Sweat dripped from my forehead and my hands ached as I moved yet another box of hydraulic fittings from the uncounted collection I had sitting around me to the shelf.
Mobile phones were still somewhat of a novelty and mine startled me when it rang.
A big change was coming, but I was out of town working and wouldn’t get the full story until the weekend.
All week in Idaho Falls, that phone call ran laps in my mind. I thought about it so much, I started to wonder if I was going crazy. I thought about the implications and my own real and perceived inadequacies.
That call made me afraid of what the future held for me.
It’s a familiar feeling to most of us. A tightness in the chest, mind racing a million miles a minute. My inner voice is never that quiet, and now it was on overdrive.
Don Johnson put it so elegantly:
Before you know it, fear is knocking on our door. It wants to get in. It wants to run the show. It looks for a weakness to exploit to establish a permanent residence in you.
There are, at times, big events in our lives, like the phone call I received, that fling the door wide open for fear to come in. Other times, all it needs is a small crack. Even when you think you’ve locked the door, fear sometimes has a way of making its way in.
And once it’s in, it never wants to sit quietly in the corner.
Fear’s the worst kind of house guest. I wants to rearrange things: your thoughts and your confidence. It makes you question yourself and doubt your choices. Things that might have seemed certain start to feel fragile.
Don Johnson again (because I love his writing):
Fear is a virus that separates us from ourselves, the present moment, peace and contentment. It makes us brittle and smaller, diminishes our capacity to think rationally, and can erode our health and well-being.
He’s right.
More than a few times since starting two businesses, I’ve felt that virus spread through my body, my decisions, and my conversations. I’ve felt it cloud my mind to the point where I couldn’t hear my own instincts anymore. It’s like losing the plot to my own story.
Fear pulls us out of the present and drops us into imaginary futures filled with worst-case scenarios or pushes us into a past where we ruminate on prior failures. It isolates us from who we really are. It disconnects us from clarity, peace, and joy.
How do we stop letting fear take over?
As much as I wish it were the case, there is neither a one-size-fits-all answer or a permanent solution that locks the door for good. What I do have are a few things I’ve been learning (mostly the hard way), and slowly trying to put into practice.
Remember: no hacks, no guarantees. It’s a model or set of reminders I’m learning to come back to when fear tries to break down the door again.
- Name it. Don’t hide it. Fear thrives in darkness. As soon as I tell myself that it’s just fear talking there is a noticeable change. These internal fears we harbor lose strength when we call them out. Sometimes, I have to say it out loud so I can recognize that I don’t have to obey it.
- Re-center in the present. I’ve joked with my wife that one of my “super powers” is dwelling in the past and fretting about the future. As we already discussed, that’s what fear does: it either pulls me into the future or pushes me into the past. When I catch myself spiraling, I try to do something — anything — that roots me in the now. I’ve been doing a simple breathing exercise: 3 seconds in, 2-second hold, 4 seconds out. It’s remarkable how effective that is in helping me get a grip.
- Don’t go it alone. Fear loves isolation. That’s why the horror movies always portray the antagonist trying to split people up. When I keep fear in my head, it multiplies. But when I talk to someone I trust , generally my wife or one of my best friends, I start to get perspective. A trusted community is a powerful antidote to fear.
- Remind yourself who you are. I often define myself based on the “loud success” I see around me. Consequently, fear loves to tell me I’m not enough. That I’ll fail. That I can’t handle what’s coming. But I’ve faced hard things before. I’ve figured things out before. Sometimes, I literally have to say that out loud: “I’ve done hard things. I can do this, too.”
- Do the next right thing. Fear wants me to fix everything all at once, to have all the answers. What I’ve learned only recently is that progress often just looks like doing the next right thing. I might be one short call, one face-to-face conversation, one action, one small step forward.
Just because I’ve got a good list going of the things that alleviate fear, that doesn’t mean I don’t get afraid. It’s still mostly my default position, but I’m learning not to let it hang around so long. I’m starting to believe that I don’t have to give fear the keys to the house anymore.
Fear hasn’t stopped knocking and it’ll keep knocking. I’m not sure that will ever change, but I know I don’t have to answer the door all the time.
We’ll all still answer the door sometimes. Fear will still get in, but that doesn’t mean we have to give it the good chair and invite it to rearrange the furniture or knock down walls.
Even when fear’s loud, it doesn’t have to be in charge. More and more, I’m learning how to pause, breathe, tell myself what the truth really is, then take a step no matter how small.
The method’s not perfect, and it’s not easy, but it is possible.
Maybe you’re having a moment where fear’s at the door or you’ve already let it in and it’s planning to demolish the family room. Just know: you’re not alone, and you don’t have to let it in.
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