Last week, I was wrangling with two important decisions. One potentially life-altering, one minor in comparison, and both had been weighing heavily on me for several weeks.
As I was mentally listing the pros and cons, turning various scenarios over in my head, and struggling to commit to a path forward, I realized I was letting fear drive my decisions.
Instead of planning for positive outcomes and navigating towards them, I’d focused all my energy and thoughts on avoiding potential negative repercussions.
The problem with letting fear drive is that it’s short-sighted. It’s looking out for tomorrow, and next week, with never a thought for the next year or the next decade. It’s reactive, rather than proactive.
It’s also imaginative, and not in a fun, grade-school art-teacher kind of way. My fear more closely resembles Jigsaw inventing creative ways to torture me.
Fear can convince me that the plane is about to crash, when in reality, that sound was just the landing gear being stowed away after a successful take-off. Fear can make me believe the housing market is falling, even as prices climb and interest rates drop. Fear can make me think I’ve contracted a deadly disease every time I search Google for the cause of my latest wrist pain.
Fear isn’t always bad, though. It keeps us from going cave diving, or reaching out to pet a snarling dog, or wandering into a dark alley searching for a short-cut.
The trick is to separate the keep-you-alive fear from the keep-you-stuck fear.
Stop feeding your fear
Letting go of keep-you-stuck fear starts the minute you stop feeding it.
You may have heard the Native American story of a young boy and his grandfather. The grandfather tells the boy that each of us has two wolves living inside. One is good and kind and compassionate, and one is angry and vindictive. They are in constant battle with one another.
The boy asks which wolf will win, and the grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”
This is true of fear as well. If I’m not careful, I can feed my fear a feast of tasty tidbits. My fear will grow fat and powerful, and before I know it, it’s taken over my life.
I’ve fed my fear by doomscrolling on Reddit or X, by obsessively checking my favorite news sites, and by listening to an endless selection of true-crime podcasts. With that kind of nourishment, my fear has everything it needs to keep offering up imaginative (and tragic) scenes.
Once I realized what was happening and made the decision to stop feeding my fear, it became a much less powerful presence. It’s not gone, but it is less vocal. From time to time, I still catch myself feeding the fear, but this one change has made a massive improvement in my mindset and my decision-making capabilities.
Separate what is within your control from what is outside your control
It was November 4, 2024. Another contentious US election would happen in less than 24 hours, and I was… well, let’s just say my stress levels were higher than is healthy.
Then I had a thought: No amount of stress or worry or fear would change the outcome of the election. That result was outside my control. What was within my control was casting my vote.
Having already done that (early voting makes it so easy), I was able to let go of the fear and get on with my life.
How much time and energy do you spend ruminating over things you cannot control? Bird flu, inflation, job security, undiagnosed health issues… The list of things that are outside our control is long and fear-inducing.
What can you control?
You can control whether you interact with sick birds (please don’t), how well you follow your budget (please do), how much value you provide your employer, and how well you take care of your body. When you focus on what you can control, and you do that to the best of your ability, the out-of-your-control things are a lot less worrisome.
Give yourself the space to reflect
The realization that I was making a decision out of fear hit me while I was in the shower. How many times has that happened to you? Brilliant ideas, insightful understandings, and yes, great comebacks to long-past conversations all seem to happen while I’m in the shower.
There’s a reason for that: It’s one of the few moments in your day when you’re not tuned into some other frequency. The television isn’t on, you don’t have a podcast in your ear, you’re not flicking through YouTube or watching reels on Instagram or listening to your kids fight.
It’s just you and your mind. If you give it the space to reflect, your brain has some world-class problem-solving capabilities.
Besides a long, hot shower, another tool I like to use is a journal. I think better on paper, usually first thing in the morning. I follow Julia Cameron’s advice from The Artist’s Way in my journaling practice. I free write, typically for two pages (she recommends three) but sometimes less.
I’m regularly surprised by what flows onto the page. Often, I truly don’t know I’m thinking a thing until I write it down. It’s like stepping outside myself and offering up the insights and advice I’d give to a friend, rather than holding back and letting fear take over the conversation.
Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, Slow Productivity, and several other books, takes a different approach. He recommends “productive meditation” in the form of a long, silent walk.
I’m quick to pull out a podcast or audiobook while on a walk, but I’ll be trying out this opportunity to allow my brain the space to do its best work.
Even after you stop feeding it, and even if you recognize some things are outside your control, you might still find your fear driving the bus. When that happens, pull out your journal or go for a walk (or maybe take a shower) and allow your mind the space it needs to reflect and solve the problem at hand.
What I’m reading
One thing I’ve done to replace my doomscrolling habit is to read more books.
This week, I picked up something I’ve read before. I didn’t enjoy The Organized Mind by Daniel J. Levitin the first time I read it, but I feel I didn’t give it a fair shot. I have to say, I’m getting much more out of it this time around.
In the introduction, the author points out a fundamental flaw in our decision-making machine: Our brains are masters at making up stories. So good at it, in fact, that we don’t even realize it’s happening. We think we are remembering facts, and we are wrong. Those stories can feed the fear, and lead us to making decisions we might not otherwise make.
If you’d enjoy a deeper understanding of how your brain works, and specifically around attention, memory, and the decision-making process, pick up a copy.
Remember this
Always do what you are afraid to do.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson