On being paralysed by fear (and some practical advice on how to handle it)

This post has been a long time coming because this is something I've been working on pretty consistently for over a year. During my time travelling I have met a lot of people and seen a few cultures and how people live. After a while some patterns start to emerge.

The problem

Fact: The vast majority of people in life are motivated primarily by fear.

Fear of failure, fear of change, fear of success, fear of rejection, fear of embarrassment, fear of putting yourself in unknown situations, fear of looking bad, fear of expressing yourself honestly, fear of death (most people especially won't admit this one to themselves) fear of pursuing what it is you really want in life in case you don't get it. These are the things that funnel most people into a small channel of comfort for much of their lives and prevent them from ever reaching their true potential.

The absolute first thing to realise if you want to get a handle on this is to face and admit the fact that you are scared. To be scared is to be human. Nobody is fearless. But a person that doesn't admit their fear and analyse exactly what they are afraid of is deluding themselves and this will only allow fear to exert its iron grip all the more forcefully for being disguised as something else.

Let's examine a practical example. Maybe you are an aspiring musician, you play in a small band and you're pretty good at lead guitar. And just maybe you sometimes dream about playing in front of huge crowds, selling albums and being the best at what you do, eventually going on to inspire other young musicians with your unique style of music. This would be a real contribution to culture and music and humanity in general. But you tell yourself "Nah that's probably not gonna happen, I'm not going to chase that dream, I won't bother pushing my band to play in more places, I won't play in front of all those people where there might be that talent scout watching, I'm happy just doing my thing at these local bars and jamming with my friends. I'll probably never get there and besides, what happens if I fail? I might screw up in front of that important person and look bad, then I'll never realise my dream and I'll be unhappy. Best play it safe. Besides none of my friends are doing that well so I don't feel so bad being at the same level as them."

This is motivation by fear. It's just disguised as something else, perhaps being "realistic" or protecting yourself from the hurt of failure, or justifying that it's ok because your friends do it too. This is the reason that most people are disillusioned with life and fail to reach their full potential.

Now fear is a natural emotion, and it has its place. There is nothing wrong with feeling fear sometimes, it is an evolved response that puts us on edge, heightens our emotions and makes sure we think carefully about what we are doing. When primitive man saw the tiger's eyes looking at him through the leaves in the jungle, being scared was probably a fantastic idea. It put him on edge, got him ready to run really fast, and gave him maximum poise and energy if he needed to fight.

One time when I was working as a volunteer here in Bolivia I was working with a jaguar called Ru. Every day we would carefully clip him on to an overhead runner and allow him some freedom to patrol his territory and swim before returning him to his cage. One day I left the door of his cage wide open and unlocked by accident. We put him inside and unclipped him from his runner, and I  immediately realised what I had done. This cat was over a hundred kilos, very boisterous and potentially dangerous. As soon as he was unclipped inside that cage he was essentially free and if he could get access to a person he would almost certainly jump them with considerable force and possibly with teeth and claws. This is an appropriate situation to feel fear. I felt shock run though me and I immediately sprinted for the door before my partner screamed at me to stop because Ru thought it was a game and started running with me. At an extremely heightened sense of awareness, I asked my partner to make noises and jump to distract the jaguar while I walked slowly round and managed to clip the lock safely on the door. Fear in this case was appropriate because it alerted me to the seriousness of the situation and gave me the clarity of mind to deal with it effectively.

The problem is, in the modern world, there just aren't many real dangers any more. Situations like the above that represent a real potential for actual harm pretty much never happen. We have all this leftover fear and nowhere to put it, so it goes into IMAGINARY dangers rather than real ones.

"We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than from reality."
-Marcus Annaeus Seneca

Read the above quote again, more slowly, and write it out in front of you in pen on paper at least twice because it is one of the most important things you can ever realise in this life.

If you didn't do this already, stop reading, get a piece of paper and do it goddammit. Lol.

Another example, and a very common one is being scared to talk to members of the opposite sex. In fact this is pretty much universal. When you see a cute girl sitting by herself on a bench in the park, what do you think as you walk past? If you are a normal human male it's probably something like this:

"Wow that girl's hot, I'm gonna try and check her out without her noticing as I walk past. Ah shit she's looking at me, what do I do? Should I say something? God no what if I embarrass myself, what if she's disgusted by me and tells me to get lost, that would make me feel terrible. I wouldn't know what to say to her anyway and I don't really care all that much, she kind of even looks a little fat and there's that old lady sitting next to her, what if she thinks I'm an asshole. I know, I'll just look away and pretend I don't even care that she's there. I can only talk to girls when I'm drunk anyway."

This is another example of motivation by fear. Fear of embarrassment or rejection or failure (or sometimes even fear of success paradoxically, you might be scared to talk to the girl because there's actually a good chance she might like you and this scares you because you aren't used to success). Fear is insidious, it is subtle, it disguises itself in many ways. The technical term for this kind of fear is creative avoidance. Your mind is scared of something so it makes excuses about why it didn't want it anyway, or why doing something else right now is really a much better idea.

These isolated moments by themselves are not a problem, but they represent a pattern in every area of our lives that cumulatively add up to a formidable wall around us that stops us from ever attaining what we are truly capable of in every area, be it work, musicianship, dating, sports, fitness and health or starting a company.

How to beat it

Let's use the example of talking to the cute girl as a practical example and examine some strategies on how we can start to get a handle on this fear.

Step one: Examine the situation logically. What are the ACTUAL repercussions of the worst case scenario. Let's say you walk up to the girl and say hi. She looks at you like you are the scum of the earth and says something like "get lost, loser". Logically and coldly examine, what are the repercussions, really? Are you physically hurt? Are you dead? Did she kick you in the balls and physically mash your masculinity into pieces? No, afterwards you are exactly the same except someone said some words to you and you have a new bit of life experience. Are you ever going to even see that person again? Probably not. (By the way, this almost NEVER happens, I've spoken to well over a thousand girls and I very rarely got a harsh reaction like this, and when it does happen, it's not even that bad, in fact it's kind of a rush, like jumping into a cold swimming pool all in one go.)
Step two: Once you have ascertained logically that even the worst case scenario is something you can handle, you need to dump the excuses and admit you are scared. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this and it is the first step in learning how to handle it. Take a good look at your fear and see it for what it is, realise it is a useful emotion that is just a little misplaced in this situation. Just admitting to yourself that you are prevented from doing this thing you want by fear is over halfway to fixing the problem. If you continue to allow it to disguise itself as something else you will NEVER get a decent handle on it.
Step three: Do this thing you are scared of. This is definitely the hardest part, especially when we are first learning how to cope with it. Fear has a very tight grip on us and shaking that off takes time and a whole heap of practice. I'm not going to lie to you, it will probably take a fair few months of consistent effort every day. It is often easier to start with small things that scare us and work our way up over time and repetition, rather than trying the hardest things first, failing to act and feeling bad. Maybe it's just something like speaking up on your opinion at work, singing in public or engaging in small talk with a shop assistant.
Step four: Repeat these steps on a regular basis in every aspect of your life, whenever you have the opportunity. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

In the start, step three is so difficult as to seem almost impossible. We can recognise our fear but it still paralyses us and we feel all the more useless and dumb for admitting to ourselves that we are prevented from acting solely by a mental block. RELAX. Realise that this is totally natural and human, and just take a deep breath, step back and take the pressure off yourself. Doing the thing you fear requires a kind of mental backflip, a sudden flick of state that causes us to take action. This is sometimes called a state break. Some strategies I have used successfully to initiate a state break are:

• Text a friend you really respect asking him/her to text back the words "DO IT NOW!" This is one of my favourites and works really well if you have a patient friend that understands what you are trying to do. I used this to great success when I first started to learn how to handle this problem.
• Do something ridiculous, sometimes I will stick my finger in my right ear and make a dumb face while sticking my tongue out. Yes, I do this in front of everyone. It invariably makes me laugh and makes everything else seem less serious.
• Count down from three then DO IT.
• Take one deep breath in, then one deep breath out, then DO IT.
• Give a friend a hundred dollars and text him every time before you do something that scares you, asking him to give you one dollar back.

What you must be careful not to do is say to yourself "I'll just do this other thing first thing and then I'll do the thing that scares me." This is our old friend creative avoidance again and he is a subtle and clever enemy. A state break needs to be short, sharp and initiate action in the direction of the thing that scares us. For example, "I'll just get a drink of water before I talk to that girl" is not a state break, it is creative avoidance and will only exacerbate the problem. Find a state break that works for you and stick with it.

I think that fear is NEVER something that truly goes away. But with practice we can build better and better strategies to handle it. In the beginning it is very hard to deal with, you need to find something that regularly presents you with scary situations so you can learn to deal with them. Approaching women is actually one of the best practice situations I can think of because it is naturally something most men are scared of, yet the repercussions are zero and there are women everywhere so practice opportunities are abound, plus you can tap into your sex drive as a source of natural motivation. But you can do it with anything, playing live music, singing or dancing in public, stretching yourself in sports, examinations, whatever. Believe me, it will get easier with practice. Over time you will find yourself having balls and confidence in other situations that used to scare you but aren't even related to what you were working on.

Eventually you will start to realise that fear is a useful emotion, it puts us into a heightened emotional state that readies us to deal with the situation at our best effectiveness.

It also definitely helps to read appropriate literature. History is full of examples of people who have heroically overcome fear and reading about how they did it will help you a lot. A motley collection of authors that helped me are Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Tim Ferris, Howard Marks (Oxford-graduate-turned-drug-dealer who wrote an autobiography) and Tony Robbins, these guys will set you off in the right direction.

A practical exercise

1. Take a sheet of paper and write down something you want to achieve in your life but haven't really worked towards yet. Maybe you are in an unhappy relationship and want a way out, maybe you hate your job and want to quit, maybe you want to start a business but are worried that it will be a lot of work and won't work out, maybe you want to kiss a girl you've been hanging out with for a long time or compete in an event in your favourite sport. It can even be a small thing like "write a song".
2. Write down a bunch of excuses as to why you haven´t done it.
3. Now cross them out and write underneath "I haven't done this yet because I am scared of what will happen if I try."
4. Write down the absolute worst case scenario then realise that you can handle it.
5. DO IT NOW. Do the thing that scares you. Call the girl, start working on a website for your business idea, print off a bunch of CVs and go out handing them into places to look for a new job.

"We always have TWO choices in life. Action or an excuse. Be honest with yourself about which you are choosing."
-Me (rather self-indulgently)

I hope this doesn't come across as preachy. Please realise that these are problems that I also have and try to work on every single day. I am far from conquering my own fears of many things. I am the first to admit my own failings in these areas, and the first to eagerly take advice from anyone who cares to share it with me. I share this because writing clarifies my own thoughts and encourages me to follow my own exercises, and because I want to help other people join me in my journey to realise the best I can be.