Fear is your brain telling you that danger could be nearby. Uncertainty is present. It helps you focus and make wise decisions when you don’t have all the facts. It heightens awareness so you can put your best foot forward.
At least, fear can do all of those things. If you’re like me, you’ve seen fear both help and hurt decisions. The key to capitalizing on the former and avoiding the latter is understanding and embracing the power of fear so you can leverage it to your advantage.
Fear Isn’t Bad
Fear is a primary or “basic” emotion. It is a “first wave” of feelings that come from an experience, often triggering the fight-or-flight response. When you can see fear as a reaction, it becomes less, well, fearful.
Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of The Power of Slow, points out that there are actually many benefits fear offers when it comes in the right doses, and we have measured responses. “We worry that things won’t turn out,” she says, “that what is unfolding is somehow not right. So we take action — or not. Depending on how we respond to things, we are either more stressed or we go into a full release, allowing things to occur just as they might.”
Fear is an organic prompt. It projects possible outcomes, and it is up to you to decide what steps you take next. That’s where great leaders can unlock potential in their fears.
How to Embrace Fear
Purposefully engaging with fear can rewire your brain. Research shows controlled exposure to fear (i.e., facing your fears) changes how you think. It helps you learn how to cope and build resilience under pressure. One study from the American Psychological Association explored this and summarized, “Understanding how fears are learned and how they can be overcome, or extinguished, is critical for coping and resilience.”
So, how do we embrace our fears? We seek out controlled moments that we know will trigger those fear-based responses.
One example of this that has always fascinated me is jumping off high places. Sky diving. Bungie jumping. BASE jumping. They all require a degree of bravery. They all include overcoming fear on some level.
Of course, you can’t just start jumping off stuff to overcome that fear. That’s where a virtual jump like JUMP by Limitless Flight helps. When I saw their hyper-realistic wingsuit flight simulator in action, I was blown away. These guys have created an experience that leverages multi-sensory input to make it feel like you’re jumping off a cliff as a base jumper.
JUMP founder and CEO James Jensen says the reason he created this unique total immersion VR adventure experience was to reach his goal to work with the fear response itself.
“Hyperreality lets us trigger flow and hyper presence in a safe, repeatable way, so people can practice calm under pressure and change their relationship with fear,” said Jensen. “The brain often responds to vivid simulated or imagined experiences as if they were real, engaging overlapping neural pathways and releasing similar chemicals and emotions. I wanted to build something that does more than entertain, something that can create a real shift for the individual and make them think, ‘Maybe I have more potential than I think I do.’”
Leveraging Your Fears
If you’re feeling stressed and anxious, start digging into the fears that drive you. What’s your “primary” fear?
Is it public speaking? Maybe you need to sign up to do stand-up comedy.
Is it rejection? Maybe you need to be the first volunteer the next time your team role-plays a sales scenario.
Leveraging fear to become a better leader starts with identifying the things that scare you. Once you’ve done that, face your fear, knowing that overcoming it won’t just remove that fear. It will make you a better leader in the process.