Don’t let fear hold you back from everything you’ve ever wanted
What’s on the other side of fear? Pretty much everything you’ve ever wanted.
At least everything that’s worth something. Your dreams, your desired life, exciting and fulfilling experiences, expansion, connection, freedom, progress, or growth. All of it is right there, sitting on the other side of fear.
Fear is the source of everything that holds us back; everything that causes us to resist moving forward.
However, fear is also a necessary and natural survival mechanism. Hundreds of years back, fear kept us alive. It helped us avoid risky and dangerous situations.
If you’d come across a bear, for example, fear would activate your fly or fight response so you could run and seek safety, instead of trying to negotiate with the bear and try to convince him to maybe eat something else other than you on that given day.
So back in the day? Sure, fear was a pretty fair and useful way to keep ourselves alive.
These days, however… it’s quite the opposite. Our brain’s desire to avoid discomfort is exactly what prevents us from living. At least living fully, to the full spectrum of the human experience.
And although we can’t completely get rid of fear, we can learn to identify it, rationalize it, and avoid it from controlling our lives, which is precisely what we will tackle in this blog post: to master our fears so that fears won’t become our masters.
That starts, first and foremost, by understanding the emotion of fear.
Don’t feel like reading? Tap below to tune into the podcast and listen to this article instead 
Everyone deals with fear.
Fear is a natural part of our lives. Everyone deals with it to one extent or another. In fact, many times we don’t know – or we simply don’t want to acknowledge – that it is fear holding us back from taking action. We make up excuses, or just give it different names.
Because fear has many faces and can take many shapes and forms, such as intrusive thoughts, perfectionism, resistance, over-protection, need to control, ego, anxiety, self-sabotaging thoughts, unhealthy pressure to overperform, avoidance mechanisms… The list goes on and on.
And although it’s a human instinct trying to keep us safe, it can also hold us back and limit us in our most important endeavors. Sooner or later that caution and those fears that are trying to prevent us from getting hurt, end up being more damaging than the situation we are trying to avoid itself.
The bottom line is that, if we don’t learn how to cope and overcome some of our fears, they’ll end up holding us back from everything that moves us forward.
Just a few examples in which fear might be holding us back might be:
- creating something that you see as valuable but being afraid to share it with the big world
- going to the gym, or that Zumba class that seems so fun, by yourself for the first time
- finally taking yourself up on that promise to move or travel to that destination you’ve been dreaming of for a long time
- quitting unhealthy habits, jobs, or relationships
- meeting great people
And well, I’m sure you know the rest of it.
In short, fear is what holds us back from experiencing those life-changing moments that shape our character.
I’m of course talking about fictional fear here.
Which is completely different from the one we might experience when we almost get hit by a car, see a shark, or are getting mugged in the middle of the night. Those are real, factual, imminent dangers that demand a fly or flight response.
So let’s first unpack that before we dive any deeper.
Fictional Fears Vs Factual Fears
I first heard about the distinction between factual and fictional fears and the importance of defining the difference between the type of things we are having a fear reaction to from psychologist Mary Poffenroth.
Factual Fears
As she explains, a factual fear is going to be in the moment. Something that is in a shared reality of everyone around you. It’s usually short-lived, and may or may not have a direct impact on your physical well-being, but it’s not something that’s just in your head that you are ruminating on.
As mentioned before, this could be something like being close to being attacked by an animal or a person, for example. Or getting hit by a car.
Factual fears are not the ones we need to be worrying about so much these days since our body is usually quite good at dealing with them. It releases adrenaline to help you react, sees the car, and moves itself out of the way not to get hit. Then it’s over.
You might have some residual effects from the adrenaline and the cortisol hormone that was released, but you probably won’t be thinking about this, months or even weeks after that factual danger that you faced.
The real issue these days comes from our fictional fears, which are much more insidious and therefore more difficult to overcome.
Fictional Fears
Fictional fears are usually not something that are on a shared reality, but rather, stories that are going on inside our heads which we keep ruminating on. They’re not something short-lived, like factual fears. They linger.
Let me illustrate this with an example, so you can also understand the different ways we react to fictional fears and the long-lasting impact that the cortisol hormone can have as a result.
Imagine that you decide to walk into a store, and all of a sudden, someone with a face cover and a gun comes rushing in and starts shouting and asking everyone to get on the ground.
Without thinking it twice you throw yourself to the ground, panicking and in shock, your heart beating fast, but then just a few seconds after, you see that the person that looked like a robber is actually a teenager with a toy gun who’s now loudly laughing while taking off their mask.
You’ve been fooled. It was just a stupid prank.
However, that apparent moment of threat completely spiked your cortisol, which is your stress hormone. Without it, if any imminent danger was near, you’d be absolutely passive, and incredibly vulnerable to potentially dangerous situations like the one you just experienced.
Moments after, once the store owner has kicked out the stupid prankster, everyone continues to do their shopping. And although there’s apparent normality, there’s tension in the air. Everyone is still on edge and with a weird feeling in their chest. No one can really forget that just a few minutes back they were being held on the ground at gunpoint.
Why? Because the cortisol hormone takes between 6 and 8 hours to go back to its normal levels. So although the peak of stress is very quick, the comedown is slow.
So you’re still there, trying to focus and decide whether you should get the 2×1 offer on the milk, but it’s not easy, because you’re still thinking, ‘What if someone with a gun actually comes in? What if it was not a prank? What if this was just a distraction to be followed up by a true robbery? How would I escape? ‘Cause I’m too far from the door now.”
And just with that chain of intrusive thoughts, just by thinking and worrying about what could happen, the same spike of cortisol is produced.
What that means is that, just by thinking and picturing risky, negative, or unpleasant scenarios in our heads, our mind and body react in the very same way they would if the situation was actually happening in reality.
This is something important to realize because it tells us that our thoughts and the constant imaginary scenarios that we play in our heads have a direct impact on how we experience our reality.
So what happens when our cortisol levels are on a constant high because we are continuously worried and concerned about things that haven’t even happened yet?
When we are chronically anxious, worrying about things that might go wrong, and exposed to high levels of cortisol during long periods of time, it takes a toll on our physical and psychological well-being.
At a physical level – things like hair loss, eye twitches, having issues digesting, gut problems, migraines, shortness of breath, impaired immune system… our bodies react because they’re on constant fly or fight mode.
At a psychological level – changes and issues in our sleep patterns, memory loss, snappiness or irritability, or even depression linked to chronic states of stress and anxiety.
All of it caused completely by whatever fictional fear stories are going on in our heads.
Crazy, right?
Many times it’s these stories that we internally tell ourselves, or that have been told to us at any point in our lives, that feed into those fictional fears.
As a child, being told that you are terrible at maths. Or that you are weird. Or unattractive. Or some years later being told you’re not a good enough writer. Or dancer. Or musician. Or that you are a bad friend. Or that you are an unfit mother. Somehow one of those comments gets stuck in your head and you continue to feed it for years.
So as you can see, fictional fears are what we should be worrying about.
However, that is also where most of the work and progress can be done. By working on identifying and deconstructing these internal fear stories we unconsciously carry around, we can prevent them from limiting us, deeming our light, and shrinking our potential and ability to thrive and shine.
How fear holds us back
One of the most common risks that come with not identifying and overcoming some of these internalized fictional fears is the well-known impostor syndrome. That negative self-talk that holds us back and either makes us settle for less or feel that nothing is ever enough.
Impostor syndrome can look a thousand different ways. it can sound like ‘I am not good enough’, ‘I’m not ready’, ‘They won’t like me if I am myself or if I say what I think or how I feel’, ‘I don’t have what it takes’, or ‘I need to work ten times harder so I can be good enough’, ‘they’re better, smarter, prettier, than me’, ‘I’m a failure’, ‘It’s probably not going to work out anyway, so I might as well just give up now.’ ‘I didn’t want it that bad anyways’ ‘It was probably not for me’…
Somewhere along the way, out of fear of ridicule or rejection, two opposite things might have happened:
- You started to tell yourself that it was okay not to go after what you wanted and you started to settle for less.
- In order to balance out your constant feeling of not-enoughness, you’ve become a perfectionist or workaholic, demanding way too much of yourself, to the point of getting dangerously close to burnout, or where your actions have become a mechanism to prove yourself and your worth rather than a source of enjoyment.
Settling for less
Therefore, on one side of the scale, we’ve got settling for less.
Falling into the trap of ‘good enough’. You respond to fear of rejection with ‘ah, well, this is good enough anyways’ ‘i didn’t really need or want it that much’. And so you end up tricking yourself into thinking that your current situation is just ‘fine’ although deep down you’d want to strive for more and know that you are not living up to your full potential. You start to give in to all this negative chatter and start to believe that your dreams are too big for you.
Alternatively, you might also just make up excuses, trying to justify why you’re giving up on those dreams or goals, and staying within your comfort zone instead.
It’s often much easier to blame external factors or others for your lack of growth, but the truth is that the most impactful things that prevent you from growing are not external, they’re internal.
The most impactful things that prevent you from growing are not external, they’re internal.
Perfectionism as a coping mechanism
On the opposite side of the scale, we’d have perfectionism as a coping mechanism related to fear. Perfectionism tells our brains that if we work hard enough, if we can be correct enough, if we can be what we think others want us to be, then we’ll be safe.
And we all want to be safe, but some people fear that lack of safety and security so much that they end up leading themselves to burn out.
So no matter to which side of the scale fear corners you in, if you continue to allow yourself such self-sabotaging behavior, you’ll keep being stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The moral of the story here is simple: if you let fear control your life, you’ll end up missing out on some of the most incredible things that life has to offer.
So the question is, how do we avoid that? How do we overcome our fears? What’s the cure?
The best antidote to fear is showing up
Showing up means making the conscious decision to take action despite not having it all figured out. Despite not having absolute certainty about the outcome. Despite not feeling fully ready. Despite the doubts and insecurity that come with it. Despite all of your fears.
Because we will never be ready for the things that truly matter and the destination of safety we’re so desperately trying to get to and hold on to, is just a mere illusion. It doesn’t exist.
Waiting to be ready before you start does nothing but widen the knowing-doing gap, whereas taking action bridges and shortens it. It’s uncomfortable to walk, sure, but it is never more uncomfortable than going your whole life without the things you truly desire.
Although it’s frightening and new, taking that kind of initiative helps us finally get over our stagnation. It unlocks the next level of the game. A new and exciting challenge.
And sure, right before we’re about to make that leap forward, our lizard brain – you know, the one that was wired to help us run from lions and bears and other scary threatening things – will definitely call in the resistance. A resistance that will urge you to back down so you can stay safe from any potential failure.
Most people struggle to show up, to start things, because of that exact reason. Because they’re afraid they might fail. So the lizard brain kicks in, on its last attempt to protect you, urging you to compromise, to settle, to not rock the boat, to avoid rash moves, and not be a troublemaker.
But once you’ve jumped, you’re back in motion. You’ve moved forward, a little closer to that thing that is waiting for you on the other side of fear.
You might even find out that most things aren’t as hard or as ‘definitive’ as we chalk them up to be. They can turn out to be fun and rewarding, and expressions of who we really are. Because that’s why we want them in the first place.
This is actually very linked to our identity and what some people call the happiness of excellence.
Aristotle, who spent years studying excellence and virtue in relation to ‘Eudaimonia’ – or ‘happiness’ – used to say ‘We become by doing’ – which in other words means that we can’t do the becoming if we’re not doing the doing.
There’s a peace of mind and a confirmation of identity that comes with taking small leaps forward and doing what we need to do to become who we want to be.
We can’t do the becoming if we’re not doing the doing.
That’s what we receive from pursuing the happiness of excellence: not just accomplishment, but identity. A sense of self that we carry into everything else in our lives.
And so taking small leaps forward will remind you that this is true. It will soothe you in a way that just thinking about taking action never will.
Contrarily, anxiety builds up when we are just thinking about doing the thing and not really doing it. Fear and resistance propagate and thrive when we’re avoiding the work.
So the only way we can start to make those leaps forward is by being more accepting of rejection and failure.
Because the thing is, everyone wants growth, but no one wants to go through the trial and error that comes hand in hand with that transformative process. And change is powerful, but we have to understand that it comes hand in hand with failure as a partner. In fact, if you haven’t been failing much lately, you quite probably haven’t been growing much either.
So it’s not about getting rid of fear in your life completely. It’s about getting better at managing it so that it doesn’t prevent you from living the full spectrum of the human experience.
It’s about feeling the fear, acknowledging that it’s there, and still doing the thing anyway. So that you don’t settle for less than what you deserve, so that you can be the happiest and most fulfilled version of yourself, rather than being debilitated and limited by it.
The way Mary Poffenroth summarizes it is: ‘Fear is still going to be in the car, it’s just not going to be behind the wheel.’ And I think that’s the whole key here.
It’s about taking responsibility for your journey, not letting fear control your life decisions. You being the one who courageously and consciously decides where you are going, and knowing that although you might carry this annoying passenger in the car with you, you can still get to the place you want in life. Whether that’s goals, experiences, or relationships.
Knowing that you can get to the other side.
Hope to see you there,