What Worries You, Masters You
How To Move Beyond Fear of Failure
“What worries you masters you.”
- John Locke
Every time I have to go on stage or give a class or go to a friend’s house even, I get afraid. My heart races faster. I distract myself by cleaning the floor or singing a song or whatever happens until I have to go “on.” And once I’m there on the stage or teaching a Zoom or at a party or event, I’m super happy. I’m energized.
And for years I’ve been thinking that I have social anxiety that I just battle through.
But I might be wrong.
My mind might be telling me that I’m afraid, but it also might be that I’m just super excited because I love people a lot. I love interacting with them. I love hearing their stories, seeing their bodies move in space and setting, watching them have epiphanies or just joyously dance around a kitchen after some really good food.
But I might be right.
I might be afraid of not being good enough, of saying something ignorant, of disappointing people I interact with.
FEAR AND EXCITEMENT
Fear and excitement both lead to arousal (which is sort of a creepy word, but I don’t mean it that way) are so similar in the way our bodies react. In both of these states, our brains focus on a task or an event. Our heart rate might go up. Our pupils might dilate. We might feel smarter all of a sudden.
But they are different. That’s because excitement opens our focus and possibilities, but fear closes them.
I’ve been thinking a lot about fear lately and what I’m afraid of and why.
There’s an old adage that goes:
F - FALSE
E - EVIDENCE
A - APPEARING
R - REAL.
Fear is basically something that makes your body’s stress response go into super-focused mode, right? And stress is your body and your mind reacting to a threat. That threat doesn’t have to be real for your body to go into stress mode. It can just be perceived.
And fear and stress have kept us alive for a long time. And it’s kept our ancestors alive.
It’s instinctive because if it wasn’t, if we paused and thought things through—like will that bear eat us?—then the pause could mean our death.
Fear is really there to keep us alive.
What it also does is narrow our focus. If the bear is about to eat us, we aren’t going to focus on a speck of dirt in our thumbnail that we might have noticed a few moments before the bear made an entrance. Instead, we’re going to focus on the bear and only the bear.
Fear impacts our perception. It changes how we think.
Fear of failure works the same way.
Professor Ramya Ranganathan says in his course, “Crafting Realities: Work, Happiness and Meaning,”
“So, the fear of failure just like any other fear snaps us away from open-minded, broad-minded, integrative, and creative ways of thinking into black and white, judgemental, conclusive ways of thinking.
“Not much of an advantage, if you are thinking about making choices in your career or your work.”
So, our fear of failure narrows our perception and limits our possibilities when we’re thinking about things. It makes us more judgmental and makes our thinking less creative and more polarized.
It sounds a bit like our country right now? But this isn’t meant to be a political post. It’s meant to be about moving beyond that fear of failure.
MOVING BEYOND THE FEAR
So, how do we get beyond that fear of failure to a place of excitement and broader thinking?
Ranganathan says,
“So, one way to counter the fear of failure or any fear for that matter is to remember this acronym and then start looking out for actual evidence that is going to prove to you that something bad is going to happen.
“Most of the times you will not find such evidence and that is going to help counter the fear. A second strategy that you can use which is also very powerful is to imagine the worst case scenario.
“Assume that you are worst fear is going to come true. What is the worst that can happen? Think it out, plan it out and create a contingency plan for that worst-case scenario. Once you created this contingency plan, you don't have to keep thinking about it and planning for that contingency plan, but you just put it aside as your backup option and just having that contingency plan stashed away somewhere at the back of your mind is going to make you experience less fear when you try to take action.”
Tim Ferris has a way to deal with this that he calls fear setting. It begins like this:
“Define your nightmare, the absolute worst that could happen if you did what you are considering. What doubt, fears, and “what-ifs” pop up as you consider the big changes you can—or need—to make? Envision them in painstaking detail. Would it be the end of your life? What would be the permanent impact, if any, on a scale of 1–10? Are these things really permanent? How likely do you think it is that they would actually happen?”
Next, think about what you could do to fix it if that worst-case scenario happens. Write it down. Was it not quite as hard as your fear made you think it would be?
Next what are the benefits, the potential, the outcomes in forever ways and tranisent ways of all those scenarios and possibilities? Would you be more confident? Happier? Would you have more money? Make a scale of 1-10 and rate those outcomes.
He asks,
“What are you putting off out of fear? Usually, what we most fear doing is what we most need to do. That phone call, that conversation, whatever the action might be—it is fear of unknown outcomes that prevents us from doing what we need to do. Define the worst case, accept it, and do it. I’ll repeat something you might consider tattooing on your forehead: What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have. Resolve to do one thing every day that you fear. I got into this habit by attempting to contact celebrities and famous business people for advice.”
And how is this hurting you? By not doing something because of your fear how are you hurting yourself? Inaction also has a cost. It’s just a cost that seems easier because it doesn’t seem to rely on as much choice.
Ferris has some fantastic slides from his TedTalk that relate to this, too.
FEAR IS OUR BIG LIE
A lot of us who write novels, talk about the big lie that dominates our main character’s life, the wrong belief that dictates and holds the character back.
Fear is our big lie in the story of our lives.
All of us have our big lie. We worry so much about what might go wrong that we are afraid to embrace what might go right. We live so much in our heads that we fail to live in our world. We allow the fear, the lie, to hold us down. Our fear is also a symptom of our lie.
RESOURCES NOT LINKED IN THE TEXT ABOVE:
Ranganathan, Ramya. “Crafting Realities: Work, Happiness, and Meaning,” IIMBx, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore. 2023.
STORIES FROM LAST WEEK:
