The fear of failure
On a basic level, fear is an intense emotion triggered by a threat or danger stimulus. It kicks our "fight or flight" response into overdrive and makes us take action in the moment. In most contexts, fear will help you react to danger - such as a spider or fire. It makes your adrenaline pump up and respond quickly - squishing the spider or running away from the fire. Its a protection mechanism - developed over thousands of years to ensure you keep yourself safe.
But what happens if there isn't a danger and yet you still have a fear response? What happens if your fear is linked to achievement or something inanimate? What do we do when our fear is with us all day every day? There are times when it’s appropriate and not so appropriate.
When I was 16, I travelled to Germany on an exchange program. I was ecstatic - I loved and still do love the idea of travel. I loved the idea of a new culture. I loved the idea of being in a country with tons of history ( I was brought up by a history teacher so you can imagine where my passion may have stemmed from). I remember lying in my bed on those first few nights, paralytically scared of trying anything new, after all, I was only 16 in a brand new country. Moreover, I was so scared that I was going to return home after 3 months having learned and experienced nothing. That fear, of not taking full advantage of the moment, put me into action and ensured I made the most of my time there. I was more afraid of losing out than I was of trying something new. This moment was the start of all my ambitious adventures- to make the most of any life journey and ensure I always try everything at least once- even if I was afraid to d
I watched a brilliant TED talk on danger vs fear- I highly recommend the watch (What I learned from going blind in space | Chris Hadfield). He explains (from my perspective) that there are certain situations where danger is inherent and a completely understandable and expected reaction is a "caveman response" ie fear. The example he used was a spider. Most people will have a spasm-like reaction walking through a spider web or seeing a spider. Its a perceived danger in which we become fearful. But when you look at the facts- that most venomous spiders likely wont be near you making their webs, it puts the logic into the scenario and leaves you feeling less fearful. What if we could apply this lesson to every scenario in our lives? What if every time we were presented with a fear response, whether appropriate or not, we used only logic? Would it be freeing? Would it be inhumane? What if every time we were met with a fear or a challenge to overcome, we could systematically work through it to better ourselves. I'm a huge fan of this idea - that we can make changes to our inherent behaviours.
How to challenge your fear:
Prepare, challenge and reflect.
Prepare yourself thoroughly - by building the "logic" pattern in your brain, you can train yourself to organise your thoughts when you have a fear response. It allows you to think through all scenarios, go in with an educated mind and talk yourself through the facts. Just like Chris in space, he had done hours of research into his profession. He had to train for years before he was even considered to be an astronaut and he knew everything there was to know before he even started his role.
Challenge yourself directly - I call this exposure therapy in my practice. The more you expose yourself to a scenario, the more likely you are to be calm and work through the fear systematically. This is directly confronting the fear. You have the lifeline of logic as well as someone doing the activity with you. In Chris's case, he had trained for hours underwater and in virtual sims. He was out on a space walk with another astronaut and he had Houston in his ear - he had challenged himself. He practiced everything that could go right as well as everything that could go wrong and challenged his inate humane response.
Reflect on your experience. This is probably the most important element. You can prepare yourself and challenge yourself but if you don't learn from those experiences, there's only so much you can achieve with it. You can learn a new lesson from each challenge. You can also share these experiences so others learn from you - how powerful! It could be something simple like a journal reflection or something more formal like a presentation. Either way, by interrogating your experience and the learning you had from it, it could change your fundamental behaviour and fear response.
So what's the overall message from this piece?
Fear is what you make of it.
You can let it control you. You can let it define your decisions. You can let it limit you - don't take the risk, don't start a new job career, don't create a passion filled life for yourself.
Or, you can choose to prepare, challenge and reflect. You can choose to give yourself the permission to follow a dream, to chase a path for yourself and to live the life you want and created. If you wanted to start a new podcast - take the leap. If you wanted to start a new business or job roll- do it! There is nothing stopping you, except yourself. If fear is all that is limiting you, the sky is the limit.
