falling in love with Fear & The Unknown

I was listening to an interview with Tom Cruise recently, where the reporter asked how he faced his fear in order to do brave things. His answer was centred around two main themes. First, that he didn’t really worry about fear, he simply got into the doing and allowed himself to be afraid. And second, that what we fear is the unknown and so if we stay focused on what we know, and walk before we run, we’ll be ok.

As a contemplated his response I agreed wholeheartedly on his bias for action, versus thought.

When our attention is directed towards doing something, there’s a lot less space for us to get lost in thought, which is the only place fear lives. This is why so many people that describe their experience of skydiving share that they were afraid before and after the event, but during, when their attention was overcome by the action itself, fear was not present. Many people describe feeling an overwhelming sense of peace, awe and beauty. This peace and awe is what is always awaiting us when thought subsides. So the idea of getting lost in action, of being in “flow”, is a sound one. The flow state by its very nature is a state of contentment, peace and creativity. There’s no room for fear. We become a vehicle for inspiration, and as the sense of self subsides, what is left is the infinite potential of creation.

This does not mean that we won’t feel fear, or that when we are fearful, we’re doing something wrong.

It simply means that when we do feel fear, we know that we are simply lost in fearful thoughts. The fear becomes a cue letting us know that the quality of our thinking in the moment, cannot be trusted. As my coach says, “it’s an invitation to return home to ourselves”.

In these fearful moments, we may choose to direct our attention somewhere else, focus on the felt sense of fear rather than the story, or simply watch the story unfold, knowing that we’re watching an illusionary projection of the mind.

Once the fear subsides, because it always does, we can look again and see what comes up.

What do we see from a settled place, once the fog of fear has lifted?

Because thoughts are transient by nature, we couldn’t hold onto a fearful thought if we tried, and similarly we can’t avoid a scary thought if our life depended on it. Knowing this, seeing this and understanding the nature and source of our thoughts changes our relationship with fear and our aptitude to simply do what we want to do, irrespective of what we might be feeling in the moment.

The second point that Tom Cruise made was about fearing the unknown. While it makes sense that we are wired to avoid risk from an evolutionary perspective and that the predictive nature of the brain does not like it when it can not predict an outcome, these widely accepted scientific theories do explain why some people seek out uncertainty and others avoid it at all costs.

If the brain’s evolutionary wiring were the only answer, we would all respond to uncertainty in the same way, but we don’t. There are vast degrees of difference from individual to individual, which points us to a more complex explanation.

What’s more, if we consider uncertainty or the unknown, I don’t see anything inherently scary about the idea that anything can happen.

The unknown is the space of infinite possibility, of full potential, the space where miracles can happen. If we think about the unknown from this lens, we may feel excited. If on the other hand, we think about everything that could go wrong, then we’ll feel fear.

What we fear is the scary projection of something going wrong.

We fear the made up nightmares of the mind.

This is why someone that has prepared for months for a meeting can walk in more fearful than someone that has decided to wing it. Your fear has nothing to do with how prepared you are, it has everything to do with how you feel about how prepared you are.

In my corporate days, there was a colleague of mine that would walk into a meeting not knowing anything about the topic at hand and feel entirely comfortable. I recall asking him whether he felt stressed walking in unprepared, and he simply said, “I know I can handle anything that comes up, even if it means I simply say, I don’t know, but I’ll look into that.” This line of thinking, led to a calm state.

Similarly, another colleague would prepare all night, talk to as many people as he could before the meeting so he knew where everyone stood on the topic, research supporting points for his position and still walk into the meeting a ball of nerves, fearing he hadn’t prepared enough.

It wasn’t the unknown (or known) that led to fear (or confidence), it was their thinking in the moment.

This may lead some of you to conclude that you simply need to change your thinking. ‘Change your thinking, change your life’, as the popular book suggests. But the positive thinking movement has been around for a while and have things gotten better? Not really. Everyday I coach leaders that fear a vast slew of things.

Here’s my experience.

Positive thinking certainly helps, but it doesn’t work all of the time and when it doesn’t we tend to blame ourselves for not doing it right, which simply keeps us in a negative and judgemental loop.

What has worked much better for me is to not change my thinking but to better understand how thinking works. Here’s what I know about thought.

• I can influence my thoughts but I cannot control them. (have you ever tried not to think something? how long did it work for? Likely only a few seconds or couple of minutes)

• Thoughts are always flowing. They come and go without any effort on my part. They say if you don’t like the weather in Calgary, wait a minute and it’ll change. Thoughts work the same way. If you don’t like your thoughts right now, wait a minute and they’ll change.

• My thinking in the moment is responsible for 100% of my experience. It’s not the never ending to dos, that annoying colleague or your demanding boss. Your experience comes entirely and solely from whatever you might be thinking in the moment.

• My experience shifts moment to moment, just as my thoughts do. Thoughts and feeling always travel together so just as my thoughts are always in motion, so are my feelings.

• I’m horrible at predicting how I’ll feel about something. For example, let’s say I lose my job and I’m the main breadwinner in my family - I’ll be worried right? Well I may feel worried if I have a worried thought, but the next thought could be ‘I never really liked this job’ and so, I may feel relief, the thought after that could be ‘I’ve always wanted to work for company B, let me call Bob that works there’ and I may feel excited. You see our feelings about a situation is always in flux, it’s not static. Our thoughts about a situation naturally shift and with them so does our experience.

Ok, now for the “falling in love” part. Why would you ever fall in love with fear or the unknown?

Simple.

Fall in love with fear because it’s letting you know you’re wrapped up in some unhelpful thinking.

How else would you know? Consider that fear is simply an invitation back to a settled mind. It has nothing to do with the content of the fear, and is doing nothing to prepare you or keep you from hard times.

Fall in love with the unknown because it is the space where miracles happen.

We live in an organic, fluid and adaptive world. Things shift and transform and this is great news. How boring would life be if A + B always equalled C. The world is much more wondrous, delightful and inspiring.

In our lifetime some shitty things will happen, but worrying about it does nothing to change that. Shit happens and when it does, you’ll do what it occurs to you to do.

But miraculous things also happen, why would you ever want to give up the opportunity to be touched by the light of the universe, by the mystery of the ages, by the hand of God.