Leaning into fear

If you lived in a small tribe on the edge of the Sahara Desert, circa say 300,000 B.C., you’d probably have a lot of good reasons to be fearful.

If you got too ambitious while on the hunt, you might end up impaled by a mastodon tusk.  

If you upset the leader of your tribe, you might be kicked out into the harsh desert on your own. 

If you wandered too far from camp into unknown territory, a Saber-tooth tiger might make a quick snack out of you.

It was a dangerous place to say the least.

“Fear” would have been an incredible ally in keeping you alive.

In the examples above, it would have pushed you to:

• Regularly tame your ambitions

• Know your place within the social order

• Stay close to what you’re familiar with

At the time, these things could literally be the difference between life and death.

Today, that is no longer the case. Yet we still feel the same fear that we felt back then. 

Our neurobiology has yet to catch up with the rapid pace of human societal development. 

Of course, we still want some fear. There are still many dangers in the world, and fear is a useful emotion to prime us for dealing with it. 

You want to feel fear when you’re at the edge of a cliff, or see somebody brandish a knife, or come across a bear den. 

The problem is when we instinctually feel fear in situations that are no longer a threat to us. Instead of holding us back from the cliff edge, here it holds us back from achieving our true potential. This typically takes three forms:

1. Fear of failure

2. Fear of social judgment / rejection

3. Fear of the uncertainty / the unknown

At the root, these all trace back to the fear of death, as described in the examples above. 

You’re wired to feel these fears, so what can you do?

There are three options I’ve found work best:

1. Deconstruct the fear & rewrite your programming around it

Consciously bring awareness to your fear, talk yourself through it & explain to your subconscious why there’s no actual threat. I’ve found that trying to dismiss it with vague language like “you’re fine” doesn’t work. You need to:

a. Drill down (“I’m scared of giving a speech because I don’t want to be ostracized by the audience”)

b. Get to the root of your worst associated specific fear (“if I can But , I’m going to be fired from work for my performance, and abandoned by my friends as a loser”)

c. Realize it’s unfounded (“audiences don’t carry pitchforks anymore, I won’t be fired for one poor speech, and my friends could care less how it goes”)

2. Activate the parasympathetic nervous system

When you feel yourself going into the fear response, or sympathetic arousal, consciously seek to activate the parasympathetic nervous system to counteract it. Two easy ways are:

• Box breathing: this is what the Navy Seals do to keep themselves calm during ops. You simply:

o Breathe in through the nose for a four count

o Hold your breath for a four count

o Breathe out through the mouth for a four count

o Hold for four

o Repeat

  (note that any technique resulting in deeper, slowed breathing will have a similar effect)

• Touching your lips: your lips have parasympathetic nerve fibers running along them. If you rub them with two fingers, it will help you relax (as will kissing someone).

3. Lean into the fear

This is far and away my favorite of the three, but it might take some practice to get here. If you can get to this place long term, it’s one of the best hacks out there for personal growth.

The idea is simply that you learn to associate fear as a signal that you should be doing what you’re afraid of. 

Fear already gets your adrenaline going, you just need to redirect it in a more helpful direction. This isn’t about becoming an adrenaline junkie who jumps off cliffs. It’s about leaning into the three fears mentioned above:

• Afraid of taking on something new at work? Probably a chance to stand out, do it.

• Afraid of walking up to that girl or boy and asking for a date? That means it’s crucial you do.

• Afraid of traveling to that distant country you’ve always wanted to? Life’s an adventure, get to it.

Over time, you learn to subvert the feeling of fear by beginning to see it as a friend, a guide, a sherpa helping you on your journey. 

When that happens, you can greet it with a smile, and know that it’s no longer holding you back, but propelling forward to exactly where you need to go.