Things Seem Scary When You're Scared.

CHAPTER 11 Things Seem Scary When You’re Scared

The final thinking trap we’ll look at is operating from a fear-based perspective. A fear-based perspective is a tendency toward imagining or anticipating a negative or worst-case scenario-type outcome. Painful experiences, trauma, self-doubt, difficulty trusting others, these are just some examples of what might cause thoughts distorted by irrational fear.

If you really think about it, the prediction something will go poorly in the future, simply because it has gone poorly in the past, isn’t actually sound logic. No matter how many times you flip a coin, you always have a 50% chance it will come up tails.

When you focus your energy and attention on what could go wrong, it can feel as if you plan hard enough, you might avert disaster somehow. Taking this approach however, two (at least!) pretty unhelpful things might happen.

The first: a tendency to overlook – or completely ignore - the very real possibility things WON’T go wrong. Instead of working to optimize our chances for success, we’re looking for ways to avoid failure. Realistic caution, prudence, and objectivity are wise; fear, on the other hand, is limiting. How easily can you create and consider alternative explanations?

The second unhelpful thing that can happen when operating from a place of fear is the unwitting creation of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, fear can infect your behavior in ways that all but guarantee an outcome you don’t want. We sometimes go to great lengths, albeit unintentionally, to sabotage our own success.  The fact of the matter is, we drive where we steer!

Fear-based decisions are often borne of a need to convince ourselves the world is predictable, or safe (or at least as predictable or safe as we can make it). Personal wants and needs are set aside, usually to our own detriment. For example, consider how illogical it is to find even the smallest measure of satisfaction when something turns out badly. You know that story we sometimes tell ourselves: “I knew that was going to happen!” Bottom line: Fearing a negative outcome usually just distracts you from striving for the best outcome.

I want to conclude this section by acknowledging vulnerability can feel really uncomfortable! It’s actually okay to be uncomfortable. When you operate from a fear-based perspective, however, you voluntarily abandon fulfillment and growth - ultimately trading them away for the illusion of control.