Do it scared

Fear doesn’t need to be a barrier. You can confront something terrifying, feel a great cresting wave of panic wash over you, and say with equanimity:

“I feel scared. I guess I’ll just do it scared.”

This was a profound realisation. Sometimes, fear is rational and protective. But most of the time, especially in our professional lives, it serves a lesser purpose. It can be ignored and overridden to no detriment.

In fact, often to your gain: it’s usually fear, and nothing else, that stands between you and the afterglow of a keynote speech to 600 people, or the thrill of exploring a new country, or the camaraderie of hosting an executive dinner with people vastly more accomplished than you. Rarely are those opportunities gifted to people incapable of realising their potential. Fear is the barrier, not ability.

It feels like some impossible trick, to simply ignore your screaming synapses and pilot the meatbag of your body into a terrifying situation. But it works, and it becomes easier with every subsequent attempt.

You can force your legs to walk, mechanically, step by halting step, onto that stage, or airport concourse, or restaurant lobby, to observe your racing heart and coursing adrenaline with amused detachment.

“I feel scared. I guess I’ll just do it scared.”

And suddenly, you’re there. You’re no longer anticipating, analysing, pre-empting the situation; you are there, doing it, engaged in it, enlisting a different, more experienced part of your brain, trading the vague abstractions of worry and anxiety for the concrete reality of practiced motions and reliable competencies. And you will succeed.

You can feel scared, and still do the scary thing.