Fear has a coercive way of keeping you focused on everything that could go wrong from taking a single step forward (failure, rejection, humiliation and judgment) in order to hold you in your place. 

But, you know the world around you is changing, and something needs to change for you. You need to take a risk that helps you speak up and move differently.  The only problem is that your fear doesn’t seem to be budging, and as a result, neither are you. That means getting yourself out of this debilitating cycle of inactivity comes down to one thing: building a healthier relationship with fear. 

If the uncertainty of this year has complicated your relationship with fear, consider these 5 ways to get back to a more productive place.

Understand to how fear operates.

While turning your head or burying your face between your hands might be knee-jerk reactions to dealing with conscious fear, you’ll do yourself a favor if you actually pay attention to it.  What you’ll see is paranoia masquerading as power, and what you’ll learn is that fear is not in the least bit sophisticated. In fear’s effort to fully protect you from pitfalls, it also will block your from your potential (if you let it). Fear is not refined enough to distinguish between obstacles and opportunities, so it does the only thing it can do and shields you from all of it. When you allow fear to lead, it takes charge by reducing everything in front of you, the bad and the good, to rubble. Once you understand this operating code, you can gain more clarity about how to adjust and adapt your approach to your relationship with fear to make it more equitable. 

Hear fear out.

It’s hard to listen in a relationship when the entity on the other end comes across as anxious and antagonistic. Even though fear annoys the heck out of you, you’ll encourage cooperation if you take a beat and hear fear out. What comes next is a diatribe about how unsafe, uncomfortable and unflattering the thing is that you want to explore. A new strategic direction. The culture you inherited. Your leadership persona. Your ears may start to ring from listening to the tedious streak of warnings, but there’s a plus side to hanging in there. When you hear fear out, you can start to digest what’s causing the most unease. Fear invites you to look in the direction where it’s ringing the alarm. What you notice may be details you’ve been ignoring or a red flag you didn’t see. Then, it becomes your turn to offer up food for thought for fear to chew on. To be clear, the entrée should be information, but not any ol’ piece of data will do. Fear starts to simmer down into a spell of satisfaction when you feed it facts that help it understand that you’ve got this. You trust yourself. When you remind fear about your past successes taking similar actions, your strengths, your preparation, and your skills, you serve up the equivalent of a t-bone straight into fear’s belly, which can pacify it enough to allow you to move past go.    

Eliminate separation as an option.  

Wishing that fear would simply go away is energy irresponsibly spent because it’s unlikely to happen — not for long, at least. You and fear are like Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Jada Pinkett and Will Smith. You are entangled. That reality leaves you and fear to deal with each other, to commit.  Fearlessness is really hard to reach. You either reach it through rashness (acting hastily and stupid) or through mastery (having expert-level proficiency.) When you mentally remove the option of leaving fear behind, you create space to figure out how exactly to get along. You become solutions oriented. And, maybe that means you’ll need to establish a few ground rules, also known as boundaries. Setting up boundaries could come in the form of giving yourself a time limit to listen to fear’s grievances or allowing fear to come along for your ride if it promises to behave in the backseat. There’s no limit to how creative you can get to make your relationship with fear work when you accept that running away from it is not a viable option.

Have a laugh.

Relationship experts agree that a good sense of humor is foundational to a healthy union, which means your relationship with fear should include a lot of laughter. That laughter, for clarity’s sake, should be directed at … yourself. When you feel yourself spiraling into a loop of negativity because of something fear has said or compelled you to do, pause. And, laugh. Take it upon yourself to release the tension, confusion and awkwardness sitting on your shoulders with a hearty, honest cackle. In the process, you may also suspend the feeling of unease long enough to recognize the irrationality of fear’s hype and give yourself an entry point into resetting the energy in the relationship. 

See fear for what it is.

You’ve heard before that good relationships allow participants to be their true selves. Your relationship with fear is no different. An important question to ask yourself is whether you have constructed fear into something that it is not, preventing it from doing what it does best. When you spend real time on that question, you may realize that your stuckness and stagnation is not really because of fear. It’s because of your cognitive response to how you see fear. Said another way, fear is not your problem. Your inability to manage it is. There’s no doubt that fear can get beside itself and cause a fuss, but that doesn’t mean it’s fully responsible for your paralyzation. Research says that fear “acts as a signal of danger, threat, or motivational conflict.” But, it’s up to you to determine what kind of signal fear is really sending off. Fear isn’t necessarily the red flashing light commanding you to stop, turn around or hide in a corner until the coast is clear.  Fear, instead, can be the yellow light that wants you to slow down and be cautious (sometimes too cautious). This means that, at least, some of the work needed to improve your relationship with fear involves refocusing your gaze and seeing fear for what it is. 

The Bottom Line

The uncertainty and turbulence of the year may have thrown your relationship with fear into a tailspin, leaving you with a heightened sense of urgency to make it better. In your committed effort to work on your relationship, be sure to pay attention to how fear operates. Understanding how it moves will help you tailor your approach when confronting it. You can also improve the relationship by listening to your fear. Hearing it out helps you to have effective dialogue. As badly as you’d like to break up with your fear forever, try to eliminate the thought of divorce from your consideration. Fear is here to stay, so your energy is better spend figuring out how to live with it. Accept fear for what it is. Don’t expect anything more or less from it than what it offers.  And lastly, laugh at yourself when you become overwhelmed with fear. The lightness of a laugh can help you to recalibrate the energy circulating between you and your fear.  

I was one click away from buying a round-trip ticket to Ubud, Indonesia. An arduous slow dance with Fear got me to that point. I took one measured step at a time and pushed Fear back at the same pace.

But, now, Fear wasn’t so moveable. It sat beside me at my desk, shoulder to shoulder, reiterating with vigor why traveling across the world by myself was a terrible idea. I could get hurt or kidnapped or lost or panicked or homesick or stranded or confused or swindled.

Its tone transitioned from authoritative to desperate, but the entire diatribe registered as nagging.

My finger hovered over the ENTER key, the cursor over the SUBMIT button. I tried to give equal attention to my desire, Fear’s logic and the website’s countdown clock. There was 1 min: 23 seconds left before the ticket would be released.

I took a deep breath out of exasperation. Surprisingly, it opened up enough space for stillness, and the stillness allowed my finger to descend on ENTER. I clicked.

I bought the ticket. I spent $1500 of hard earned money. I was going to Indonesia, and, ironically, I wasn’t flustered to undo what I had done.

I expected Fear to berate me. “How could you? Are you stupid? You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into!” But, it didn’t (or rather, I didn’t hear it). Instead, I felt a deep sense of relief. I felt in control, powerful and courageous.

Why?
[gdlr_heading tag=”h2″ size=”25px” color=”#000000″ ] COURAGE AND COMMITMENT[/gdlr_heading]

Courage and commitment are connected. Commitment gives a sense of control, and control manages fear. Any overt action—as simple or as difficult as clicking a button—can create perceived control, which is necessary to reduce fear. On the other hand, lingering in uncertainty, like I did the moments before hitting SUBMIT, helps magnify Fear’s voice and influence.

Purchasing the ticket gave me a sense of control; but, how did I decide to do it? The answer can, again, be found in the connection between courage and commitment. I made several small commitments on the journey to Indonesia long before sitting down at my desk. I committed to seriously considering the trip, putting away money, developing a ‘things to do’ list and researching where to stay.

CONSISTENCY PRINCIPLE

Those smaller commitments made it increasingly possible and necessary for me to summon courage to make the larger commitment of buying a ticket. This is the Consistency Principle at work. It holds that a person will have a strong psychological need to behave consistently with a commitment he or she has made. So, clicking SUBMIT and buying a ticket justified my earlier, smaller commitments on the journey to Indonesia. In addition, those earlier, smaller commitments took effort. Evidence about the Consistency Principle reveals that the more effort that goes into a commitment, the greater is its ability to influence the behavior of the person who made it.

Commitment is one of the essential tools in the courage toolbox, and individuals who want to act courageously should understand how to put it to work. It helped me travel to Indonesia and have one of the best experiences of my life. It can help others along the path to their dreams.

Fear is a deeply ancient instinct and an evolutionarily vital one … but it ain’t especially smart. – Elizabeth Gilbert

I read Eat Pray Love when I was 27. The book’s vivid descriptions of Indonesia’s culture and countryside painted pictures of detailed wood-carvings, colorful temples and sprawling rice paddies in my imagination. And I was there. In the middle of it all. Shining in the sun, marveling at nature’s grandeur and breathing in the freedom of being halfway across the world by myself, just like author Elizabeth Gilbert.

Then, I snapped out of it.

The last thought produced a panic that very quickly transported me back to reality and reminded me that I had never traveled outside of the United States. Ever. And I had never traveled alone. “So, that little daydream of yours needs to stay right where it is. In la la land.” Fear had a way sassing me back in my place—a small, familiar corner that proved to be safe, yet restrictive and boring as hell. There were no rice paddies or volcanoes in the corner. There were no monkey forests or temples. There was nothing new. And the more time I spend in the corner, the more I realized how badly it sucked, along with my relationship with Fear.

[gdlr_heading tag=”h3″ size=”20px” color=”#3d3d3d” ]THE PROBLEM WITH FEAR[/gdlr_heading]When protection turns into suffocation and guidance increases to supremacy, a relationship with Fear gets complicated. Annoying. Even exhausting. We try to investigate our curiosities and move toward our goals, but Fear is always there, unbidden, cautioning us against exploration of the unknown. It consumes itself with pulling us back to safety, coddling us in comfort and convincing us that every threat, no matter how irrational, is far more significant than any (self) discovery we can make along a journey.

At first, we try to cover it up, drown it out, smack it back and push ahead, but Fear’s relentlessness slows us down and forces us to deliberate internally. We question our purpose and doubt our abilities, which, in effect, gives vibrato to Fear’s persuasive rhetoric. It becomes the only opinion we hear. So, with a muted and powerless inner voice, we stop. Then we turn around. Of course, Fear is by our side telling us that it’s better this way—the way back. We grow exponentially dissatisfied with our relationship with Fear every time this cycle repeats itself. But. This isn’t a relationship we can extinguish, wish away or trade in. Why? Because Fear is in it for the long haul.

[gdlr_heading tag=”h3″ size=”20px” color=”#3d3d3d” ]3 WAYS TO BUILD A BETTER RELATIONSHIP WITH FEAR[/gdlr_heading]
My time in the corner, however, taught me that we can improve our relationship with Fear through intentional effort. Here are three ways how.

1. Seek to Understand. We can’t improve what we don’t understand. Building a better relationship with Fear requires comprehension of fear and of ourselves.

Understanding Fear. Fear’s main responsibility is to keep us safe from harm—physical and social harm. Fear doesn’t want us to experience rejection, discomfort, ridicule and defeat, so it criticizes and prohibits drives and actions that may end that way or that may have other significant consequences. The benefit of fear is that it can slow us down enough to help us organize our thoughts and to bring an element of practicality to our plans. Fear, however, is not discerning. It cannot distinguish among what it protects us from, so while it guards against rejection and discomfort, it also protects us from (or causes us to evade) possibility, like the possibility of discovering a new country and observing a different culture. That’s a common entry point to our problems with Fear, but it can’t be blamed for doing what it’s programmed to do. Its purpose is safety, not opportunity and growth. That’s where understanding ourselves comes into play.

Understanding Ourselves. We have safety and growth forces within us. Safety, driven by fear, can block us from freedom, progression and self-actualization if we don’t have the confidence and courage to face it. Several courage researchers, including Daniel Putman, found that confidence in one’s abilities was the major determining factor in how a person responded to fear, how much effort a person would exert and how long he or she would persevere in the face of challenges. Confidence gives a person a sense of control in the presence of Fear and can help reduce it. But before we can be confident in our abilities, we must first know our abilities. Therefore, self-knowledge is a prerequisite of self-confidence. If we don’t know ourselves very well—what we desire, believe in, excel or struggle in—Fear will overwhelm us.

2. Communicate Openly and Honestly. It’s ok to confront and question our fears because curiosity brings clarity. Questioning Fear, even if momentarily, suspends its power and allows the voice of our inner convictions to emerge. The idea of traveling to Indonesia stayed with me for a few weeks, and my thoughts vacillated between possibilities and challenges. I needed to talk it out, so one day, I decided to have a conversation with Fear. It went something like this: “Fear, I know you don’t want me to get snatched up, swindled or lost overseas. I know you don’t want me to be treated with hostility or disregard. I know you don’t want me to feel helpless or confused in a place I know little about. Thank you for wanting to protect me. I really appreciate it. But I have a few questions. If I don’t go, will I ever go? Anywhere abroad? If I don’t go, will I miss out on what could be the most liberating experience of my life? If I don’t go, am I missing an opportunity to show myself what I’m made of? Would I alleviate some of your concern if I researched the country or other female solo travelers who’ve already been there? Ok, let’s just say I get over there and freeze from panic, couldn’t I still enjoy Indonesia from the safety of my balcony?”

We stand little chance against Fear if we don’t communicate with it and challenge its over-protectiveness.

3. Build Healthy Boundaries. Without boundaries, Fear usurps control in our relationship. We can’t eliminate it, but we can contain it by knowing what we tolerate and disapprove. Those responses are clues to our limits. In Big Magic, author Elizabeth Gilbert perfectly illustrates, through a road trip analogy, how and why she sets boundaries with Fear. She says, “‘Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do … I recognize and respect that you are a part of this family, and so I will never exclude you from our activities but still—your suggestions will never be followed. You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote. You’re not allowed to touch the road maps; you’re not allowed to suggest detours; you’re not allowed to fiddle with the temperature. Dude, you’re not even allowed to touch the radio. But above all else, my dear old familiar friend, you are absolutely forbidden to drive.’”

***

We can make the best of the complicated relationship with Fear by seeking to understand Fear, communicating with it and building healthy boundaries.

Taking these steps helped me negotiate with Fear and purchase a ticket to Bali, Indonesia. It was a challenging discourse, but three months later, I found myself bargaining in markets and biking along side rice paddies. I shined in the sun, marveled at nature’s grandeur and breathed in the freedom of being halfway across the world by myself, just as I had imagined.

Posing with Ketut Liyer, the medicine man from Eat Pray Love

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