by So let me ask you a very big question here: What is your favorite four-letter “f” word? No, not that one. My favorite “f” word has held me in thrall for the majority of my life and almost destroyed me: fear.
Fear is corrosive and shrinks the mind, and tonight I’m going to tell you and invite you to think again about why fear is the greatest driver for growth in the human experience, and share with you why I believe that to be true. As I said, fear is corrosive, it shrinks the mind, yet we absolutely don’t have to go there if we examine the motivation behind it and look for the clues that keep us stuck.
My fears were huge for a long time. My confidence was low, my self-esteem was non-existent. I really didn’t know who I was or what I was capable of being. I spent a long time looking for answers. What I discovered was that fear actually became my north star, because it transformed my life from destructive to instructive.
Only 10-15% of People are Truly Self-Aware
In her research on self-awareness, Dr. Tasha Yuri said that only 10 to 15% of us are truly self-aware. I was quite surprised by that number, because I thought to myself, that’s a very small amount of people. But when you think about it, knowing who you are takes a tremendous amount of effort to face the reluctance, the discomfort of facing your fear and understanding yourself better. And when we challenge ourselves, we have to think differently.
If only 15% of us are truly self-aware, then 85% of us think we know who we are, but we’ve never taken the time to test our assumptions. I’ve worked with many, many people around the world, and they all had one thing in common that really got in the way of their self-awareness, and that was fear. That four-letter word has all the power in the world to limit your potential, and it’s not too dramatic to think about it this way: it destroys your health, careers, your relationships, your family, and your future opportunities.
Fear is kind of like driving your car with the parking brake on. After a while, you’re going to burn out the brakes and destroy your engine. But when you release that brake, the engine grows.
Who Do You Think You Are?
My mother used to say, “Who do you think you are?” Well, it was clearly meant to keep me in my place. It didn’t work, so I reframed that one to, “Who do you think you are?” And when we ask that question of ourselves, you’re going to have a lot more questions than you have answers, because the truth is, most people don’t know how to answer that one: Who do you think you are? We could go into that in depth, but not tonight.
I grew up in Fife, Scotland, where generations of my ancestors experienced poverty, violence, alcoholism, depression, anger. My childhood was a maelstrom of these same forces that were handed down from generation to generation without concern for the consequences.
Imagine this: Behind a wooden door in a large wardrobe sits a 5-year-old child huddled beneath dresses and coats smelling of well-worn clothes. The only sound is a slight wheezing she tries to control so that her violent, alcoholic father won’t tear her from the sacred hiding place. Inside her brain, chemical reactions like a swarm of bees rush to her defense – a powerful cocktail of adrenaline, dopamine, norepinephrine, with an added dose of cortisol to kind of soften the impact. The classic fight or flight response. And her response was to freeze.
Over time, the stress hormones became an alarm that was impossible to turn off, and hypervigilance to any perceived threats, real or imagined. The fight was between self and the environment, and that little girl was me.
The Impact of Childhood Trauma
In 1997 there was a study done called the Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACE study. What they found was that children who were exposed to trauma or abuse – neglect, family dysfunction – experienced tremendous problems as adults mentally and physically. These traumas created behaviors that were tremendously difficult to resolve.
I was an ACE classic – Ace and a COA and an ADHD and an OCD and many of you know what these acronyms stand for. But I got the whole package growing up. So guess what? I’m an overachiever in the acronym department!
As we think about my journey escaping the family chaos, I left school at 15 and at 16 I moved to London with a boyfriend who proceeded to show me who was boss. That didn’t last very long – 24 hours later I was out on the street. I felt like I had to find a job, place to stay, and once more asking myself what the hell is your life supposed to be doing? And that was a pattern that would last for a very long time.
I drowned myself in sex, drugs, and alcohol, and by the age of 19 I was pregnant with someone’s child I didn’t know who it was. That absolutely did not want fear and insecurity created massive misadventures, obsessive drug-filled sprees, chaotic relationships, and self-sabotaging behaviors. Hard to believe standing here tonight, but that’s true. Of course I thought I was having a good time at that moment.
I was in AA for five years before I realized it wasn’t about the drinking, it was about the thinking. The fear of change is greater than the fear of staying the same until you have a vision of where you want to go.
The Allure of Horror Movies
How many of you love horror movies? Personally I have a daughter who loves horror movies, but I can’t stand them. They make me really uncomfortable. But if you like them, you like the adrenaline rush, the edge of the seat. We don’t need to go to the movies to be scared – our minds are movie makers that store clips and knowledge for future use. And when our internal movie maker imagines particular dangers, it looks for ways to stay safe.
But here’s the thing: safety is not necessarily being out of danger. True safety in my book comes from the willingness to challenge yourself when you get the discomfort, when you’re confronted with something that makes you scared, because then you have an opportunity to grow both personally and professionally.
We look for guarantees in life, but the truth is there’s no guarantees. We all know that. But uncertainty we can absolutely guarantee. The early Stoics believed that uncertainty was simply information that we did not have yet, and that it was fundamental to life. And if we could use that uncertainty, it would help with future opportunities.
Fear is Imaginary
Fear is essentially that we don’t trust we can handle whatever it is that comes our way. Learning how to shape my thinking and behavior towards more positivity was a gradual process. I had to stop avoiding confrontations. I needed to make commitments that I could live up to, and I needed to take decisions that were no longer being second guessed.
I was in therapy for quite a long time, actually, and when I was in my deepest throes of therapy, a friend looked at me and said, “Why are you doing this? You’re clearly in a lot of pain.” I told her that if I didn’t do it, I would die – and maybe not physically, but emotionally and spiritually. And plus I owed it to my children to give them a better start in life.
The truth is, fear is your imagination on steroids. Fear is rarely real – it is mostly about what’s going on in our heads. In the research on narrative therapy, Michael White and David Epson came up with the idea that our identities are formed by the stories we tell ourselves and form our worldviews.
Many of us grow up being told who we’re supposed to be or what we’re capable of becoming, and the messages we received were frequently sharp and negative and limited our potential because we believed them. And when we think about what that does for you, it limits your life.
Unleashing the Power of Fear
Unleashing the power of fear means that I had to stop and think about the assumptions I was making about myself. I had to look at the motivation of what I was doing, and I had to really examine the deceitful thinking that got in the way of truly believing in myself.
Dr. Martin Seligman, who’s an expert on positivity, said that those folks who actually confront their fears experience profound personal growth. So why don’t we face our fears? And I’m pretty sure that everyone in this audience right now can think of some fears that have been holding them back. So why don’t we face our fears?
Well, it’s quite simple. We can come up with all kinds of reasons why, justify them not taking action, and that’s really what it comes down to – excuses. But here’s my take on fear: Fearless is not the absence of fear, but the courage to take that next step, and the next one, until you’re comfortable facing the challenges that come up for you.
Here’s the thing: Fear tells you you’re not good enough, you’re not capable, and you will fail if you try. And when you say no to the opportunities life passes you by, nothing changes, you feel frustrated, and then you wonder why everything stays the same.
Being fearless is not the absence of fear, but the courage to take the next step. And there’s a simple path to navigating fear:
Vision – You’ve got to see where you’re going, you’ve got to have a vision of what it is you’re looking for. And I had to do that for myself. Sometimes I didn’t really believe it, so therefore I had to have faith that I could achieve this.
Courage – I had to take that next step and I had to really look at the thinking, manage the thinking and the stories I was telling myself.
Action – Take actions that would allow me to take that vision, the faith, the courage, the thinking, and put it to a point where I could evolve it and grow.
Simple but not easy. My journey to become an author, train, sing, earn a black belt in karate, was filled with uncertainty. We get in our heads, we make a mess of things. But when we are looking at our fear, for me specifically, when I looked at each of my accomplishments I realized I did not need to avoid the fear. I needed to confront the fear and realize it was an alarm that needed to be turned off. And fear became my greatest teacher.
3 Steps to Overcoming Fear
So here are the three steps I’m going to take you through if you’re thinking about how to get past your fears:
- Understand that it’s imaginary thinking and a few chemical reactions in the brain.
- Defeat this urge to run, to defend, to deny, and refuse to allow fear to overwhelm you.
- Look at the stories we tell ourselves.
This is important – get comfortable being uncomfortable, because that is where the power lies. I was dominated by fear for a very long time until I discovered that it was a driver for growth, and I could channel that towards an honest self-awareness of who I am with all of my imperfections and my strengths.
Fear became for me my north star, because it showed me the possibilities of how to move forward. When you unleash the power of fear, you give yourself the greatest gift there is, and you give it to others too. Not only that, you invite in more love, more acceptance, more joy and happiness than you ever thought possible.
So be fearless. See where it gets you. Thank you.
