We’ve all been there, in the midst of making some big decision. Should I break up with him? Should I quit my job? Should I start a business? Move across the country? Tell him how I feel?
We’ve all been at that point- right on the verge of taking a risk, catapulting our life into some great unknown, breaking free of the rut we’ve been stuck in.
And BOOM. The fear hits.
Sometimes it’s paralyzing, stomach churning, heart racing, palms sweating kind of fear. Other times its just a general sense of unease that makes you want to crawl back under the covers. It shows up just in time to talk you OUT of taking your big leap. To tell you “nahh, how about you just stay where you are. It’s safe here.“
And that’s how dreams die. We convince ourselves that our fears are practical. That fear is actually keeping us out of danger. That we are the young girl in a horror film and fear is doing us a favor by yelling “don’t go in there”.
But what if that’s a lie? What if our fear isn’t keeping us safe at all. What if it’s actually just keeping us stuck?
What is fear?
Fear developed in humans as a reaction to something in our immediate surroundings that threatens our safety or security. At its most basic level, fear is an emotion, which is a way that our body communicates with us. The message of fear is to alert us to danger.
From an evolutionary perspective, fear evolved to protect us from predators. If there was a mountain lion headed our way, fear activated our sympathetic nervous system which motivated us to run like the wind in the opposite direction.
To sum it up, we learned fear as a protection mechanism. It helped to ensure the survival of our species. Fear was valuable and kept us alive.
Now, however, we live in a drastically different world. Our environment has completely changed, but the neural pathways in our brain responsible for fear are largely still reminiscent of our primitive nature. Our neurobiology hasn’t evolved at quite the same speed as our physical environment.
Because of that, there is a disconnect. What was once a supremely valuable signal to run from a predator, has taken root in our psyches in some very negative ways.
Think about it, the common predators of our ancestors are no longer much of a threat to us in our every day lives. Most of us, who are fortunate enough to live in the industrialized parts of the world, are no longer fighting for our very survival on a regular basis.
Modern day predators
So what are our predators now? What are the actual threats in our modern world and do our fears accurately reflect those threats?
Some of the most common fears people share with me now are fear of failure, fear of the unknown, and fear of being judged/ rejected by others.
And if fear is a mechanism for detecting threats, the question becomes what are the actual threats behind these ambiguous fears? Are these fears based on threats that are REAL or IMAGINED?
To answer that, lets dig deeper into an example from my own life.
When I was making the decision to leave my career in medicine, I was terrified. What it really boiled down to for me was a fear of failure. What if I walked away from this prestigious career I had been working so hard for and fell flat on my face?
But the thing about “fear of failure” is that it is so vague. And anything is infinitely scarier when it is unclear. Think about it- that’s why everything is so much scarier in the dark. It’s because you can’t actually see it clearly and your imagination runs wild. The shadow from your bookshelf becomes a masked intruder. Holding a gun. Who’s coming towards you.
But then when you flip the light switch on you see that “ohhh. False alarm. it’s just my bookshelf.”
Shine some light on your fears
That’s what we have to do whenever fear pops up. We have to shine the illuminating light of clarity into the shadows of our mind.
Step one of doing this is defining exactly WHAT it is that you are scared of. If the fear of failure pops into my mind, I have to ask myself some follow up questions. What is failure? What would failure look like in this situation? Another way of asking this would be “what is the absolute worst case scenario that could happen from me walking away from medicine?”
I walk away from my career in medicine and try to start up my life coaching business. But it’s a huge ol flop. I can’t land or keep clients. Turns out I do NOT have a knack for coaching, or online business, or entrepreneurship for that matter. I can’t make any money life coaching so I have to find another source of income. I dust of my resume and hit the job market but am completely unsuccessful. No one seems to want an MD who didn’t complete residency. I go on countless interviews and the rejections keep piling up. I’m unemployed, deeply in debt and have to declare bankruptcy (can you even do that for student loans?) and move back in with my parents.
Ok… so yea. That would be pretty bad.
How likely is each event?
But now let’s ask a better question. How likely is any of this to actually happen to me? Let’s go through each event and rate their likeliness on a scale of 1 (completely unlikely) to 10 (guaranteed to happen).**
** I got this rating exercise from Marie Forleo’s new book “Everything is Figureoutable”.
My life coaching business never takes off.
I will give this a 5/10 just based on the statistical probability that 50% of small businesses fail in their first 5 years.
I enter the job market again and can’t find a single entry level position.
I’m going to give this a 2/10 because I am persistent, persuasive and an extremely hard worker; I am almost positive that I could convince someone out there to take a chance on me.
I’m unemployed and have to move back in with my parents.
Again 2/10 because I know that I could find a job doing SOMEEEETHING. Even if that is bartending or waiting tables or teaching English.
I know this is all made up math, but if I multiply it out (5/10 x 2/10 x 2/10) that ends up being a .02% chance that this worst case scenario would actually happen. I would say those odds are ever in my favor.
And THEN we could ask an even better question.
Is there any possible way I could cope with each of these set backs?
Of course there is. At each bump in the road, there are countless ways I could dust myself off to keep each minor set back from becoming a life sentence of doom and gloom.
Fear is irrational NOT practical
So while fear is trying to anticipate threats, detect danger and protect me, in this instance it’s actually doing me a disservice. It’s taking a relatively unlikely future event and reacting to it as if it’s bolt of lightning and I’m standing on top of a mountain holding up a trekking pole.
In other words… it is blowing this unlikely event WAAAAAY out of proportion.
Not helpful. And not at all practical.
As Eckhart Tolle says in his book The Power of Now ” the psychological condition of fear is divorced from any concrete and true immediate danger. This kind of fear is always of something that might happen, not of something that is happening now.”
So yes, it is normal to feel that fear of “what will happen if I take this big risk”. But just because you feel afraid, doesn’t mean that you should avoid doing that thing. Fear is NOT actually keeping us safe. The truth is, that all your fear is doing is keeping you stuck.
And listening to your fear, allowing it to dictate your decisions is not practical at all. Its actually highly irrational.
Going forward, I want to challenge you to lean into your fear. To investigate it. Question it. Ask yourself…. what am I really scared of? And how much of a threat is this really?
Shine some light on that puppy and stop letting this irrational, primitive part of your brain control so much of your life.
