represent a threat (or instead inform us of an Instagram post). So instead of spotting complex but real threats, our brains are now over-sensitive to perceived threats — things like terrorism, flying in a plane and what really happens if you quit your job.
Dan Gilbert sums it up beautifully in his audaciously titled article on climate change, ‘If Only Gay Sex Caused Climate Change’: “The human brain is exquisitely sensitive to changes in light, sound, temperature, pressure, size, weight and just about everything else. But if the rate of change is slow enough, the change will go undetected. If the low hum of a refrigerator were to increase in pitch over the course of several weeks, the appliance could be singing soprano by the end of the month and no one would be the wiser. Because we barely notice changes that happen gradually, we accept gradual changes that we would reject if they happened abruptly.”
Healthy protector vs. Poor decision maker
Obviously, it’s important that we experience the feeling of fear and it plays a critical role in protecting us from danger. The challenge lies in how we assess and respond to risk — we measure it badly and therefore avoid some situations that are actually a path to something much better.
Think back to when you were a child, to something that terrified you at first but you eventually overcame. Something like learning to ride a bike, jumping from a high diving board or singing to an audience. That poor child version of you was wracked by terror but somehow, probably with some encouragement, found the willpower to give it a go. In most cases, it will have gone well and, with hindsight, been a fun experience. Even in the cases where it didn’t go well, I’ll bet that the general outcome was the same — you gave it another go. And another one. And again. And so on. You realised you were getting better every time and your perception of risk diminished as you headed down the path towards mastery.
As adults, our accumulated life experience heightens the risk side of the equation. The ‘what ifs’ seem more severe and more numerous. The possibility and the outcomes of failure seem much higher. And so we avoid that which looks and feels risky, often because adults are much more emotionally prone to shame and judgement.
Amongst Brene Brown’s considerable research on vulnerability and shame, she points out that avoidance of fear and risk stunts our capacity to grow and create: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.” Similarly, Seth Godin talks about doing “things that might not work” as an opportunity to flourish and the true path to growth.
So what does all this have to do with the big choices we make in life? Things like relationships and careers?
How it’s been for me…
Let me share a little about my own evolving relationship with fear to illustrate the point I made earlier on about moving towards our best selves. Over the best part of a decade, I’ve made a number of big choices and decisions about my work and life as I’ve grappled with, and gotten better at, understanding fear and risk.
This is by no means a completed journey, probably more like a life’s work, but it began with a deep feeling of dissatisfaction I felt with my work and direction in life. I was working for a large international consulting firm, and had been there for four years. I’d worked on some amazing projects in different parts of the world and had learned a huge amount. But my learning had started to plateau and I didn’t feel in control of my future. I could see the attractive path laid out in front of me: a series of promotions up to Partner and all the financial and status rewards that would bring, as long as I was hitting performance targets on an annual basis. These were railroad tracks rather than rough paths in the grass — you got on them and stayed on them. I realised I didn’t want to continue on this journey.
I was miserable but also terrified about what to do and how to make a change. It took me a while to admit it to myself. Not long after I voiced it, I was introduced to a coach by a friend of mine who had found the courage to make a huge career change. She was on the fast-track to Partner and gave it up to follow her passions in yoga and interior design (she’s built a super happy life around both).
So, twice a month, I met with my coach. I chose her partly because she’d moved away from a high-flying career with an international corporate, so I figured she would know some of what I was feeling.
There were two things I learned pretty quickly from working with her. The first was that what I thought I needed to work on was rarely what I actually needed to work on. The second was a realisation that multiple fears and insecurities were holding me back.
“The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.” Steven Pressfield
My (paraphrased) conversations with her would go something like this:
Me: “I’ve got this amazing idea for a business.”
Her: “Great, why don’t you play around with it and test it?”
Me: “Well, I’d need to find time around work.”
Her: “Ok, so how about starting small and carving out little bits of time around work?”
Me: “But that might distract me. And I don’t think I’d be able to make enough progress.”
Her: “Maybe you could take a bit of time out from work? Maybe even go freelance?”
Me: “But that could put my career at risk. I need money to live on. What if it doesn’t work?”
Her: “Well, what if it didn’t work? What would happen?”
Me: “Well, I suppose I’d be able to find work. I back myself to do that, I’ve got useful skills and experience. But what if I couldn’t find work?”
Her: “What’s the absolute worst that could happen in that situation?”
Me: [starting to get the point now] “Well… I suppose the worst-case scenario is that I can’t find work and have no income, so I’d have to rent out my flat and move back to my mum’s for a bit.”
Her: “So that’s the worst-case scenario?”
Me: “Err, yeah.”
Her: “And probably highly unlikely?”
Me: “…Yeah.”
Her: [patient smile and raise of an eyebrow] “Not that bad is it?”
Most of my responses, you’ll notice, are driven not just by fear of tangible things (like paying a mortgage) but also intangible, emotional drivers like the fear of feeling ashamed if I failed at something, the feeling that I’d be ‘behind’ my peers somehow if I stepped off the corporate ladder. It was through working with my coach that I realised that there was a bigger fear gnawing away at me, a bigger question that needed to be answered: What if I didn’t act on these feelings and instead spent my life doing something I didn’t care about, and worse, hadn’t even consciously chosen to do?
Wow. It hit me like a ton of bricks.
I imagined spending my life trudging to a job I didn’t really care about, my learning curve plateauing over time, but probably doing well enough to climb the ladder just through sheer diligence. I’d do all the usual things — use the increased income to buy a bigger house, and a nicer car and so on. I’d be highly skilled and experienced in something I didn’t have any love for, following a path laid out by an organisation I had little or no influence over. And then — I knew — I’d wake up in late middle-age wondering where the fuck my life had gone. What had seemed like the safe option would actually have been the riskiest one, sacrificing my self-worth and probably my health too, all because of fear.
“One can spend one’s whole life climbing the ladder, only to realise it’s been placed against the wrong wall.” Joseph Campbell
I took away another really powerful question from this that I still use as a barometer now: “What’s the worst that can actually happen?”. It’s this question that helps me confront fear and label it. I’m more aware when I feel it now — ‘ah yes, that’s fear fucking with my head there, I know what’s going on’.
The journey I started with those coaching sessions* continues to this day. Within a couple of months of having the conversation I’ve summarised above, I asked my firm for a sabbatical. By this point, I’d completed a six-month novel-writing course at the Faber Academy (another step I took through facing fear). The firm said yes and I took three months off. I spent the first half of it cycling down the west coast of the US with my girlfriend — a few weeks prior to that, I didn’t even own a bike. After an incredible adventure, I came back and worked on my half-finished novel (it remains half-finished and I overcame the ‘shame’ of that fairly quickly).
“You have to dance with the fear… If you’re feeling fear, you’re probably headed in the right direction.” Seth Godin
Then I came back to work and two weeks later, I resigned from a promising career in a fast-growing consulting firm. I had no job to go to and not that much in the way of savings.
Recently, I read something along these lines: ‘Trust yourself, pursue what matters, and the universe will provide’ (thanks Rich Roll). Back then, I would have probably scoffed at this sentiment. But as it turned out, whilst still serving my notice period, from nowhere an old work friend got in touch to ask what I was up to. Six weeks later, I began freelancing as a consultant for the financial services company that he was working for.**
After that, things changed. I became much more efficient at work and how I used my time, leveraging the fact that being a freelancer was about delivering results rather than being seen to work long hours or other input measures. This freed up even more personal time which I began to use much better. Over the last few years, I’ve worked on several business ideas (mostly failures), been on numerous courses and learning experiences, read a LOT of books on a range of topics, launched an app (still live), helped my brother design and launch his new business (going strong), launched two new businesses within a global consulting firm (as a freelancer), started an adventure blog, gained experience in innovation, technology and a range of other areas, had amazing adventures around the world, and most of all: committed myself to ongoing learning and self-development.
Let me be clear, it’s not been an endless rollercoaster of success and happy times, and I haven’t always had the balance quite right, but my decisions are more my own now and I’m making intentional choices about what I do. This seems an obvious thing to say but most of us don’t make life choices with full intentionality. But that’s a whole other topic.
Most recently, I took the leap out of well-paid freelancing into a pre-seed startup, cutting my income by over two-thirds to launch a venture that might fail within six months. I won’t lie — it was a scary decision to make but this seemed to make it more exciting and I knew it was an opportunity I’d regret not taking. Fear, rather than being an inhibitor, is now something that provides a guide towards decisions that offer the potential for growth and fulfilment.
After all, what’s the worst that can happen?
I’m still mastering living by this question but it’s one I revert to regularly as my guiding principle.
So, what’s the one thing you want to do but feeling fear is holding you back? And what’s the worst that could really happen if you made that decision?
*If you’re looking to make personal change or inquiry, I highly recommend the book ‘Wild Courage’, by my coach Elle. I promise I’m not on any sort of referral fee 🙂
**I recognise that this seems hugely fortuitous — and yes, luck and timing always play a part in everyone’s story. But I now also know that when you take a chance, the things you need have a habit of manifesting and working out. Trust me.
