How to feel fear and take action anyway
The discomfort of the fear you feel is showing you the wants you deep down know you want to fill.
Listen and learn from that discomfort with patient observation.
(Imagining I'm Jane Goodall helps me not frantically hop into "fix-it-now" mode.)
Listen to what you really want. What's calling out to you? What do you wish was different? This is the beginning and wanting is part of your journey.
Wanting isn't a judgement of insufficiency, scarcity, or lack. Wanting simply shows you possibilities for where you may like to go and grow next.
If you say to me, "I don't know what I want..." or, "I don't know what to do next..." If you feel your identity is lost, if you feel you are not who you used to be, if you’re looking to recognize yourself again…
I offer you a practice of wanting.
The more you practice wanting, the more you recognize what you want. The more you recognize what you want, the more you know and understand who you are and who you are ready to become.
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An essay on Fear & Wanting
In the absence of wanting there is fear. Fear is a well-meaning guardian of safety. Albeit often archaic and partially informed, survival is fear’s objective. If fear can keep you from risk, harm, unnecessary expenditure, you will live.
So fear, uses all of her wiles. Fear woos and shoos you away from all unknowns. Using comfort, she urges you toward easy and immediate gratification via only the most familiar and obstacle-free paths. And on these known paths, you survive.
But even known paths shift, because in our world, chaos is predictably omnipresent.
And known paths tamp down our spirit. We value exploration, creativity, connection, and the shininess of what’s new. Adventures that once won us pride and satisfaction, when reenacted are met with less reward, unrecognizable merit, dulled satisfaction.
And then we question, “Who are we, if not adventurers? If not achievers? If not brave, capable, and ready? Must we live a life of playacting? Retelling prosaic told tales with rote sufficiency?”
But a familiar role is safe. As fear with her predictable comfort soothes us, we resign ourselves to stuckness. We allow ourselves the consolation of this indulgent sufficiency because the risk of contending fear is too great a cost to bear.
Because change equals risk, a shackled existence seems our best choice. It’s the closest to surety we can hope for.
So we cling to known roles and a well-worn script. Emboldened by fear’s siren call of comfort, we battle and rally and rebel against any and all hinted deviations from the known and familiar.
We are enticed to perpetuate the known even when eye-to-eye with a life spent unfulfilled.
Until...
Until the balance is tilted. Until fear of unfulfillment outweighs the fear of the unknown. Until a gambler’s chance of safety within a hobbled together illusion of a formerly known existence is measured and found lacking. What has befallen us? What has shifted?
When seeds of hope have found purchase, you want.
You want deeper, true fulfillment.
This change of course does not diminish previously won achievements. It does, instead, ring out as an ode exalting all of the moments and experiences which have brought you here. The sweeping culmination of your existence has, in fact, been in preparation for this precise moment - your imperative next.
Your imperative next is a love song of wanting.
Lest you be conflicted, know that the act of wanting need not upend all that is current, known, and safe. To the contrary.
Wanting is arrayed in peace and assured confidence. Instead of threat, this intentional chapter of wanting ushers in tidings of calm and sovereign clarity.
You have found your innate endowment for the act of wanting. To conjure and play with imagined possibility, without burden of consequence, commitment, or cost, release and relax your mind to answer now:
What do you want in your life?
What things, and feelings?
What actions and creations?
What inspirations and muses?
What moments and breaths and views?
What flavors and smells?
What is it that you want?
What matters the most?
Who do you want to become?
How do you want to see yourself?
From these images and this wanting, you have articulated what is possible and made the impossible and unknown now familiar and plausible. In so doing, fear’s ferocity is abated. Fear is persuaded and concedes and aligns herself to this calling.
Where once you were stuck and mired, wanting has illuminated, inspired, and spoken life into possibility.
So what is next?
Continue your imperative: Want. Want. Want.
Then will you be ready to Decide and Do.
Recap
Fear is wiring. Wanting with intention is wisdom. To level up your work, your relationships, any area of your life, you gotta know how to allow fear and take action anyway. This is intentional discomfort: feeling and thinking on purpose for a purpose, and this is how you get results that you want.
Tarah Keech is a Master Life Coach, a burnout prevention and recovery expert, and has a Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and a resume of Fortune 100 consulting.
No, she can’t read your mind but she knows how your thoughts work and can help you see them and then use them so you can level up your life personally and professionally.
Basically, she’s a combination of strategist, mentor, and bestie. Except she gives you better advice than your friends do and she teaches you how your brain works so you can take informed action that creates real change.
She helps smart leaders level up their businesses and lives in the Level Up Membership.
And to connect with Tarah directly, complete this form.
