For the next two weeks, I’ll be writing about one of my favorite subjects, fear. This week’s note talks about the use of fear as a guide, and next week, we’ll talk about unfinished business.

Fear Isn’t My Enemy, It’s My Path Forward

I have a men’s group where we meet every Tuesday and talk about our feelings for three hours (no, really). At the end of our session, each man claims what we call a “work statement,” which we define as something that is true but is difficult to say. For many of us, growth comes from acknowledging and accepting the truth of a situation or ourselves, even though it is something we don’t want to think about.

Some years ago, after realizing that I took myself out of many actions and pursuits out of fear, I realized I could reframe my fear as not a limiting factor, but rather a clue as to what my best course of action was. In other words, whatever I was most scared of ought to be the thing I do. If I was procrastinating and avoiding applying for a new job (fear of failure or rejection), that’s precisely what I should do, because from a risk-reward perspective, the pain of rejection is far less than the potential upside of landing a role I want.

Even though that work statement—“fear isn’t my enemy, it’s my path forward”—was probably from 5 years ago, it’s stuck with me and turned into something of a motto. When I look at my to-do list in the morning and immediately feel anxious or paralyzed, I ask myself “what thing on here am I most scared of” and that’s the thing I do first. Basically, I use fear as a guide. Fear has become a clue toward my best course of action. Rather than relying on my powers of logic to determine which task is likely to be most valuable, I follow my emotion (typically fear). Subconsciously, we already know what action is the most valuable and most of the time it’s the thing that is the hardest or the scariest, so we avoid it.

Why is this the case?

The Connection Between Fear and Growth

Everything meaningful comes with a sense of risk, and that’s why it’s scary.

To me, this sense of risk is a signal of potential. In financial markets, the potential for reward generally accompanies risk. I see personal growth the same way. Most of us would rather avoid the risk, so we skip doing the hard stuff and stick to doing the low-value actions that feel productive, even though we’ve done them a thousand times before and haven’t brought us the results we want. Telling ourselves that we are being productive or working hard becomes just another excuse to avoid the big thing we are scared of.

I see this all the time in the early-stage space. Some entrepreneurs will spend all day working on pitch decks, software updates, or business plans and not do the thing that matters the most, which often is talking to customers and figuring out how to solve their problems. Or, more generally, they fall back to doing the things that they are good at—whether they matter or not—rather than the difficult and unfamiliar skills needed to grow their venture.

Ultimately, all of this is just our subconscious mind focusing on what can go wrong, rather than what can go right. What happens when we start to look at fear as a “green light” rather than a “red flag”?

Stepping Into and Through the Fear

The rewards of accepting fear, and taking action anyway—sometimes called courage—are massive. Not only do we realize that the action is nowhere near as difficult as we imagined, but we often start to see the upside immediately.

Usually we have to do difficult things for a long time before we get a reward. However, when we are more than prepared for a new activity or environment and have simply avoided it out of a misplaced fear, when we finally enter that environment, we often see (small) success right away.

I see this most often in social settings or interactions—for example, with cold emailing people for networking purposes or going to an unfamiliar event in town. In the past, I’ve procrastinated for months regarding cold outreach for various projects and I tend to be pleasantly surprised when I get a single positive response out of 10 cold emails. Had I started cold emailing months ago, even a 2 or 5% response rate would have resulted in dozens of new conversations. What would my network look like had I reached out 10 times a day for six months?

I also see this a lot with people that are stuck on creative endeavors—poets, writers, or photographers that amass a huge library of creative work and never share it with anyone. Sometimes, when they finally dip their toe into the cold water and get a positive response from friends or strangers, it gives them the positive motivation to keep going and doing more. As I’ve said before, it takes only a small amount of positive evidence to start making negative self-beliefs start to melt away—why not get started now?

And whether we see success right away or not, stepping into and through our fear benefits us in other ways. We gain confidence from confronting our fear. We also gain a sense of accomplishment when we prove to ourselves that we can do difficult things. And if my framework is right, we consistently put ourselves in a position to attack the highest-potential-reward tasks!

Exercise

Journal on the following or discuss with a friend.

1)      Noticing

What tasks, actions or projects have I been avoiding or procrastinating about? What major changes in my life am I most afraid of making?

What is my strategy for avoidance or procrastination? Do I rationalize away the fear, making excuses as to why I can’t take the action right now? Or do I fill up my time with comfortable busywork that I know how to do, and tell myself that I’m working hard towards a goal, even though the evidence over the past months or years says that I’m not?

2)      Thought Experiment

Regarding those changes, actions or projects, what is the nature of my fear? What can go wrong? How can I get hurt?

If I undertook those actions or projects, what could go right? If I make a big change in my life that I am avoiding or delaying, what is the potential upside to me?

3)      Adopting a Fear-First Mindset

If I adopted a “fear-first” mindset, to do the things I am scared of first, what actions would I take?

If it was another person, what judgment would I have of a person that does the scariest thing first? What does it feel like to have that judgment of myself?

As I complete this exercise, what task, project, or life change have I been avoiding the most? Can I practice taking a tiny action step on that project, and see what it feels like to adopt a “fear-first” mindset?

Remember, we are scientists conducting a series of experiments! I am not asking you to commit to a total life change. Can you do one small scary thing right away, only for the sake of seeing how you feel afterwards? Do whatever you want with that information!