When was the last time you did something that scared you? It could be anything – confronting someone at work, letting go of something important in your life, skydiving or swimming with sharks.. When was the last time you embraced fear?
Fear obviously serves a very important purpose, namely keeping us alive. If we didn’t have a little bit of appropriate fear, be it of heights, wild animals with huge fangs or even of social faux pas (being ostracized from a tribe often meant death), the human race wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have.
But what happens when we succumb to the little fears? The fears that are holding us back in our life, that keep us from reaching ever new heights? These are the fears that must be embraced and overcome if you’re going to truly thrive in this world, and almost all of them can be boiled down to just three things – fear of the unknown, fear of failure, and fear of success.
Fear of the Unknown has obvious implications – just what is in that deep, dark forest? Lions, tigers, maybe bears?
We fear the unknown simply because we don’t know whether it’s dangerous or not. However, most of our fears in the modern world in regards to the “unknown” aren’t life threatening or even any sort of substantial gamble. That new job you’ve been offered? It might be awesome, or maybe it will suck, but it’s not gonna kill you and you’ll likely bounce right back if things don’t work out.
Fear of the unknown stems from being too attached to comfort. The antidote? Get comfortable shaking things up, get comfortable being uncomfortable – actively seek out the unknown every day, or at least a few times a week. Go ahead and start small – strike up a conversation with people you don’t know, explore new hiking trails, try Ethiopian food or a new cuisine that is radically different from what you’re used to. Take bigger bites as time goes on – travel to a new city, a new country, move to a new state, take up a new job doing something radically different, or anything that fully submerges you in the unknown.
Summed up – Get comfortable being uncomfortable. Once you embrace the unknown, it loses it’s power over you.
Fear of failure is probably the most prevalent type of fear in today’s world. Who hasn’t felt that tinge of panic when attempting something you’re not sure will work? I’ve got news for you, it’s time to embrace failure.
The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried. – Stephen McCranie
Nothing great ever came from comfort zones! No progress is ever made without some discomfort, so go out there and get uncomfortable! You’ll succeed more than you thought you would, and each time you don’t is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes.
You have to reframe failure as a positive thing, or maybe even erase the word failure from your lexicon. Reframe “failure” as such – each time you attempt something and get a different result than you expected (which most would call failure), you recognize that something simply needs tweaking in your methodology. Become a scientist and think of things as an experiment – they don’t get their feathers ruffled when their experiment gives them a result different than expected, so why should you?
Further, failure is a sign of progress. How many times did you fail before you took your first step? How many times did you fail learning to ride a bike, or hit a baseball, or learning your multiplication tables? My sevens still get me.
“Failure” is simply a sign that you’re getting closer and closer to success.
One of the first tricks you learn on a skateboard is a kickflip, and it took me easily a full year to land my first kickflip. That’s a whole year of trying one trick every day and messing up again and again and again. But if I gave up I never would have found one of my first true passions, had a chance to film in videos, compete in contests or get an all-expense-paid trip to San Diego to compete in an Amateur world finals competition.
Summed up – Reframe failure as evidence that you’re getting closer and closer to success. You’re simply a scientist, and each time you get results different than expected, just tweak your methods.
On the flip side of fear of failure is fear of success. Fear of success is insidious because it’s so hard to spot – we think we want success and think we’re doing all we can to achieve it, when in actuality we’re still stuck in our comfort zones. With success comes change, and so fear of success has an element of fear of the unknown in it as well.
Success may also contradict a deep held belief of yours – that you don’t deserve anything good. How so many of us got this belief in the first place is beyond me, but it’s very common.
Long story short, figure out what you want, plan out how to get it, and take action. Every so often take a step back and ask yourself if you’re really doing everything you can to achieve your goals, and figure out what your weak spots and sticking points are.
Summed up – Believe, deep down, that you deserve the best. Figure out what you want, plan out a course of action, attack, and constantly assess and tweak. As Tai Lopez would say, finding and consulting with mentors doesn’t hurt either.
The bottom line is to train your brain to embrace discomfort, to embrace fear, and to reframe failure as a positive thing. Remember, neurons that fire together wire together – the more you feel that twinge of fear and back down, the stronger those neural connections will be in your brain, and the more likely you’ll back down in the future. Rewire your brain to embrace fear and move through it, and watch as it loses all it’s power.
Now go get uncomfortable.