All about fear in 4 stories

I am an IT project manager. We’ve been facing a crisis and everyone is under pressure. My client’s IT manager is under strong pressure from the business and my team and I are under pressure from our client to solve the problem. Our two teams are working together to apply and test patches, but it seems like each problem is hiding another one that we still need to analyze and fix. We work collaboratively (except for exec meetings that go up in decibels), our corporate cultures and mutual respect help us move forward. We could just solve the problems one by one but it’s harder than that. Some of us seem to row against the tide. There is a resistance force to fight against which is added to the difficulty of the situation. In our daily exchanges I see smirks, violence in the mails, the emotion is very strong. I can read anxiety in the eyes. It is communicative and adds up to everyone’s discomfort. Fear, anxiety, worry, insecurity, discomfort.

It’s not that we have to deal with forest fires, a terrorist attack or anything that could put lives at risk. These are IT services whose success rate is too low. And yet, everyone is out of his comfort zone (myself included). Our brain reacts to danger with fear in the same way in both cases. It is difficult to make a difference, to remain calm and take a step back in order to move faster.

I know this feeling.

I recently started practicing wakeboarding. I took some good slaps on the water, launched at full speed, but my progress motivates me and I’m looking forward to tackling the wake to wake jumps at the back of the speedboat. Although I approach them with a lot of apprehension, I get up twice a week at 6 am to take my lesson at sunrise when the sea is calm. And yet, when I wake up my motivation has vanished. A little voice defies me: What are you going to do at your age? Where will this lead you? Why don’t you stay warm in your bed for an extra hour? All these questions take precedence over my ambition to surf the waves. I must do violence to myself. Fear, anxiety, worry, insecurity, discomfort.

Here’s what I learned about fear in 4 stories.

1. Fear is a primitive mechanism

For million years fear has been the signal for impending danger. Before we, Homo-sapiens, were endowed with reason and began to live in society, we were primitive beings simply struggling for their survival. Our primitive brain is our survival kit. A rapid device that by reflex takes precedence over other slower functions such as thinking, reasoning, in order to guard us against mortal danger. Fear spreads quickly throughout the tribe to alert everyone. It pushes us to fight or run away to stay alive, or simply to preserve the comfort we have acquired.

2. There is a true and false fear

Sarah Marquis is an extreme adventurer who has been walking the world for more than 25 years. In this interview, she explains that there are two kinds of fears: « False fear is the one we create. We tell ourselves: My God, I’m alone in the Gobi desert, it’s horror! In a storm, it happens. So that, you must forget! And there is the real fear. The fear that wakes me up before the wolves scream around my tent. I woke up an hour before they arrived ».

3. Accept fear instead of fighting it

What do we do with this feeling of fear? According to Seth Godin, former Yahoo’s vice president and inventor of direct marketing, there is nothing to do. “If you seek to defeat your reptilian brain, to fight against fear, you will fail”, he explains. “However, when your reptilian brain activates, it is to tell you that you are about to do something brave, daring and powerful. When we listen to our brain, accept its signal, we are grateful to warn us, then we can use it to our own end”.

4. Action is the antidote

What Will Smith experienced on the occasion of his parachute jump reminds me of my wakeboard lessons. He wonders, “Why are we afraid before? The maximum danger point is the minimum fear point. It is in the heart of the action, where we should be most afraid, that on the contrary, it has completely disappeared. “God puts the best things on the other side of fear,” he believes.

Conclusion

Fear is the only way our brain can prevent us from getting out of our comfort zone. We cannot reason it. She disguises itself in this little voice that tells us that we’d better stay at home. To act in spite of ourselves to widen our comfort zone is the only alternative to succeed.