Grappling With Fear - Understanding It To Move Forward
Fear as an ancient operating system, worst case scenarios, and a framework for leveraging fear to serve you
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Fear is an emotion that keeps us psychologically trapped and figuring out how to grapple with it can help us live.
How do you conquer fear? That’s an exciting question to wrestle with I think. Over the years I’ve gotten curious about where fear comes from, how it takes shape, and what we can do to keep it from us holding back in life.
Fear Has Reared Its Head In My Life In A Variety of Ways
The movement from certainty to uncertainty is what I call fear. - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Throughout my life, I’ve grappled with fear and my guess would be most people have as well.
Some of the fears that have manifested throughout my life include not getting to where I want to go professionally, the fear of not knowing if I’d find someone I loved, the fear of losing close friends and family, the fear of not being able to travel the world or do the things I want. Generally, I have experienced fear around all of the stuff that is important to me and it's usually related to will I get it, will I lose it, will something bad happen to it?
However, fear has also shown up for me even with things that are relatively benign like sending an email or hearing back from someone on something. It may not feel as strong as fear but it shows up in variations of that same emotion - i.e. anxiety, nervousness, stress, etc.
Cultivating A Relationship With Fear
Because fear will inevitably show up, over the years, I've tried to create a relationship with my fear to better understand it so I can navigate it when it does show up.
I think creating a healthy relationship with fear is important because the risks of not doing so are great. Specifically, I think the downside of not understanding how to work with fear is you feel worse, you do fewer things that you want to do, and you make changes that will serve you in your life a lot more slowly.
I think the better you understand your fear the more at ease you feel with it, the more you do stuff that you want, and the quicker you make changes to align your life with what you do and don't want.
All of that, in my opinion, is worth the effort of figuring out how to exist with and dance with fear
Fear: An Extremely Old Operating System
In order to work with fear in my life, I have found it helpful to try and understand what it is and how it gets formed. So what is fear in the first place?
Fear is an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.
What I found cool about this definition is that upon reading it, it’s clear that fear is extremely useful. Fear is this internal operating software that was designed to help me out by alerting me to danger. Fear, as a mechanism, exists to keep us safe and free from harm.
What I find interesting, is this software we have (i.e. our fear) was programmed a long time ago and the world we live in today does not present the same life-threatening risks that we’re more common thousands of years ago. For example, most of the people reading this newsletter are likely not worried about getting eaten by animals, going hungry, or finding shelter.
The implication of this, at least for me personally, is we've got this thing that is designed to keep us safe and alive, yet the actual risks posed to us (more often than not) are not life-threatening on a daily basis.
While it's true that the risks I face are not life-threatening, the way my body and mind react to fear is still very intense and visceral. One example was the fear I had coming out of college to "figure out" what I wanted to do. I would get very real anxiety pangs from thinking about my future professionally and my mind was always racing to try to solve that problem.
I'm not saying that figuring out my next step professionally did not have implications for my future, but I have realized that the feeling I have when I am fearful is out of proportion with the actual risk that is causing fear.
Defining Fear To Conquer It
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. - Marie Curie
One exercise that I have developed to work with my fear is getting very specific with defining what I am afraid will happen. It's been life-changing because once I am able to get my hands around what I am actually worried will happen, more often than not, it’s far less scary than I'd imagine. Getting specific has even helped family & friends a ton with their own fears.
For example, a while back Isabella felt like she had hit her ceiling with a company she was working at. All of a sudden, her learning had stopped, and she did not see a path forward with the firm that would fulfill her. While it was extremely clear to her that the job would no longer bring her what she needed, there was still a tremendous amount of anxiety and fear from leaving. This included things like:
How long would it take to find another opportunity that would engage her?
Would she risk ruining relationships with people that she cared about at her current firm?
Would she start to fall behind professionally as a result of not being engaged?
And a ton of other things. I'm using Isabella as an example (thanks for volunteering), but catastrophizing is human nature and designed to protect us from pain. As a result, there are a few things that I've tried that have been extremely helpful when navigating fear.
Map Out The Most Extreme Worst Case Scenario of What Could Happen
But to run away from fear is only to increase it. One of the major causes of fear is that we do not want to face ourselves as we are. - Jiddu Krishnamurti
So in Isabella's scenario, she started by defining her fears and getting more specific about what she worried about when she’d say "falling behind professionally". We took catastrophizing to an extreme and imagined the absolute worst-case scenario:
It would take over a year to find a role that was the right fit and challenging
The gap in her resume would grow and her attractiveness as a candidate would continue to plummet with each month that passed as people would naturally start to assume something was wrong with her if she was not actively engaged in work.
Since she would not be engaged in work for a long period of time she would then start to deteriorate intellectually and would actually become less competent than all of her peers and loved ones, making it even harder to progress the way she wanted.
She would fall behind in her capabilities to such an extreme degree that she would never be able to catch up to the competency of her peers.
The people who loved her in her life would think less of her and eventually lose their admiration and figure out that she was not as special as they all thought.
When you read this it probably sounds silly and an obviously unlikely scenario, but it is crazy the places fear will take our brain if we let it. Oftentimes, even if the ideas themselves are irrational, they are percolating in our brain making us nervous. Until we choose to face them on the page or voice them out loud they will continue to plague us.
Getting very specific around what exactly would happen if all of our fears were to come true is a great first step to grappling with it for me.
Write Down How Your Life Would Be Impacted If Your Worst-Case Scenario Came True? How Bad Would It Be?
Named must your fear be before banish it you can - Yoda
In this example, I find it useful to take the stance of assuming that my worst fear came true. I then like to think about what would actually be happening in my life if all of this came true? How bad would it be? So in Isabella's example, it would include things like:
Spend several months and maybe over a year or two not working
Would still have a house, access to food, and warm clothing
Loving family and friend support system still ready and available
Would not be actively making an income/would be saving less
Her time would be completely unstructured and it would be up to her to figure out how to learn & grow
She’d have a gap in her resumé for an undefined period of time
Tons of free time to explore her interests and test our learning about different careers
Some time to relax after a fast-paced startup experience
As I start to stack things up and illustrate what would actually happen if all of my fears came true, more often than not, it is not as scary as I think.
In the above scenario, the conclusion for Isabella was life would still be pretty good and there were actually a ton of upsides to the worst case scenario that she had not considered.
Think Through Things You Could Do To Avoid Your Worst-Case Scenario Should Things Go Wrong
Another step here in coming to terms with my fears includes thinking through ways to mitigate the worst-case scenario. So in Isabella's example here are some of the things that came up:
Gap In Resume - Dedicate her non-job-hunt time to pursuits that were really enjoyable and engaging to her. This could include deepening her cooking, expanding her dog walking business, reading about civil rights, or trying a bunch of different kinds of work to test them out. Talking this through was helpful to realize that the gap in her resumé was her narrative to control.
Losing Intellectual Capacity - As she thought through how she'd be spending her time it was clear that while she was not formally engaged in work, she would be extremely engaged intellectually & would actually be making a fair amount of money from her side pursuits. It also became clear that she would develop both soft and hard skills (risk tolerance, creativity, working through ambiguity, skills involved in expanding a business, etc) that would not have been as easy to gain in a traditional role and would make her more impactful wherever she went.
What I have found cool about thinking through this is realizing that there is often a ton in our control that we can do long before arriving at our worst-case scenarios. When I've taken the time to think through that it brings me an immense amount of comfort.
Define The More Realistic Scenario
To continue with Isabella's example the short version is that the likely scenario was she was going to spend some time not working and splitting her time between the following:
Engaging in a variety of pursuits that interested her
Creating definition around what she wanted to grow into next professionally
Finding the right next opportunity
Once this was clear the time-off became a much more enjoyable and fulfilling experience rather than an anxiety-ridden transition that needed to be pushed through.
I've found that once I have a realistic vision of what will actually happen my feeling of fear diminishes significantly.
What Are You Giving Up By Not Facing This Fear?
Lastly, I love to think about the downside of not facing any particular fear of mine. The reason being is we spend so much time locked up in what could happen if our fears come true, but it’s extremely valuable to spend time thinking about what is the worst that could happen if we don't face our fears.
Again, to use Isabella, for her this looked like the following:
I'll go to work every day and be unhappy in my work because I'm not learning and growing
I'll come home less fulfilled and as a result, won't be able to be as engaged at home because I'm not personally enjoying my time
I'll waste my time in a role that does not bring me energy, satisfaction, or growth because I'm nervous I won't be able to figure out a next step that gets me what I want
I’ll spend less time actually engaging in activities that bring me joy, push me to learn & grow, and that I find meaningful
I’ll give up a lot of things I love for a sense of security that is largely imagined
These are just a few examples, but oftentimes, for me, getting clear on what I'd give up by not moving forward makes it painfully obvious that the alternative to not facing my fears is much scarier.
As a result, it's often the final straw and catalyst I need to make a push.
It's Not Easy But It's Worthwhile
Fear is an extremely valuable emotion because it’s telling me that there are things I need to pay attention to. I do my fear a disservice when I don't put in the work to understand it and to figure out how it can serve me.
I'm not trying to say that working through fears or anxiety is easy, but that it has become far more manageable now that I have got an approach to working through it.
Additionally, working through fear and anxiety is invaluable because it helps me feel better more quickly and actually get an understanding of what is worrying me.
I know I'll never get rid of fear entirely, which I think is great and healthy because when it does show up it’s usually an opportunity for growth.
All I hope is that each day I'm able to get more comfortable with fear and delight more in figuring out what it’s trying to tell me.
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To Living Well,
Alvaro