Let fear ride shotgun
What scares you might save you
“We greet the unexpected visitor and listen to what he has to tell us. When fear arrives, something is about to happen.”
–Leigh Bardugo
They tell you to be fearless. It’s bad advice.
Fear isn’t a weakness to overcome. Fear is your body telling you that something needs to become known. Curiosity dressed in caution tape. You can’t avoid fear, nor can you destroy it. But when you use the fear, the world starts to change.
Fear says:
I don’t know what the future will look like.
I don’t know if I’ll find a better job.
I don’t know if they’ll judge me for speaking my mind.
It’s a lot of “I don’t knows.” Fear is the edge of your map, where “hic sunt dracones.” But fear is rarely screaming stop, it’s whispering pay attention.
The unknown territory is where all growth happens, and where all the unfound spices are. Fear is an internal GPS and it makes noise when you are some place new. Don’t try to silence it. It will reveal precisely what you need to discover next.
The sphere of fear contracts with every step. The thing that terrifies you most contains your greatest lesson. The doorway that makes your heart race leads to a room that contains your future. Don't leave out the impossible idea that what you fear (that is, what you don’t know) might be precisely what you need.
Yesterday’s terror, becomes today’s discomfort, and tomorrow’s routine. And routine is doing what you want. Courage was never about being fearless. Courage is letting fear ride shotgun without letting it grab the wheel.