Throw Off the Bowlines: Why facing your fears might be the best thing you do
Note: I wrote this while preparing for and then while flying to Dhaka, but didn’t have a chance to post until my return.
Tomorrow night, I will board the first of four flights that will take me first to Seattle, then to Hong Kong, onto Bangkok, and finally to Dhaka, Bangladesh. I have been asked to join a trip hosted by the Richardson Center for Global Engagement to visit Cox’s Bazaar, the largest Rohingyan refugee camp in the world. We will meet with the refugees themselves and the many people, organizations and officials working to improve their situation and help them build new lives away from home.
I’m scared.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m thrilled and honored by the opportunity, but I am also filled with nervous jitters and deep feelings of imposter syndrome.
Although I have imagined a million things that could happen, I don’t really have a clear picture of what to expect. It all feels like one great big unknown and that makes me uneasy. That nervousness, trepidation, and just plain old fear are all signs that I must do this. That this trip is exactly what I need because I have learned that facing my fears might just be the best thing I can do for myself.
You see, when you’re afraid to do something — try a new activity, go to a new place, meet a new person — and you do it anyway, you learn that you can withstand more than you were giving yourself credit for. Facing your fears, pursuing your dreams, braving the unknown help you realize you are stronger, smarter, or more capable than you thought.
This is how resilience is honed. Testing our limits and recognizing that we’d misjudged them, that those limits are further out than we’d previously suspected.
It’s one of the reasons why entrepreneurship helps — or forces rather — you to become grittier, stronger and more confident. Being in business brings up so much fear, doubt, and worry, but you get through it and it makes you just a little stronger, a little bolder each time.
I have been listening to the audio version of Marie Forleo’s “Everything is Figureoutable” and she brings up a really wonderful and thought-provoking idea about fear — what if fear is actually how our body shows its excitement?
She explains how Bruce Springsteen describes the thrill he experiences backstage, listening to the crowd roar in expectation of his performance. His breath quickens. His heart races. His skin tingles. Sounds a little like fear, doesn’t it? But he uses those physical symptoms as signals that he is about to do something incredible. That he is living his dream.
While I didn’t have the nuanced perspective to understand that my fear is indeed my own excitement over an experience or opportunity, I have recently come to the conclusion that if there is something that I know I want to do, but it also makes me jittery and nervous, then I must proceed.
Those nerves are a sign that this matters to me and that the only result of me failing to take that next step forward would be regret.
The next time you find yourself flooded with feelings of anxiety or fear over an opportunity for adventure or progress, ask yourself one simple question.
In 5 years, am I more likely to regret
saying yes or saying no?
Most of the time, when you take a moment to reflect on this question, the answer is clear. You’re more likely to regret saying no. When you say yes, even when it winds up being an absolute failure, you learn. You grow. And it makes you a better person.
A few years, ago I decided that I wanted to be the person who said yes. Who took the chance on adventure, and experience, and life. It’s why I got a tattoo with part of my favorite Mark Twain quote:
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
So don’t let fear get in the way. Don’t let your dreams slip through the cracks because of “what-ifs.” Instead, focus on the “why nots” and take that leap.